Desiring Martyrs: Locating Martyrs in Space and Time 9783110682632, 9783110682489

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Harry O. Maier, Katharina Waldner (Eds.) Desiring Martyrs

SpatioTemporality/ RaumZeitlichkeit

Practices – Concepts – Media / Praktiken – Konzepte – Medien Edited by / Herausgegeben von Sebastian Dorsch, Bärbel Frischmann, Holt Meyer, Susanne Rau, Sabine Schmolinsky, Katharina Waldner Editorial Board Jean-Marc Besse (Centre national de la recherche scientifique de Paris), Petr Bilek (Univerzita Karlova v Praze), Fraya Frehse (Universidade de São Paulo), Harry Maier (Vancouver School of Theology), Elisabeth Millán (DePaul University, Chicago), Simona Slanicka (Universität Bern), Jutta Vinzent (University of Birmingham), Guillermo Zermeño (Colegio de México)

Volume / Band 10

Desiring Martyrs

Locating Martyrs in Space and Time

Printed with the financial support of the Erfurter RaumZeit-Forschung (ERZ) / Spatio-Temporial Studies Group at the University of Erfurt in Germany

ISBN: 978-3-11-068248-9 e-ISBN (PDF): 978-3-11-068263-2 e-ISBN (EPUP): 978-3-11-068271-7 ISSN 2365-3221 Library of Congress Control Number: 2020944776 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available from the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover photo: Mosaic from Zliten. Scenes from the amphitheater. Archaeological museum of Tripoli. Augusta Hönle, Das Mosaik von Zliten: Ein Munus für höchste Ansprüche, Antike Welt, Vol. 13, No. 4 (1982), p. 25, fig. 3. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Preface This book project began with a workshop organized by the editors of this volume at the University of Erfurt in the summer of 2017 entitled Martyrs in Space and Time / Die Raumzeitlichkeit des Martyriums. We would like to thank everyone who made this undertaking possible: first of all to the Catholic Theological Faculty of the University, which allowed us to meet in its wonderful premises. Special thanks also go to the Erfurt Research Group on SpatioTemporality (Erfurter RaumZeit- Forschung), who financially supported our workshop and publication, and to the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, which made several research stays for Harry possible in Erfurt. It is always a long way to convert an inspiring personal exchange on a topic into a book. We would like to thank all those who made this possible, especially Aaron French, who was responsible for editing and also helped to produce the indices, and of course Ms. Bettina Neuhoff of De Gruyter Verlag as well as the editors of the book series SpatioTemporality / Raumzeitlichkeit. During this time of the Corona Pandemic, which has kept our world in suspense since the beginning of 2020, many things that were dear and natural to us have changed. This also includes the experience of space and time. These months have taught us the importance of keenly thinking about space and time from a cultural studies perspective, not only with respect to the past but also in the midst of our own global challenges. Harry O. Maier (Vancouver) and Katharina Waldner (Erfurt), October 2020

Table of Contents Harry O. Maier and Katharina Waldner Introduction 1 Michael J. Thate Sacral Meals and Post-Traumatic Places: Revision and Coherence in the Epistle to the Hebrews 15 Harry O. Maier “Who are these clothed in white robes and whence have they come?”: The Book of Revelation and the Spatiotemporal Creation of Trauma 41 Christopher A. Frilingos Murder at the Temple: Space, Time and Concealment in the Proto-gospel of 63 James Jan N. Bremmer Roman Judge vs. Christian Bishop: The Trial of Phileas During the Great Persecution 81 Eric C. Smith Pure Bread of Christ: Imperial Necropolitics and the Eucharistic Martyrdom of Ignatius 119 L. Stephanie Cobb From Prison to Palace: The Carcer as Heterotopia in North African Martyr Accounts 137 Nicole Hartmann Bones Ground by Wild Beast’s Teeth. Late Ancient Imaginations of the Death of Ignatius of Antioch 155 Katharina Waldner When the City Cries: The Spacetime of Persecution in Eusebius’ Martyrs of 177 Palestine

IV

Table of Contents

Jennifer Otto Making Martyrs Mennonite About the Authors

211

Index of Ancient Authors Index of Subjects

193

229

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Introduction

The majority of essays published here originated in an international workshop entitled “Martyrs in Space and Time/Die Raumzeitlichkeit des Martyriums,” convened at the University of Erfurt in the Spring of 2017.¹ At the time of its gathering there was no extended study of spatial temporal considerations of early Christian martyrology and none has appeared since.² This volume represents a groundbreaking study that seeks to address the ways in which a series of texts from emergent Christianity represent and produce configurations of time and space and the ways they invited their original audiences to enter into them. The investigation of the construction of space and time in literature produced in early Christ religion and emergent Christianity is relatively new.³ The “spatial turn” has been underway for a longer time in the field of Hebrew Bible, manifested especially in the steady production of volumes of essays produced by the Society of Biblical Literature “Constructions of Biblical Space Seminar,” which was first convened in 2000 by James Flanagan and Jon Berquist and now continues under the leadership of Eric Smith (a contributor to this volume) and Jaime L. Waters in the “Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity Unit.”⁴ In Germany, the study of Christian space as part of “Excellence Cluster Topoi” convened in Berlin from 2007– 2019 produced numerous dissertations, monographs, and ar-

 Papers presented but not published in this collection include “The ‘Two Eons’: Remarks on an early Christian Concept of the World and Its Implications” by Helmut Löhr (Münster) and “Explications and Martyrs in Cilica: Presentations of the results of a PhD project” by Philipp Pillhofer (Berlin). Michael Thate’s essay in this collection is different from the one given at the conference (some of the ideas he presented can be found in The Godman and the Sea: The Empty Tomb, the Trauma of the Jews, and the Gospel of Mark [Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2019]) and Jan Bremmer offered a response to the papers not published here and instead has written a new essay for this volume.  It is notable that in the rich collection of essays edited by Paul Middleton, Wiley Blackwell Companion to Christian Martyrdom (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2020), there is no critical spatial discussion.  For an overview of literature, see Eric C. Smith, “New Testament Space/Spatiality,” Biblical Theology Bulletin: Journal of Bible and Culture 42 (2012): 139 – 150; Patrick Schreiner, “Space, Place and Biblical Studies: A Survey of Recent Research in Light of Developing Trends,” Currents in Biblical Research 14 (2016): 340 – 371. Schreiner offers reviews of recent monographs with a focus on New Testament monographs as well as a chronicle of the spatial turn in biblical studies more generally.  Schreiner, “Space,” reviews a list of the five edited volumes the seminar has produced under the general title Constructions of Space. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110682632-001

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ticles related to the New Testament and early Christianity.⁵ In none of these cases, however, has a sustained study of spacetime of martyrs appeared. The Erfurt SpaceTime Research group (Erfurter RaumZeit-Forschung) represents another multidisciplinary application of the tools of spatiotemporal study to a variety of fields including early Christianity.⁶ This volume takes up its residence in the series edited by members of the research group and represents an attempt to move other scholars to consider using the tools explored in this collection to consider other sites of spatiotemporal production in the emergent religious movement we today describe as early Christianity. To refer to “martyrs” in the title of the volume raises a number of questions: how should we define the term “martyr”; how do modern notions of martyrs relate to ancient depictions; how do we avoid anachronistic conceptualization; what is the semantic range of the Greek term martys and how should that range be related to other terms such imitator of Christ, confessor, and sufferer; how should one best translate the word martys; how should the term be related to Jewish literature? In a classic study Norbert Brox focuses on the linguistic development of the term martys and traces it back to the trials of Christians in courtrooms, whence it was further adapted and expanded.⁷ Jan Willem van Henten rejects a purely linguistic account and argues, “Martyrdom in the Greco-

 “Excellence Cluster ‘Topoi. The Formation and Transformation of Space and Knowledge in Ancient Civilizations (2007– 2019).’” https://www.topoi.org/home/about-topoi/; studies related to ancient and early Christianity were produced under a variety of sections under four headings with subunits (“Research in Topoi II (2012– 2019). Knowledge Through Space,” https://www. topoi.org/research-in-topoi-2/, where publications are also listed: for example, “Creating Christian Concepts of Space. Research Project: C-2– 1,” https://www.topoi.org/project/c-2-1/; “Diversity of Spaces. Research Group B-III-2 (Topoi 1),” https://www.topoi.org/group/b-iii-2-topoi-1/; “City Spaces. Research Group C-IV (Topoi 1),” https://www.topoi.org/group/c-iv-topoi-1/. All websites were last updated October 31, 2019.  “Erfurter Raumzeit Forschung. Interdisziplinäre Forschungen zu Raum und Zeit,” https:// www.uni-erfurt.de/philosophische-fakultaet/forschung/forschungsgruppen/erfurter-raumzeitforschung, Universität Erfurt, accessed July 8, 2020, led by Susanne Rau, Holt Meyer, Sabine Schmolinsky, Sebastian Dorsch and Monika Frohnapfel-Leis. “Profil der Erfurter Raumzeit-Forschung. Raumzeitlichen des Religiösen,” Universität Erfurt, https://www.uni-erfurt.de/philoso phische-fakultaet/forschung/forschungsgruppen/erfurter-raumzeit-forschung/forschungsprofil, accessed July 8, 2020, is a subunit of the research group under whose aegis the workshop “Martyrs in Space and Time/ Die Raumzeitlichkeit des Martyriums” was convened. The De Gruyter series Spatiotemporality/Raumzeitlichkeit. Practices – Concepts – Media/ Praktiken – Konzepte – Medien, https://www.degruyter.com/view/serial/SPATIO-B, De Gruyter, accessed July 8, 2020, represents the work of the group’s seminars and affiliated projects.  Norbert Brox, Zeuge und Märtyrer. Untersuchungen zur frühchristichen Zeugnis-Terminologie. (Studien zum Alten und Neuen Testament 5; Munich: Kösel-Verlag, 1961).

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Roman period is a scholarly concept.”⁸ He and Friederich Avemarie propose a more elastic definition: “a martyr is a person who in an extremely hostile situation prefers a violent death to compliance with a demand of the (usually pagan) authorities.”⁹ Tessa Rajak points to Christian use of the term martys, makes the notion of witness the defining feature of Christian martyrdom, and distinguishes it from Jewish accounts even if the martyrological vocabulary for Christian stories was first created by Jews.¹⁰ Daniel Boyarin’s account insists upon a messier account wherein Jewish and Christian notion of deaths “for God” unfolded together as tales of desire for death in the complicated social, theological, and political entanglements of two emergent religious traditions.¹¹ Paul Middleton argues that the meaning of the term is embedded in narratives told by communities to reinforce their world view; ultimately what distinguishes a martyr from a heretic, an extremist, or an insane person is that “the battle in which the martyr is engaged represents the political, religious, or even cosmic struggle in which the group sees itself.” Whereas Romans saw criminals, Christ followers saw martyrs. “It was the stories Christian told about those deaths that made the difference between martyrdom and execution.”¹² Candida Moss develops this notion further by arguing that the stories of the martyrs were in varying degrees historical fictions that were rhetorically crafted for particular uses and for specific audiences.¹³ She prefers a definition of “martyr” that “leaves the edges of the

 Jan Willem van Henten, “Martyrdom,” Oxford Bibliographies, https://www.oxfordbibliog raphies.com/view/document/obo-9780195393361/obo-9780195393361- 0132.xml, last modified 24 May 2017.  Jan Willem van Henten and Friedrich Avemarie, Martyrdom and Noble Death: Selected Texts from Graeco-Roman, Jewish and Christian Antiquity (London: Routledge, 2002), 3.  Tessa Rajak, “Dying for the Law: The Martyr’s Portrait in Jewish-Greek Literature,” in Tessa Rajak, ed., The Jewish Dialogue with Greece and Rome: Studies in Cultural and Social Interaction (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 99 – 135 at 102.  Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism. Judaism (Figurae: Reading Medieval Culture; Stanford: Standford University press, 1999).  Paul Middleton, “Creating and Contesting Christian Martyrdom,” in Middleton, Companion, 12– 29 at 26; similarly, Paul Middleton, “What is Martyrdom?” Mortality 19 (2014): 117– 133, where he argues that the search for an objective definition of the term “martyr” must necessarily fail because the term is neither neutral not objective, but a product of interests in the people telling the story of martyrs.  Candida Moss, Ancient Christian Martyrdom: Diverse Practices, Theologies, and Traditions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), the front matter and back matter of The Myth of Persecution How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2013), describes them as “pious legend” and “pious exaggerations.”

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definition ragged” and allows incorporation of diverse reports and vocabularies.¹⁴ In this collection of essays, it is largely the narrative and rhetorical dimensions of reports of deaths of Christ followers that are developed. The essay by Christopher Frilingos asks whether the Proto-gospel account of the death of Zecharias (father of John the Baptist executed by Herod the Great) can be called a martyr by applying the insights of Daniel Boyarin regarding a death “for God” and shows the difficulty of defining what is an elusive term. On the opposite end, the essay by Jan Bremmer, which contests Moss’s treatment of the stories as more fiction than fact, argues that the “facts” in some reports have been appropriated for particular audiences and their interests. In these cases it is not fiction at play, but selective facts. The main title of the collection, “Desiring Martyrs,” is meant in two senses: one that refers to characters in stories who desire their deaths, and another that relates to the implied author and audience who want to tell a story about itself and others as part of its communal self-understanding. This results in complex mechanisms of eros.¹⁵ Elizabeth Castelli states the point eloquently in an essay on the voyeurism of martyr narratives, with a particular focus on the spectacle of female martyrs and the male gaze of viewers: “[T]he economy of martyrdom depends upon the looking of the crowd and the looked-at-ness of the martyr.” She cites as representative the Martyrdom of Polycarp which celebrates the bishop as “not only a great teacher, but also a conspicuous martyr, whose testimony, following the Gospel of Christ, everyone desires to imitate.”¹⁶ David Frankfurter argues that the martyrologies allow audiences to enjoy a sado-erotic voyeurism of violence even as they disavow that enjoyment by projecting the desire for death onto authorities, the pagan mob, and even demonic powers.¹⁷ Yet at the same time, family members such as Perpetua’s father are brought into the arena and together with the authorities express their profound desire that Perpetua save herself while there is still time.¹⁸ Here an audience has a front row seat

 Moss, Christian Martyrdom, 5; see also 2– 6 for a discussion of the difficulties of translation.  Virginia Burrus traces the erotic entanglements in martyrological literature in “Reading Agnes: The Rhetoric of Gender in Ambrose and Prudentius,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 3 (1995): 25 – 46; similarly, Boyarin, God, 67– 126.  Elizabeth A. Castelli, “Visions and Voyeurism: Holy Women and the Politics of Sight in Early Christianity,” in Protocol of the Colloquy of the Center for Hermeneutical Studies, 6 December 1992, New Series 2, edited by Christopher Ocker, 1– 20 at 12, Mart. Pol. 19.1.  David Frankfurter, Martyrology and the Prurient Gaze,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 17 (2009): 215 – 245.  Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas 2.

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at a theatrical performance of multiple desires. Desire works at other levels as well. Michael Thate’s essay in this volume on the Epistle to the Hebrews discusses the desire of a Roman community of Christ followers in Flavian Rome for the absent Jesus whose presence is simultaneously transferred into a variety of compensatory mechanisms related to priestly sacrifice, meal, communal gathering, and reimagination of space and time in a new geographical imagination. Spatiotemporal consideration of martyr stories offers a way of locating these kinds of desires and identifying their many rhetorical roles of persuasion in early Christianity. As indicated above, there has not been a sustained spatiotemporal analysis of the martyrology of early Christ religion. Nevertheless, a number of studies gesture in the direction that these essays develop. Judith Perkins has presented ground-breaking essays in the application of spatial theory to early Christian texts in general and martyrology in particular. In “Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era,” she considers martyrology spatially as a way of forming resistance and the creation of an alternative civic identity.¹⁹ Candida Moss develops Perkins’ insights with reference to the reversal of spatial hierarchies inscribed by deaths in the arena, an insight that Harry Maier has developed further with a more theorized application of the social geography of David Harvey, Henri Lefebvre, and Edward Soja.²⁰ Elizabeth Castelli’s analysis of the Christian appropriation of the arena and the spectacle as “a performance space” where Christian memory and culture were constructed also moves in a spatiotemporal direction.²¹ L. Stephanie Cobb, a contributor to this collection, considers the relation of spaces and times of martyrological narrative with those of their audiences and argues that through the stories’ vivid accounts listeners and readers are transported to behold and experience differing types of spatiotemporalities.²² As in the case of these studies and modern analysis of ancient martyrology, the essays of this volume move outward from definitions to considerations of

 Judith Perkins, “Space, Place, Voice in the Acts of the Martyrs and the Greek Romance,” in Mimesis and Intertextuality in Antiquity and Christianity, edited by Dennis R. MacDonald (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2001), 117– 137; Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era (London: Routledge, 2008); also, “Social Geography in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles,” in Space in the Ancient Novel, edited by Michael Paschalis and Stavros A. Frangoulidis (Groningen: Barkuis, 2002), 118 – 131.  Moss, Christian Martyrdom, 137– 139; Harry O. Maier, “Early Christian Martyrology, Imperial Thirdspace and Mimicry” in Space Time of the Imperial, edited by Holt Meyer, Susanne Rau, and Katharina Waldner (Spatiotemporality/ Raumzeitlichkeit 1; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), 254– 284.  Elizabeth Anne Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 104– 133  L. Stephanie Cobb, Divine Deliverance: Pain and Painlessness in Early Christian Martyr Texts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017).

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where, when, amongst and for whom accounts unfold and the ways in which narratives create and reflect spatiotemporal worlds. Spatial study rejects the idea that space or time are inert backdrops or empty containers, and rather considers them as expressions and outcomes of a processual reality. Susanne Rau furnishes a useful heuristic set of principles that undergird spatiotemporal study. These include: attention to processes producing and constructing spaces; consideration of spatial practices; analysis of similarities and differences amongst spatial conceptions; observing localization and spatializations of social relations; analyzing spatial self-representations and structures of the order of groups and their effects; and pointing to spatiotemporal transformations of social processes.²³ This is not an exhaustive list. For example, the place that desire holds in the main title of this collection alerts us to the importance of attention to gender, as one finds in Judith Perkins’ and L. Stephanie Cobb’s considerations of space, time, and martyrology. Ways in which martyrological narratives unfold in the contact zone of subverted Roman imperial ideologies invite postcolonial analysis, a topic focused on in Eric Smith’s treatment of the death of Ignatius of Antioch and Cobb’s consideration of the Roman prison as heterotopia. Even a superficial consideration of these principles will indicate their promise for investigating topics related to early Christian martyrdom however raggedly one wishes to define it. In one way or another the essays in this volume engage these principles of investigation. In Chapter One, Michael Thate, with the help of trauma study, considers the Epistle to the Hebrews as a site for the repair and revision of the past in response to the traumatic event of Jesus’ crucifixion and imperial harassment of the letter’s audience. In Hebrews Jesus is both pattern and goal of desire, one who is imitated and who makes imitation possible. He is “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:2). Hebrews places Jesus’ death at its center and transforms the trauma of crucifixion as a place of repair that results in a number of revisions and recreated sites of desire: death becomes a sacrifice; traumatized followers become priests, threat of persecution and other forms of insecurity are repaired and transformed through sharing a cultic meal; desolate space of crucifixion outside the walls of the city becomes a place of commemoration. Trauma theory presents a means for Thate to consider these as sites for therapies of desire. In the light of this trauma work, he revisits one of Hebrews’ polemical

 Susanne Rau, History, Space, and Place, trans. by Michael Thomas Taylor (London: Routledge, 2019), 4.

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passages against the Jewish cult (Heb. 13:9 – 10) not so much for what it polemicizes against but for what it advances as the establishment of a new space time imaginary of communal belonging and solidarity. From the trauma of Jesus’ absence remembered through commemoration, Hebrews creates what Thate calls a temporal and spatial parallax. In doing so, he invites us to reconsider the ways in which the letter molds and creates desire and transforms memory and absence into a desire for belonging and communal actions. Hebrews is a document from the imperial capital that centers itself on the martyr Jesus and addresses itself to a persecuted community of believers whom Thate describes as suffering transgenerational trauma. In Chapter Two Harry Maier’s treatment of the Book of Revelation considers desire for martyrdom and the imitation of Christ from another perspective, one in which the absence of trauma dominates. He cross-examines treatments that interpret Revelation as a text that is a response to persecution and argues that attempts to produce a persecution to explain the Apocalypse’s contents have largely failed. Instead through the use of the spatial theory of Henri Lefebvre and Edward Soja, together with Mikhail Bakhtin’s literary concept of the chronotope, he proposes that John wrote an apocalypse to create a desire for an imitation of Christ’s death through a vivid set of contrasting spatiotemporal depictions assigned to faithful Jesus followers on the one side and idolaters on the other. This means that in Revelation there is not so much the biography of the desire of those characters in the past who have suffered violence (in the Apocalypse, as the Greek term indicates, witnesses) as there is a desire for such biographies to unfold in the future. In seeking to create this desire, John rhetorically crafts sites of trauma which he invites his audience through a set of retrospective profiles of reward for faithfulness and punishment for idolatry to behold and thereby be persuaded of. In Chapter Three Christopher Frilingos looks outside the canon to the second century Proto-Gospel of James which describes the death of Zechariah and the flight of Elizabeth during Herod’s massacre of infants described in Mt. 2:16. With the help of Daniel Boyarin’s treatment of Jewish and Christian martyrs in which he discovers a set of shared features, Frilingos notes either the absence of those characteristics or their presence under a different form. He thus asks the question whether Zechariah is a martyr of Herod and answers his question by examining the spacetime characteristics of the Proto-gospel’s plot. The story invites readers into a variety of spacetime configurations in which concealment, persecution, and refuge play central roles and in which there are a set of “cosmic sympathies” between the different space-time locations that make up the story. In the apocryphal Gospel there is not so much a love of or desire for

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martyrdom as there is a love story of a husband for his wife and of God for Elizabeth and John. Next Jan Bremmer, well known for his precise examination of the historicity of early Christian martyrologies, examines the report of the martyrdom of Phileas, executed according to tradition in 305 CE during the Diocletian persecution, to discern what contained within it is more likely to be fact or fiction. Bremmer asks whether the Acta Phileae can plausibly be read as based on a historical transcript of Phileas’ trial and whether it reveals a desire for an accurate account of the proceedings of the trial and condemnation. Bremmer does careful detective work with the manuscript tradition to determine what elements of the account are historically plausible. In doing so, he resists the current trend in scholarship to read the martyr acts as pure invention. This is not to deny that the Acta Phileae is rhetorically crafted to commemorate a death. Bremmer draws on media studies that examine ways in which reports of the past can be appropriated in creative ways and adapted to the needs of those who receive them depending on the desires of producer and recipient. The choice between the Acta as fact or fiction thus creates a false dichotomy. The better question is to consider how historical records are adapted and used to promote a certain kind of memory and to what uses that memory is being put. In Bremmer’s account a desire for a particular kind of martyr does not necessarily imply a desire either for pure fiction or for history “wie es eigentlich gewesen.” Attention to issues of appropriation allow us to see what kind of martyr readers were desiring and how historical records could be tailored to fulfil those needs. The history behind the account of Ignatius of Antioch’s martyrdom in Rome and his journey through Asia Minor are today topics of renewed debate with the pendulum swinging toward the side that reads Ignatius’ letters as second century pseudonymous productions. Eric Smith’s interest in his chapter on Ignatius’ vivid letter to the Romans takes up a different set of questions with the help of the postcolonial theory of Achille Mbembe and his notion of necropolitics. The term necropolitics describes a spatiotemporal relationship of the subjugated to dominant colonizing powers in which the spacetime that the colonized occupy is oriented toward exploitation and subjugation. Ignatius’ journey to Rome “chained to ten leopards” replicates the colonizer-colonized power of periphery to center. But in the case of Ignatius’ martyrdom and its memory Smith sees what he calls “a new semiosis of killing” in which death signifies something other than the inscription of imperial power through the annihilation of the body and becomes a eucharistic sacrifice. Ignatius will become “God’s wheat” and “pure bread” when the beasts grind his bones in the amphitheater (Ign. Rom. 4.1). The desire of Ignatius reveals a profound postcolonial mechanism of imperial subversion.

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Ignatius imagines a death consumed by beasts in the Roman amphitheater and most scholarly accounts of ancient Christian matyrology also focus on the arena. In Chapter Six L. Stephanie Cobb takes us from the arena and offers us a subterranean view of the martyrs in the carcer, the imperial prison cell. Modern scholars of ancient Christianity have been inclined to minimize or ignore the violence of Roman incarceration, but Cobb reminds us that Roman imperial prisons were notorious for being overcrowded, dark, fetid, noxious, and pestilential places of deprivation and torture where prisoners often starved to death. The Roman prison was another site of necropolitics where imperial power was inscribed on bodies through humiliation and suffering. With the help of Michel Foucault’s famously elastic and evocative notion of heterotopia, Cobb examines the imperial prison as a counter-site of Christian heterotopia where Jesus followers produced an alternative spatiotemporality. She discusses the ways in which theologians such as Tertullian rhetorically transformed the diseased squalor of the carcer into paradoxical places of refreshment, physical training, and nearness to God. Such authors created a new kind spatiotemporal desire through consideration of confessors in prison. By inviting audiences into vivid descriptions of the prison cell they helped promote an anti-imperial space time communal identity. Early Christian martyrs enjoyed many afterlives in a variety of media that included manuscript production, the creation of monuments, and liturgical celebrations. Nicole Hartmann examines the afterlife of Ignatius of Antioch starting with Irenaeus onward and then focuses on the Late Antique and Byzantine Antiochian Acts of Ignatius and the Roman Acts of Ignatius as well as the furnishing of monuments for his relics. These media reveal the ways in which communities desired Ignatius in multiple ways. Ignatius’ memory was recrafted numerous times to match the needs and to conform to liturgical celebrations of later generations in which the cult of the saints grew steadily in importance. Here we recall Bremmer’s use of media studies to show the ways in which the past is appropriated for new goals and public desires. Hartman reveals the way in which Ignatius undertook not only one but many journeys through space and time as communities refashioned his travels to conform to their liturgical needs and theological expectations. She discovers what she calls a “synchronic multidimensionality” in Acts that are contemporary with each other. The Ignatian Acta thus reveal a variety of desires and spacetime configurations as differing communities and groups tailored him for their own ends. If in a different medium, Eusebius of Caesarea’s Church History was no less a monument to the martyrs of the pre-Constantinian era than those erected to honour Ignatius of Antioch. In Chapter Eight, Katharina Waldner considers the Martyrs of Palestine, a narrative extant in two recensions; the longer one as Syriac

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translation with some Greek fragments, the short one formed part of the first edition of the Ecclesiastical History from 313/14, but missing in our modern editions of the work. The period after the emperor Galerius’ Edict of Toleration of 311 CE furnished the vantage point for the historian to look back at the ‘Great Persecution’ of 303—311, to create a spatiotemporal conceptualization of Caesarea Maritima and the other cities of Roman Palestine and through it to fashion what Waldner describes as a new kind of Christian Palestinian identity. He transformed the empirical space of Roman Palestine into an imagined space with Caesarea Maritima and the school of Eusebius’ beloved mentor, Pamphilius, at its center. Waldner deploys Soja’s spatiotemporal notion of thirdspace to analyse the real and imagined Palestinian cities of Eusebius’ narrative, especially in their more wondrous aspects such as the miracle of the weeping columns of public porches and the grieving mist that moistened the streets and market places upon the brutal public executions of the faithful (Eccl. his. 8.9.4). In chronicling the personal traumata of individual martyrs in their cities and using martyrology as a key element of the organizing structure of his Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius transformed local histories into a monument of cultural trauma. His vivid accounts expressed the post-persecution desire for a certain kind of martyrological past, which had the lasting effect of creating a new spacetime conceptualization of the early church that continues to capture the Christian imagination to this day. Investigation of another literary monument is taken up in the final essay by Jennifer Otto in which she develops a similar insight about the tailoring of the past to create new spacetime configurations in the service of changing desires. She examines the martyrologies of the Martyrs Mirror composed by Thielemann van Braght in 1660, a volume which today can be found in many contemporary Mennonite homes around the world, and whose presence there helps to sustain a particular kind of Anabaptist historical memory. The two-volume work is a record of early Christian and Anabaptist martyrs that was composed for a Mennonite community living during the Dutch Golden Age, a period of prosperity and religious toleration of a religious group that had been fiercely persecuted a century earlier. Otto’s interest is primarily in the first volume of the work, in which Braght draws on early Christian martyrology to chronicle the martyrs of the early church. She offers a close comparison with his source documents and examines what Braght omits and embellishes in these accounts in order to show ways in which his profiles reveal a desire for a particular kind of early Christian martyr that satisfies both his own expectations and the kinds of desires he wants to awaken in his readers. The ancient accounts come from different authors, times, and places and are thus diverse and contain various messages and treatments of early Christian martyrs, but Braght takes this diversity and crafts it to

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make it conform to a uniform narrative of what he takes to be true martyrdom. The repeated themes and narrative treatments thus became a means by which Braght invited his audience to read themselves into the stories and interpret their lives in the light of them. The spatiotemporality Braght desired for his readers refashioned the spacetime configurations of past reports to help foster a communal self-understanding in which persecution – a signifier of Anabaptist cultural and religious identity – was becoming a distant memory. Whereas Hartman shows ways in which the memory of Ignatius could be reproduced in a variety of accounts tailored to differing local spatial temporal ends, Otto discusses the way a diversity of accounts could be shaped and serviced to create a uniform spatial, temporally, oriented desire. Desiring Martyrs: Locating Martyrs in Space and Time will have achieved its aim if it encourages other scholars to continue the spatiotemporal investigations published here. The essays are timely, not only for the promising direction they signal for a largely unexplored application of spatial study to emergent Christian tradition. There is also a reminder in these essays that rhetorical constructions of space and time and the practices of them matter in questions of life and death. This volume is appearing during the global COVID-19 Pandemic. Competing desires for health and a growing economy create their own unique spacetime configurations and rhetorical formulations. An American state lieutenant governor governor calls on the “Great Generation” to rise to the challenge and sacrifice their lives as they once did, this time for the economy; other leaders exhort the limitation of desire for the common good; still others minimize the threat of sickness and invite people to ignore the advice of health officials.²⁴ Everyone in the end dies, but it is important to know what you are living and dying for. All of the essays in this volume are dedicated to an examination of answers to that existential question from another period in history, but it is a question that presses itself upon us whenever we become conscious of and intentional about the space and time in which we live and the practices of our everyday lives.

 Adrianna Rodriguez, “Texas’ lieutenant governor suggest grandparents are willing to die for US economy,” USA Today, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/03/24/covid-19texas-official-suggests-elderly-willing-die-economy/2905990001/, March 24, 2020; David Smith, “Trump Clams 99 % of US Covid-19 cases are ‘totally harmless’ as infections surge,” The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/05/trump-claims-99-of-us-covid-19-cases-aretotally-harmless-as-infections-surge, Sunday 5 July 2020.

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Harry O. Maier and Katharina Waldner

Bibliography Boyarin, Daniel. Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism. Figurae: Reading Medieval Culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. Brox, Norbert. Zeuge und Märtyrer. Untersuchungen zur frühchristichen Zeugnis-Terminologie. Studien zum Alten und Neuen Testament 5. Munich: Kösel-Verlag, 1961. Burrus, Virginia. Reading Agnes: The Rhetoric of Gender in Ambrose and Prudentius. Journal of Early Christian Studies 3 (1995): 25 – 46. Castelli, Elizabeth Anne. Visions and Voyeurism: Holy Women and the Politics of Sight in Early Christianity. In Protocol of the Colloquy of the Center for Hermeneutical Studies, 6 December 1992, New Series 2. Christopher Ocker (ed.), 1 – 20. Berkeley: University of California Press. Castelli, Elizabeth Anne. Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Cobb, L. Stephanie. Divine Deliverance: Pain and Painlessness in Early Christian Martyr Texts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017. Frankfurter David. Martyrology and the Prurient Gaze. Journal of Early Christian Studies 17 (2009): 215 – 245. Maier, Harry O. Early Christian Martyrology, Imperial Thirdspace and Mimicry. In Space Time of the Imperial. Spatiotemporality/ Raumzeitlichkeit 1, Holt Meyer, Susanne Rau, and Katharina Waldner (eds.), 254 – 284. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017. Middleton, Paul (ed.). Wiley Blackwell Companion to Christian Martyrdom. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2020. Middleton, Paul. Creating and Contesting Christian Martyrdom. In Wiley Blackwell Companion to Christian Martyrdom, Paul Middleton (ed.), 12 – 29. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2020. Middleton, Paul.What is Martyrdom? Mortality 19 (2014): 117 – 133. Moss, Candida. Ancient Christian Martyrdom: Diverse Practices, Theologies, and Traditions. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. Moss, Candida. The Myth of Persecution How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom. San Francisco: HarperOne, 2013. Perkins, Judith. Social Geography in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. In Space in the Ancient Novel, Michael Paschalis and Stavros A. Frangoulidis (eds.), 118 – 131. Groningen: Barkuis, 2002. Perkins, Judith. Space, Place, Voice in the Acts of the Martyrs and the Greek Romance. In Mimesis and Intertextuality in Antiquity and Christianity, Dennis R. MacDonald, (eds.), 117 – 137. Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2001. Perkins, Judith. Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era. London: Routledge, 2008. Rajak, Tessa. Dying for the Law: The Martyr’s Portrait in Jewish-Greek Literature. In The Jewish Dialogue with Greece and Rome: Studies in Cultural and Social Interaction, Tessa Rajak (ed.), 99 – 135. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Rau, Susanne. History, Space, and Place, trans. by Michael Thomas Taylor. London: Routledge, 2019. Rodriguez, Adrianna. Texas’ lieutenant governor suggest grandparents are willing to die for US economy. USA Today (McLean, VA) March 24, 2020, https://www.usatoday.com/story/

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news/nation/2020/03/24/covid-19-texas-official-suggests-elderly-willing-die-economy/ 2905990001/. Schreiner, Patrick. Space, Place and Biblical Studies: A Survey of Recent Research in Light of Developing Trends. Currents in Biblical Research 14 (2016): 340 – 371. Smith, David. Trump Clams 99 % of US Covid-19 cases are ‘totally harmless’ as infections surge. The Guardian (London, UK), July 5, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/ 2020/jul/05/trump-claims-99-of-us-covid-19-cases-are-totally-harmless-as-infectionssurge. Smith, Eric C. New Testament Space/Spatiality. Biblical Theology Bulletin 42 (2012): 139 – 150. van Henten Jan Willem and Friedrich Avemarie. Martyrdom and Noble Death: Selected Texts from Graeco-Roman, Jewish and Christian Antiquity. London: Routledge, 2002. van Henten, Jan Willem. Martyrdom. Oxford Bibliographies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, last modified May 24, 2017. https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo9780195393361/obo-9780195393361 - 0132.xml.

Michael J. Thate

Sacral Meals and Post-Traumatic Places: Revision and Coherence in the Epistle to the Hebrews Abstract: The Epistle of Hebrews is an important witness to the complex transgenerational phenomena of post-traumatic place-making in early Christianity, as well as its recapitulation of desire, the staging of the sacral meal, the imitation of the Jesus’ voluntary death, and tensions among Jewish communities. Not only is trauma firmly placed within the Epistle, the community has sacralized traumatized space and time through the therapies of a cultic meal. Such repair leads to a series of revisions: violent death becomes a sacrifice; traumatized followers become a community of priests; transgenerational somatic insecurity congeals in the sharing of a sacral meal; and desolate space becomes a commemorative place. Hebrews is an important text in this complex process precisely because of its finely-ordered cosmology. Disjunction and displacement from originary social bonds are revisioned through the rubric of heirship, inheritance, imitation, and a heavenly city. Violent death becomes sacrifice. The threat of death is revised through a sentiment of felt persecution and the imitation of desire. An absent corpse is recast by the dramatic presence of Christ in heaven. Witness and martyrdom become the imitation of Christ and martyrs past as well as perfective of God’s redemptive plan. The edge zones of Jesus’ and his first followers’ decreation—that primordial outside—is revised as the sacral site of commemoration. This is the comfort of coherence, the redemptive revision through a later reason. This is difference at work among a social body; the emergence of temporal and spatial parallax. I don’t have a name for the thing that happened to me, but I don’t feel safe anymore. Octavia E. Butler¹ No one is immune from wanting a master narrative, from wanting to be comforted by coherence. Teresa Godwin Phelps²

 Octavia E. Butler, Kindred (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979), 17.  Teresa Godwin Phelps, Shattered Voices: Language, Violence, and the Work of Truth Commissions (Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 126. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110682632-002

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[…] These are not things transformed. Yet we are shaken by them as if they were. We reason about them with a later reason. Wallace Stevens³

Trauma, Place, and Desiring Martyrdom in Early Christianity Early Christianity’s capacious traditions circulate around a figure crucified in the desolate edge zones outside the sacral city. Within Gospel writing, Jesus’ movement from Galilee to Jerusalem is refracted through an enacted and choreographed desire: the journey to the capital was a staging for his death. Whatever conspiratorial action may have moved the plot along, Jesus is portrayed as firmly in control. He entered the city in order to die. We see this most pointedly in John’s Gospel where Jesus claims to give his life of his own accord: οὐδεὶς αἴρει αὐτὴν ἀπ᾽ ἐμοῦ, ἀλλ᾽ ἐγὼ τίθημι αὐτὴν ἀπ᾽ ἐμαυτοῦ (10:15, 18). And die he did: violently, painfully, publicly, shamefully, traumatically, willfully, alone. Most striking is a prevailing sentiment surrounding Jesus’ death. We get a glimpse of this sentiment in the Pharisees’ hypothesizing over Jesus’ mental state: μήτι ἀποκτενεῖ ἑαυτόν (John 8:22). Such texts have led the likes of Georges Minois to claim that “Christianity’s founding event was a suicide.”⁴ And, in subsequent imitation, as the great Peter Brown declared, that late-antique “Christians were seen by pagans as suicidal exhibitionists.”⁵ Desiring death became a contested issue throughout the histories of late antiquity.⁶ “Voluntary martyrdom,” as it became termed,⁷ as in the extreme case of Ignatius, tended to be conceived as an imitation of the Jesus pattern, the true martyr (cf. Clement Strom. 4.9.70.1), who orchestrated the events of his own death. That is, because Jesus desired death and staged his end accordingly,  Wallace Stevens, “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction,” in The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1954), 401– 434, 422.  Georges Minois, History of Suicide: Voluntary Death in Western Culture, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press 1999), 26.  Peter Brown, The Ransom of the Soul (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015), 7.  See, esp., G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); G. W. Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); and, Candida R. Moss, “The Discourse of Voluntary Martyrdom: Ancient and Modern,” Church History 81, no. 3 (2012): 531– 551.  See Michael J. Thate, “Exeunt: The Question of Suicide at the Origin of Early Christianity,” in Death and the Afterlife, ed. Candi Cann (London: Routledge, 2018), 231– 239.

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the faithful μάρτυς should do likewise. Ignatius’ desire for death is framed as his wish to be “an imitator of the passion” (μιμητὴν εἶναι του πάθους) of the divine Christ (Ign. Rom. 6.3). This imitation consisted of similar spatial staging in Ignatius’ processional toward Rome. Moreover, he likewise considered himself to be the “pure bread” and sacral meal of the divine.”⁸ Christ’s passion was pressed into the present by Ignatius with what de Ste Croix termed a “pathological yearning for martyrdom.”⁹ Origen may have averred. Though himself suspicious of an exuberance for death, he considered the passion of Christ as something akin to a suicide.¹⁰ The uncertain parameters of the voluntary nature of Jesus’ death, and those desiring imitation, released shockwaves of social shame and somatic insecurity throughout the histories of Christianity.¹¹ In a form of traumatic recurrence, the shame of the founder’s public execution and subsequent confusion over the absent corpse haunted those who had gathered around him. They were adrift, socially exposed, abandoned. Being abandoned by those who have the power to help, or by those whom we consider capable of helping, “produces a loneliness more profound than simple isolation.”¹² We are shaped by the worlds around us—and undone by worlds and selves that abandons us. The simple passing of time cannot remedy such experiences of abandonment. Trauma pierces the spatial and temporal fabric of social bonds. The traumatized fall out of space and time; or are passed by. Trauma inserts a fundamental disruption from space and time and the organizing desire of a community. It fractures selves and worlds, leaving a pervasive sense of insecurity. How, then, can a community’s traumatic “past” resonate with the present? Jill Stauffer, in her beautiful study, Ethical Loneliness, reflects on what she terms “repair” and “revision.” Revision constitutes the strategies and practices for living one’s past in the present moment. It is the assortment of meaning to events, spaces, and time. “The past cannot be changed, but it can resound in the present moment in vastly different ways.”¹³ It therefore matters what stories

 Cf. Ign. Rom. 4.1.  de Ste. Croix, Christian Persecution, 189.  Origen, Commentary on the Gospel According to John: Books 13 – 32, trans. Ronald E. Heine (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 190.  Again, see Thate, “Exeunt.”  Jill Stauffer, Ethical Loneliness: The Injustice of Not Being Heard (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 5.  Stauffer, Ethical Loneliness, 4.

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we tell ourselves, and what stories we are told about such matters.¹⁴ Reconciliation to space and time occurs when the moment once again becomes livable in light of what the past has been: this is how we securitize ourselves. Repair, then, is not a return to what was lost or broken—it is not putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. Nor is it ever neutral.¹⁵ Repair consists of a creative revision informed by value commitments.¹⁶ Such commitments invariably lead to pronounced differences—and sometimes conflicts—within communities marked by different cadences.¹⁷

Revision and Recurrence in the Epistle to the Hebrews These dynamics of repair and revision help explain the remarkable diversity of “later reason” that emerged in early Christian reflection on Jesus Christ. Transgenerational trauma helps explain the shifts of communal self-narration and differentiation among early Jewish followers and the gentile mission of Christ. Diverse revisionary practices lead to distinctive reconciliations with time, space, and desire. This essay attempts to track a specific instance of themes often left unconsidered in studies of early Christianity and martyrdom: viz., the narrative assemblage of trauma, place, and therapies of desire. It is not difficult to locate studies on individual aspects of these themes. Together, however, they form an episodic tapestry of desiring martyrdom in early Christianity. Jesus’ violent death, however we choose to interpret it, was a traumatic, shameful event—shattering space, rupturing time, and disrupting desire within a Jewish social body that had gathered around its rabbi. The emergence and diffusion of early Christianity was the complex repetition and marking of this transgenerational traumatic wound. Early Christianity is a post-traumatic marking within (and among!) Judaism.¹⁸

 Stauffer, Ethical Loneliness, 3. See here the brilliant new work of Robert J. Shiller, Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019).  Stauffer, Ethical Loneliness, 36.  See, esp., Elizabeth Spelman, Repair: The Impulse to Restore in a Fragile World (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002).  See, e. g., Stauffer, Ethical Loneliness, 34– 68.  I have attempted to put forward a reading of early Christianity as a complex post-traumatic phenomenon in The Godman and the Sea: Trauma, Loss, and Anxious Suspense at the Origin of Gospel Writing (Divinations; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019).

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The ways begin to part in all those tactics of making a shameful absence a saving presence. In particular, this essay focuses on two verses within the Epistle to the Hebrews which have been considered among the most difficult in the entire New Testament canon (13:9 – 10).¹⁹ Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings; for it is well that the heart be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited their adherents. We have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat (my translation).

The Epistle itself is an important witness to the complex transgenerational phenomena of post-traumatic place-making in early Christianity, as well as its recapitulation of desire, the staging of the sacral meal, the imitation of the Jesus’ voluntary death, and tensions among Jewish communities. As we shall see, not only is trauma firmly placed within the Epistle, the community has sacralized traumatized space and time through the therapies of a cultic meal. Such repair leads to a series of revisions: violent death becomes a sacrifice; traumatized followers become a community of priests; transgenerational somatic insecurity congeals in the sharing of a sacral meal; and desolate space becomes a commemorative place.²⁰ Hebrews is an important text in this complex process precisely because of its finely-ordered cosmology. Its rendering of space, time, and death are redemptively rendered. Disjunction and displacement from originary social bonds are revisioned through the rubric of heirship, inheritance, imitation, and a heavenly city. Violent death becomes sacrifice. The threat of death is revised through a sentiment of felt persecution and the imitation of desire. An absent corpse is recast by the dramatic presence of Christ in heaven. ²¹ Witness and martyrdom become the imitation of Christ and martyrs past as well as perfective of God’s redemptive plan. The edge zones of Jesus’ and his first followers’ decreation—that primordial outside—is revised as the sacral site of commemoration. This is the comfort of coherence, the redemptive revision through a later reason. This is difference at work among a social body; the emergence of temporal and spatial parallax.

 Cf. Lane, Hebrews 9 – 13, 530; Thompson, The Beginnings of Christian Philosophy, 141; Koester, “‘Outside the Camp’,” 299; Young, ‘“Bearing His Reproach,’” 243.  See Gabriella Gelardini, “Existence Beyond Borders: The Book of Hebrews and Critical Spatiality,” in The Epistle to the Hebrews: Writing at the Borders, ed. Régis Burnet, Didier Luciani, and Geert van Oyen (Leuven: Peeters, 2016), 187– 203.  See David M. Moffit, Atonement and the Logic of Resurrection in the Epistle to the Hebrews (SNT 141; Leiden: Brill, 2011), and his many articles on similar themes.

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Martyrdom lives on the other side of value judgments within a complex narrative assortment of disparate elements. We might call this the “emplotment of martyrdom.” According to Hayden White’s definition, emplotment is the way “a sequence of events” is fashioned into narrative and gradually becomes known as a particular kind of story.²² It is the narratological explanation in which events are given a flow and legibility.²³ A man seeking his own death dies outside the city. What kind of story is this? The masterstroke of Hebrews is its revision through the coherence of the priesthood. Death, blood, violence, absence, presence, discontinuity, disjunction, space, time, trauma: all are made meaningful and placed within the sacerdotal world of the priesthood. This essay explores this priestly revision of Hebrews specifically by entering the interpretive fray of chapter 13. This masterstroke of Hebrews is densely wound around the subtle logic of vv. 9 – 14. This essay will argue that the imagery in vv. 9 – 10 is that of the priest sharing his priestly meal with his family (cf. Lev 22:10; cf. Num 18:11 ff.). It will be argued that Lev 21– 22 presents a thematic pattern similar to the context surrounding Heb 13:9 – 10 by way of right worship and priestly solidarity. Hebrews 13:9 – 10 presents, in effect, the community of the Hebrews as the priesthood of Christ, the high priest of God. This is the emplotment in which transgenerational social shame and traumatic recurrence are given redemptive valence. This is how they are placed. While there are certainly other places in Jewish literature where priestly holiness is stressed,²⁴ the Rules for the Priests in Lev 21– 22 betray an interest in priestly solidarity with respect to who can and who cannot participate in the communal meal. Communal meals are a system of communication, with “a social dimension of the utmost importance.”²⁵ This is seen acutely at Qumran,²⁶ whose source may very well be the material present in Lev 21:1– 22:16. The priestly solidarity described in 21:1– 15 specifies those who can eat the sacrificial meal,²⁷ and the reciprocal pattern of sacrificial solidarity specifies what consti-

 Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1980), 7.  White, Metahistory, 1– 42  e. g., Num 18:9 – 20; Ezek 44.  Mary Douglas, In the Active Voice (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), 82.  Cf. Lawrence H. Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls: Their True Meaning for Judaism and Christianity (ABRL; New York: Doubleday, 1995), passim; Schiffman, “Communal Meals at Qumran,” Revue de Qumrân 10 (1979): 45 – 56.  Cf. Lev 6:16, 18, 26, 29; 7:6; 8:31; 10:12– 14; 21:22; 22:4, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13.

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tutes and qualifies as “the food of God.”²⁸ The verb ‫ אכל‬occurs seven times in 22:10 – 13, with 10a repeating itself in 13b forming an inclusio. ²⁹ a ‫ק ֶדשׁ‬ ֹ ‫ְוָכל־ ָזר ל ֹא־י ֹאַכל‬ b ‫ְוָכל־ ָזר ל ֹא־י ֹאַכל בּוֹ‬ a No lay person shall eat of the sacred bread b No lay person shall eat of it [the sacred bread]

The sacred offering (‫ )קדשׁ‬that is reserved for the priest and his ménage is a symbolic enactment of the solidarity between the divine and the community: an offering of which those outside have no right to eat. The coherence of priestly prescriptions is the source of revision in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Trauma is repaired through the coherence of the priesthood. The absence of the corpse of Jesus is revised into Christ’s priestly session in heaven.³⁰ As the author writes: Κεφάλαιον δὲ ἐπὶ τοῖς λεγομένοις, τοιοῦτον ἔχομεν ἀρχιερέα, ὃς ἐκάθισεν ἐν δεξιᾷ τοῦ θρόνου τῆς μεγαλωσύνης ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς (Now the main point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens; 8:1). In fact, if here were on earth, he would not be a priest (εἰ μὲν οὖν ἦν ἐπὶ γῆς, οὐδ᾽ ἂν ἦν ἱερεύς; v. 4). The violent, shameful, and bloody death of Jesus is revised through the coherence of priestly sacrifice and the sharing of the priestly meal. Traumatic displacement becomes the sign of citizenship (11:13 – 14; 13:14). The shameful space of extinction is repaired through practices of commemoration (13:11– 14).³¹ The questionable circumstances of Jesus’ death are revised by the later reason of what the author terms συντελείᾳ τῶν αἰώνων

 “Food of God” occurs in 21:6, 8, 17, 21, 22; 22:25. The uncharacteristic use of ‫( אלהיהם‬god) may suggest a remaining instance of pagan accommodation (cf. Ps 50:12– 13; cf. Frank Moore Cross, Jr., Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, 1.260; Jon D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993], 32– 35; Mark S. Smith, The Rituals and Myths of the Feast of the Goodly Gods of KTU/CAT 1.23: Royal Constructions of Opposition, Intersection, Integration, and Domination [SBLRBS 51; Atlanta: SBL, 2006]; Dennis Pardee, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit: Writings from the Ancient World [Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002]). Perhaps embarrassed by the anthropomorphism, Tg. Onq. and Tg. Ps.–J., but not Tg. Neof. or Sam. Tg., substitute “sacrifice.” Cf. Israel Drazin, Targum Onkelos to Leviticus: An English Translation of the Text with Analysis and Commentary (Denver: Ktav Publishing House, 1994), 188 n. 10.  On the switching of words in 10a and 13b, see Milgrom, Leviticus 17 – 22, 1860 – 1864.  Cf. Moffit, Atonement and Logic.  See the work of Batanayi I. Manyika, “A Social-Scientific Reading of Hebrews 13:11– 14 from a Postcolonial Milieu,” Canadian Theological Review 4, no. 2 (2015): 35 – 50.

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(“at the end of the ages”; 9:26). Voluntary martyrdom and suicide find repair in the coherence τῆς θυσίας αὐτοῦ (of [Christ’s] suffering), which is recapitulated in the voluntary martyrdom of the community (11:35, 40; cf. 12:1– 2). Though perhaps an overstatement to suggest 13:9 – 16 contains the key to understanding the entirety of the letter,³² the pericope issues a “complex deployment”³³ or “recapitulation of the argument and exhortations” of the Epistle.³⁴ More to the point, in its demonstration of the right worship called for in 12:28 – 29,³⁵ the Epistle revisions transgenerational trauma and the dislocation of space and time into the coherence of priestly imagery and a sacred past. It also sets the imitation of Jesus’ voluntary death within a sacral and redemptive rhythm. Right worship (12:28; 13:15 – 16) is the enactment of the voluntary movement “outside the gate” (ἔξω τῆς πύλης), “outside the camp” (ἔξω τῆς παρεμβολῆς), which later reason now colors salvific (13:12– 13). Such voluntary movement is the imitation of Jesus’ self-sacrifice—his voluntary martyrdom (cf. 9:26; 11:35; 12:1– 2)—revised as redemptive.

Strange Familiarity and Provocation The locution Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς ἐχθὲς καὶ σήμερον ὁ αὐτὸς καὶ εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας (Jesus is the same yesterday and today and forever) in v. 8 introduces the christological confession set in opposition to the polemical Διδαχαῖς ποικίλαις καὶ ξέναις (all kinds of strange teachings) of v. 9.³⁶ Read against such texts as Dio Chrysostom (Or. 74.21– 22), the “sameness” of Christ communicates “constancy,”³⁷ inspiring the community to consider and imitate his example,³⁸ as opposed to the Διδαχαῖς ποικίλαις καὶ ξέναις, whatever their origin or content.³⁹

 Floyd V. Filson, ‘Yesterday’: A Study of Hebrew in the Light of Chapter 13 (London: SCM Press, 1967).  Attridge, Hebrews, 391.  David A. deSilva, Perseverance in Gratitude: A Socio–Rhetorical Commentary on the Epistle “to the Hebrews” (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 498. deSilva is referring to 13:10 – 16 with his statement.  A. Vanhoye, La structure littéraire de l’Épître aux Hébreux (StudNeot 1; Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1963), 136 – 137.  Cf. Lane, Hebrews, 502, 506, 528.  deSilva, Perseverance in Gratitude, 495. Cf. Filson, ‘Yesterday’, 50; and V. C. Pfitzner, Hebrews (ACNT; Nashville: Abingdon, 1997), 194.  Cf. deSilva, Perseverance in Gratitude, 496.

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Hebrews often sets plural and singular substantives in comparative tension to evoke a superlative markedness regarding the singularity of the Son.⁴⁰ Πολυμερῶς καὶ πολυτρόπως πάλαι as well as fathers and prophets (1:1) are set against the singular revelatory event of the Son in the last days (v. 2). Angels are set against the superiority of the Son (1:5 – 14). The blood of goats and calves is found wanting with respect to the blood of the Son (9:12). And the repetitious sacrifices of the priests (10:11) are compared with the single sacrifice of the priesthood of Christ (10:12).⁴¹ The structure of Heb 10:1– 18 in general establishes a contrast between Mosaic sacrifices and the efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice.⁴² This contrast reappears with the string of plural datives in 13:9 following the singularity of τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεου in 13:7.⁴³ The appearance of ποικίλαις καὶ ξέναις has led some to view the language as suggesting a so-called relapse into Judaism,⁴⁴ or a flirtation with “syncretistic gnosis,”⁴⁵ as in, say, Col 2:16 or 1 Tim 4:3.⁴⁶ Though the lexeme ξέναις can denote “heresy,”⁴⁷ the pragmatic function connotes a deeper irony of a system familiar to the community.⁴⁸ This is Hebrews’ technique of emplotting the present (earthly) cultic system as foil⁴⁹ to

 Cf. Helmut Koester’s comment that the doctrines opposed are an “enigma” (“‘Outside the Camp’” 299).  See Nicholas Moore, Repetition in Hebrews: Plurality and Singularity in the Letter to the Hebrews, Its Ancient Context, and the Early Church (WUNT II/388; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015).  Cf. Felix H. Cortez, “From the Holy to the Most Holy Place: The Period of Hebrews 9:6– 10 and the Day of Atonement as a Metaphor of Transition,” JBL 125, no. 3 (2006): 527– 547. See, too, Gabriella Gelardini, “The Inauguration of Yom Kippur According to the LXX and its Cessation or Perpetuation According to the Book of Hebrews,” in The Day of Atonement, ed. Thomas Hieke and Tobias Nicklas (TBN 15; Leiden: Brill, 2011), 225 – 254.  Theodore G. Stylianopoulos, “Shadow and Reality: Reflections on Hebrews 10:1– 18,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 17 (1972): 223 – 24.  Lane contends that it is “impossible to reflect in translation the sonorous quality of the dative endings, which is rhetorically effective: Διδαχαῖς ποικίλαις καὶ ξέναις” (Hebrews, 522).  See the discussion in F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews (rev. ed., NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 376.  Bruce, Hebrews, 377.  Windisch, Der Hebräerbrief, 118; W. Manson, The Epistle to the Hebrews: An Historical and Theological Reconsideration (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1951), 150.  Jos. Ag. Ap. 2.36.251; 38.267; J.W. 2.17.414; Herm. Sim. 8.6.5; Ign. Trall. 6.1; Achilles Tatius, Leuc. Clit. 2.30.1; Acts 17:18.  See Lane, Hebrews 9 – 13, 531– 532 on the five points of clarity he sees in the “strange teachings.”  James W. Thompson, Beginnings of Christian Philosophy: The Epistle to the Hebrews (CBQ Monograph Series 13; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1981), 150 – 151.

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Christ’s high priestly ministry in heaven.⁵⁰ It is this “presentness” of the high priestly ministry of Jesus in heaven that makes current practices of the priestly ministry given on earth “foreign” (cf. Heb. 9:9 – 10). Hebrews both grounds⁵¹ and contrasts the discussion in 9a with what follows in 9b as signaled by the coordinating conjunction γάρ.⁵² A B B’ A’

Διδαχαῖς ποικίλαις καὶ ξέναις μὴ παραφέρεσθε καλὸν γὰρ χάριτι βεβαιοῦσθαι τὴν καρδίαν οὐ βρώμασιν ἐν οἷς οὐκ ὠφελήθησαν οἱ περιπατοῦντες.

A B B’ A’

Many strange teachings Do not be led away for it is well for the heart to be strengthened by grace not by foods which have no benefit for those who observe them

The thrust of the couplet is guided by a constituted antithesis between μὴ παραφέρεσθε and βεβαιοῦσθαι τὴν καρδίαν.⁵³ Whatever practices or teachings might have been described in 9a, Hebrews sees an antithesis with “the life of the new covenant.”⁵⁴ This “antithesis” is protracted in 9b in the antithesis of χάρις and βρῶμα—which is operative as metonymy for the old and new covenants.⁵⁵ The substantive καρδία occurs eleven times in Hebrews,⁵⁶ and in most cases connotes the new covenant organ for perseverance.⁵⁷ The heart, as Mitya taught us to say, is the field of battle on which the devil and God struggle,⁵⁸ “the place where a person’s basic inner orientation vis-à-vis God is decided.”⁵⁹ The leme “hearts” (καρδία) in 13:9, when read against the earlier uses of καρδία in Hebrews and the quotations of Ps 95:7– 8 and the echoes of Lev 16:31; 23:32, has an organizing function in terms of aggregating the various themes

 Lane, Hebrews 9 – 13, 532.  Attridge, Hebrews, 393.  Lane, Hebrews 9 – 13, 532.  Cf. Plutarch, Timoleon 6; Lane, Hebrews 9 – 13, 531.  Attridge, Hebrews, 396.  For the deployment of the antithesis between βρῶμα and χάρις, see Ign. Trall 2.3; Philo QE. 2.18; cf. Ign. Magn 8.1. For the opposition of grace and Judaism in the thought of Ignatius, cf. William R. Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch (Hermeneia; Fortress: Philadelphia, 1985), 118 – 119. These references are first cited by Attridge, Hebrews, 393 n. 56.  3:8, 10, 12, 15; 4:7, 12; 8:10; 10:16, 22 [2x]; 13:9.  The one possible exception to this would be 4:12.  Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 122.  Lehne, The New Covenant in Hebrews, 115.

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of rest and perseverance. Hebrews, inter alia, is a tale of two hearts: hardened hearts that wander from God (3:10) because of the collusion of sin and unbelief (3:8, 12, 15; 4:7, 12), and new hearts that seek after God (10:22).⁶⁰ Thurén has argued that the biblical expression “to strengthen the heart” is idiomatic for the observance of meal time,⁶¹ and that “eating, joy, and the praise of God at cultic meals” accoutered “the faithful Jew with strength and an occasion to acknowledge the grace of God.”⁶² Similar patterns of belief and practice were apparent at Qumran.⁶³ While it is certainly possible that this metaphorical reading of βρῶμα may be in view in Hebrews, owing to the earlier ostensive warning (μὴ παραφέρεσθε) of staying away from Διδαχαῖς ποικίλαις καὶ ξέναις, it seems unlikely to be the case here. In appreciation of the complexities of cultural creep and syncretism, other commentators have seen possible allusions to pagan cultic meals or the eating of meat sacrificed to idols.⁶⁴ Still others read βρῶμα as either an allusion to “the communal dinners which were held on Jewish feast days in Diaspora Judaism,”⁶⁵ or the system of “dietary laws.”⁶⁶ Though this is close to the point that “some form of contemporary Jewish practice and ideology is enticing some of the hearers” away from their new covenant entry,⁶⁷ to call it “dietary laws”⁶⁸ or “kashrut laws,”⁶⁹ or to connect it too closely with communal dinners in Diaspora Judaism even if examples of βρῶμα were being used as a “fellowship meal” in Diaspora Judaism can be found in Josephus (cf. Ant. 14.189, 213 – 215, 257, 260 – 261), is perhaps too narrow of a reading.⁷⁰

 Koester, Hebrews, 568.  Thurén, Lobopfer, 194– 196; as cited by Lane, Hebrews 9 – 13, 534.  Lane, Hebrews 9 – 13, 535. Cf. the possible connections with the thank offering of the Temple accompanying each meal for the faithful living outside of Jerusalem (cf. Ps 104:14– 15).  E. g., 1QH 1.31– 32; 2.6 – 10; 4.3 – 4; 1QS 1.12.  Attridge, Hebrews, 394; James Moffatt, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews (New York: Scribner’s, 1924), 233; and C. Spicq, L’Epître aux Hébreux.  Barnabas Lindars, “The Rhetorical Structure of Hebrews,” New Testament Studies 35 (1989) 388; and, with his own peculiarities, see Thurén, Lobopfer, 194– 196.  Johnson, Hebrews, 347.  Cf. H. Koester, “‘Outside the Camp’: Hebrews 13:9 – 14,” 304; N. H. Young, “‘Bearing His Reproach’,” 243 – 261; Isaacs, “Hebrews 13.9 – 16 revisited,” 268 – 284.  Johnson, Hebrews, 347.  See Attridge, Hebrews, 394.  Cf. Ellingworth, The Epistle to the Hebrews, 707.

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While it is true that βρῶμα is rarely used in the LXX for sacrificial meals,⁷¹ there are instances where it does function in some sort of sacrificial, or, at least, ceremonial way.⁷² Despite the paucity of βρῶμα being used in the LXX in a sacrificial sense, Hebrews employs the term in its redemptive-historical polemic against the worship in the earthly tabernacle in telling terms (9:1– 10).⁷³ Marie E. Isaacs suggests that βρῶμα refers to a “catch-all reference” for priestly sacrificial legislation now revised by the death and session of Jesus.⁷⁴ Hebrews is evoking the entirety of the priestly sacrifice of the old covenant by metonymy, as it did earlier in 9:1– 28. With the arrival of the eschatological priest came the eschatological priesthood (7:12).⁷⁵ Jesus, the high priest, has appeared once for all ἐπὶ συντελείᾳ τῶν αἰώνων (9:26; cf. 7:18 – 19; 10:1– 4, 8).⁷⁶ The sacrificial system was never an end in itself (Ps 40:6 – 8; Isa 1; Hos 6:6; cf. 10:5 – 9). Divine desire was. Hebrews is careful to stress the continuity of the covenants in order to demonstrate God’s faithfulness to his people and bolster the faith of the community.⁷⁷ The Epistle is equally careful to highlight the arrival of the eschatological priest and his concomitant new law in heaven (7:12).⁷⁸ The relationship of the antithesis is reality revisioned;⁷⁹ a move toward a strengthening of the heart through grace. That is, according to 13:9, χάρις has coalesced in the sacrificial and priestly act of Jesus, and it is only in this coalescence that true nourishment of the heart exists. The prepositional phrase διὰ παντὸς in 13:15 signals that the old covenant, symbolized by the βρῶμα of 13:9 and 9:10, is fulfilled in a “continual praise offering” and imitation of the community.⁸⁰ Grace, then, is shorthand for being translated into the new covenant

 Pace the claim by Ellingworth that it never is used sacrificially (The Epistle to the Hebrews, 707). Haggai 2:12 and Mal 1:7 are instructive, however, in that while Haggai uses κρέας ἅγιον and Malachi uses ἄρτους ἠλισγημένους in the sacrificial sense, βρῶμα is used in a more general sense. Though Ellingworth overstates his case, he is certainly speaking for the majority of texts.  E. g., the possible P material in Gen 6:21 (read with Gen 7:2, 8 in mind); Lev 11:34; Mal 1:12; cf. 1 Macc 1:63; 4 Macc 1:34; 6:15; Bel. 1:11, 21; and possibly Sir 13:7; 30:18.  Bruce, Hebrews, 377.  “Hebrews 13.9 – 16 Revisited”: 281; cf. Koester, ‘“Outside the Camp,’” 304– 307; and Young, “‘Bearing His Reproach,’” 253.  Cf. Lindars, Theology of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 137.  Cf. 7:18 – 19; 10:1– 4, 8.  E. g., 4:2; 11:1 (cf. Ps 22:4).  Lane, Hebrews 1 – 8, 210.  Cf. deSilva, Perseverance in Gratitude, 500.  Lane, Hebrews 9 – 13, 550.

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based upon the sacrificial act and priestly session of Christ.⁸¹ The distinction is a “Christological exposition” of the high-priestly offering of Christ and his heavenly session (8:3 – 10:18).⁸² The διόρθωσις within the symbolic world of Hebrews is not a matter of βρῶμα, then, but of χάρις, animated by the sacrificial act and priestly work of Jesus. Those who continue living under the age of βρῶμα find no value or permanence. Wrede suggested over a hundred years ago that Hebrews is a study regarding the nexus of the old and new covenants.⁸³ The contrast of Hebrews, then, is less between, say, false teachers, relapses into “Judaism,” as it is divergent therapies of space, time, and desire. These social dynamics and practices of repair are made legible—or are made manifest—through the cultic logic of covenant. Ignatius, perhaps with 13:9 – 10 in mind, warned his community along similar lines in his Letter to the Magnesians. Gather together—all of you—to the one Temple of God, as it were, to one altar, to one Jesus Christ. […] Do not be led away through strange teachings and outmoded fables, which are not useful. If we still go on observing Judaism, we acknowledge that we never received grace; the godly prophets lived Christ Jesus’ way. That is why they were persecuted, for they were inspired by his grace (Ign. Magn. 7.2– 8.2).

For Ignatius and Hebrews, the present priestly arrangements of the old covenant are now obsolete. Philo could even argue that the occasion of the Day of Atonement is the worship of the Lord and the celebration of his promise, not food or cult (Spec. Laws 2.193 – 94, 198 – 99).⁸⁴ The ritual process was a vehicle for right worship.⁸⁵ Those who continue in the sacerdotal world of shadow would find no entrance into the new covenant community of the Son. The sacerdotal world of Hebrews is thus charmed by a thoroughgoing Christology.⁸⁶ Those who linger in the evanescence of the old covenant will find no value in the new.  Cf. Filson, ‘Yesterday’, 41: “Jesus the high priest is viewed in Hebrews as both sacrificing priest and sacrificial victim.” Cf. this line of thought in Augustine, City of God 10.4– 6, 20; E. TeSelle, Augustine (Abingdon Pillars of Theology; Nashville: Abingdon, 2006), 58, 87 n. 11.  Guthrie, “Hebrews,” 970.  W. Wrede, Das literarische Rätsel des Hebräerbriefes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1906), 66.  Cf. Lane, Hebrews 9 – 13, 536. Moreover, Philo regarded prayer as superior to sacrifice (De plant. 126 – 129; De cher. 99 – 100; De vit. M. II.24). Cf. H. A. Wolfson, Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (2 vols.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1947).  deSilva, Persevering in Gratitude, 504– 505.  What Pierre Grelot calls the “transhistorical work” (The Language of Symbolism: Biblical Theology, Semantics, and Exegesis, trans. Christopher R. Smith [Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2006], 3 – 4).

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Altars and Priests (13:10) Verse 10 is among the more “difficult statements in Hebrews to fit into its context.”⁸⁷ Central to the riddle is the evident conflict of value (cf. 13:9). The Epistle appears to be polemically charged with respect to something like “Judaism.”⁸⁸ The use of ἔχομεν and ἔχουσιν in v. 10 alludes to distinguishable groups, ways of worship, social cadences, and approaches to God.⁸⁹ The fundamental point (κεφάλαιον) distinguishing the priesthoods in Hebrews is the signification of absence.⁹⁰ Traumatic absence is revisioned with sacerdotal significance: εἰ μὲν οὖν ἦν ἐπὶ γῆς, οὐδ᾽ ἂν ἦν ἱερεύς, ὄντων τῶν προσφερόντων κατὰ νόμον τὰ δῶρα (if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law; 8:4). The implication of the conditional construction— which affirms its opposite—grammaticalizes a reversal of presence and absence. The session of Christ that is absent on earth is present in heaven. The session that is operative on earth is thus absent in heaven.⁹¹ The edge of these polemics has caused great controversy, raising uncomfortable associations and charges of antisemitism.⁹² Any “anti” stance is not quite as

 Lane, Hebrews 9 – 13, 537; cxxxv.  Pace Lane, Hebrews 9 – 13, 536; Thompson, Beginnings of Christian Philosophy, 142– 145. Lane (“Polemic in Hebrews and the Catholic Epistles,” in Anti–Semitism and Early Christianity: Issues of Polemic and Faith, ed. Craig Evans and Donald Hagner [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993], 166 – 198) does concede that 7:18 – 19; 8:7, 13; 9:8 – 10; 10:1– 4, 9 may be polemical, but cf. the following: 1:14; 2:10 – 13, 16 – 1; 18 – 22, 27– 28; 8:5 – 6, 8, 13; 9:8 – 28; 10:1– 4, 8, 9, 11– 12; 12:18 – 27; 13:9 – 10, 14. See Koester, “‘Outside the Camp,’” 299.  Young, “‘Bearing His Reproach,’” 248; Filson, ‘Yesterday’, 48.  See Jon L. Berquist, “Critical Spatiality and the Book of Hebrews,” in Hebrews in Contexts, ed. Gabriella Gelardini and Harold W. Attridge (AJEC 91; Leiden: Brill, 2016), 181– 193.  Cf. Moffit, Atonement and Logic.  See, e. g., James D. G. Dunn, ed., Jews and Christians: The Parting of the ways A. D. 70 to 135 (rev. ed.; Baker: Grand Rapids, 1999); W. P. Eckert, N. P. Levinson, M. Stor, eds., Antijudaismus im Neuen Testament? Exegetische und systematische Beiträge (Munich: Kaiser, 1967); Craig Evans and Donald Hagner, eds., Anti-Semitism and Early Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993); Eugene J. Fisher, “The Church’s Teaching on Supersessionism,” Biblical Archaeology Review 17 (1991): 58; Lillian C. Freudmann, Antisemitism in the New Testament (Lanham: University Press of America, 1994); Robert R. Hann, “Supersessionism, Engraftment, and Jewish–Christian Dialogue: Reflections on the Presbyterian Statement on Jewish–Christian Relations,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 27 (1990): 327– 342; Lloyd Kim, Polemic in the Book of Hebrews: Anti-Semitism, Anti-Judaism, Supersessionism? (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2006), 1– 16; Judith Lieu, “Anti-Judaism, the Jews, and the Worlds of the Fourth Gospel,” in The Gospel of John and Christian Theology, ed. Richard Bauckham and Carl Mosser (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 168 – 182; F. Lovsky, Antisémitisme et mystère d’Israel (Paris: Michel, 1955); James Parkes, The Conflict

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clear-cut in the wider polemics of the Epistle owing to the lack of any single “Judaism” to oppose.⁹³ Judaism was (and is) “dynamic and diverse.”⁹⁴ Moreover, Hebrews takes great pains to demonstrate grand continuity,⁹⁵ as well as differentiation from covenant to covenant. This has led some to posit the classical rhetorical practice of encomia in favor of any sort of anti-Judaism polemic.⁹⁶ Here, the “sole purpose of this comparison was to amplify the honor and achievement of the subject of the encomium.”⁹⁷ The comparative interest in the Levitical priesthood, then, is that it “affords a salvation-historical perspective that will also amplify the value of Jesus’ priesthood.”⁹⁸ Criticisms are, however, levied against actual people (12:16), generations (4:6), and institutions (7:11– 28). Hebrews thus cannot be comfortably cornered to be either solely “for” or “against” Judaism. A different reading is proposed here. The polemic is not simply grounded on a “theological argument,”⁹⁹ but emerges from a therapeutic revision with respect to absence and alienation.¹⁰⁰ On offer is a fundamental rationale of an altogether new mode of existence.¹⁰¹ The effective force of this new therapy of desire is a polemic against presence. The polemic centers around contrasting solidarities within the priestly imaginary of Judaism as seen in 13:10.

of the Church and the Synagogue: A Study in the Origins of Antisemitism (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1961); Rosmary Radford Ruether, Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti–Semitism (repr.; Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1996 [1974]); Samuel Sandmel, AntiSemitism in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978); Miriam S. Taylor, Anti-Judaism and the Early Christian Identity: A Critique of the Scholarly Consensus (SPB 46; Leiden: Brill, 1995); Clark M. Williamson, A Guest in the House of Israel: Post–Holocaust Church Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993).  Cf. Jacob Neusner, “Varieties of Judaism in the Formative Age,” in Formative Judaism: Second Series (BJS 41; Chico: Scholars, 1983), 58 – 89.  E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63BCE – 66CE (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992), 3.  E. g., 6:18; 13:8; 11:1– 40.  E. g., deSilva, Perseverance in Gratitude, 263.  deSilva, Perseverance in Gratitude, 263; and, Attridge Hebrews, 55.  deSilva, Perseverance in Gratitude, 263.  Susan Haber, “From Priestly Torah to Christ Cultus: The Re–Vision of Covenant and Cult in Hebrews,” JSNT 28, no. 1 (2005): 121.  See Gabriella Gelardini, “‘Wir haben hier keine bleibende Stadt’ (Hebr 13,14): Kritische Raum- und Machtdiskurse im Hebräerbrief,” in Lampada per i miei passi è la tua parola, luce sul mio cammino” (Sal 119, 105) (Redazione Sardini: Franciacorta, 2017), 357– 376.  Cf. 8:4; 9:24; 11:13 – 14; 13:14.

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A (+)

ἔχομεν B (+) θυσιαστήριον ἐξ οὗ B (‐) φαγεῖν οὐκ ἔχουσιν ἐξουσίαν A (‐) οἱ τῇ σκηνῇ λατρεύοντες A (+) we have B (+) an altar from which B (‐) those who eat have no authority A (‐) those who serve in the tent

Whether in first-person plural verbal forms,¹⁰² plural forms of ἐγώ (“I”) and hortatory subjunctives,¹⁰³ or in employing the leme ἀδελφοί (brothers),¹⁰⁴ Hebrews creates a solidarity between audience, author, and Christ. The one who makes holy (ἁγιάζων) and those who are made holy (οἱ ἁγιαζόμενοι) are of an accordant desire.¹⁰⁵ Jesus is therefore not ashamed to call (καλεῖν; cf. Lev 1:1) them family (2:11).¹⁰⁶ The brother who sacrificed himself did so to sanctify his brothers.¹⁰⁷ And this sacrifice recurs in the language of imitation and perseverance with respect to social conflict. The LXX use of the substantival participle ἁγιάζων occurs seven times alone in Lev 21– 22 where the Lord makes his priests and people holy.¹⁰⁸ Hebrews presents Jesus as the subject who by his sacrifice makes perfect (τετελείωκεν) those who are being made holy (10:14), and how his suffering outside the camp was to make his people holy (13:12).¹⁰⁹ In light of “Heb 3:1– 16, it is possible that the author is already thinking of Christ’s role as ὁ ἁγιάζων in analogy to that of Moses consecrating Aaron and his sons (Exod 29:1; Lev 8:30), thereby instituting a priestly order on God’s instructions.”¹¹⁰ This priestly imaginary, however, stands upon an elaborate construction of spatial repair and therapeutics of desire.

 See 2:1, 3, 5, 8, 9; 3:1, 6, 14, 19; 4:2, 3, 13, 14, 15, 16; 5:11; 6:3, 9, 11, 12, 18, 19; 7:15, 19; 8:1; 9:5, 14; 10:10, 19, 21, 23, 24, 26, 30, 39; 11:1, 3; 12:1, 9, 10, 25, 28; 13:6, 10, 14, 18.  See 1:2; 2:3; 4:1, 2, 11, 14, 16; 6:1, 18, 20; 9:24; 10:15, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25; 11:40; 12:1, 2, 9, 10, 25, 28; 13:13; 15; 18; 21.  See 2:11, 12, 17; 3:1, 12; 7:5 (negatively); 10:9; 13:22; cf. 13:1.  On the interpretive difficulty and various proposals of ἐξ ἑνὸς πάντες, see Ellingworth, Hebrews, 164– 165.  Cf. the miniscule MS (33) variant.  See 2:10 – 18; 9:13 – 14; 10:10, 14, 29; 13:12.  See 20:8; 21:8, 15, 23; 22:9, 16, 32; cf. Exod 31:13; Ezek 20:12; 37:28.  Cf. Ellen Bradshaw Aitken, “The Body of Jesus Outside the Eternal City: Mapping Ritual Space in the Epistle to the Hebrews,” in Hebrews in Contexts, ed. Gabriella Gelardini and Harold W. Attridge (AJEC 91; Leiden: Brill, 2016), 194– 209.  Ellingworth, Hebrews, 164. This essay assumes a priestly order owing to work in the previous two chapters, and, by way of continuation, the work of Scholer, Proleptic Priests.

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Though hinted at in the exordium (1:3),¹¹¹ the title “high priest” (2:10 – 18) is rather “abrupt.”¹¹² Nevertheless, the “designation summarizes well the theme of solidarity developed in the preceding verses,”¹¹³ and sets forth a trajectory into the rest of Hebrews by way of weaving together “a wide range of concepts” to communicate the solidarity of the high priest and his family.¹¹⁴ The community has a sympathetic and eschatologically-effective high priest (8:1– 2).¹¹⁵ The Christology of Hebrews introduces the community as those with a special access to God.¹¹⁶ And this “special access” is epitomized in two resounding uses of ἔχομεν: “we have a high priest, we have an altar.”¹¹⁷ The priestly ministry was primarily “an altar ministry.”¹¹⁸ It was the place where fellowship between God and his people was realized through the mediation of the priests.¹¹⁹ The Levites, who were responsible to the Aaronic priests and were to perform the duties of the Tent of the Testimony, were not to go near the furnishings of the sanctuary or the altar on pain of death (Num 18:3). It was only Aaron and his sons that could serve at the altar. The service of the priesthood was a gift (δόμα τῆς ἱερατείας) from the Lord (v. 7). All that was presented to the Lord was in turn received and enjoyed by Aaron and his solidarity (vv. 8 – 11, 18 – 19, 31). Everything that was devoted to the Lord was likewise theirs (v. 14; cf. Tob 1:6). There is therefore no need for the priests to have a share in the land because the Lord himself is their inheritance (v. 20). The care to which they

 Cf. Thomas H. Olbricht, “Anticipating and Presenting the Case for Christ as High Priest in Hebrews,” in Rhetorical Argumentation in Biblical Texts: Essays from the Lund 2000 Conference, ed. Anders Eriksson, Thomas H. Olbricht, and Walter Übelacker (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2002), 355 – 374.  Attridge, Hebrews, 95.  Attridge, Hebrews, 95.  Patrick Gray, “Brotherly Love and the High Priest Christology of Hebrews,” Journal of Biblical Literature 122/2 (2003): 350. Gray, unfortunately, does not connect the high priest and family motif. His concerns are elsewhere.  Barnabas Lindars, The Theology of the Letter to the Hebrews (New Testament Theology; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 58.  Scholer, Proleptic Priests, 90.  C. F. D. Moule, “Sanctuary and Sacrifice in the Church of the New Testament,” Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 1 (1950): 37. Cf. 4:14; 6:19; 8:1; 10:19.  Dommershausen, Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament 7:69.  E. g., 1 Esd 1:18; 5:46, 48 – 49, 50 – 53, 59; 7:9; 8:46, 58, 60; Tob 1:6; 1 Macc 1:46; 3:49, 51; 4:36 – 61; 7:33, 36; 10:42; 14:42; 2 Macc 1:21, 23, 30; 3:15; 4:14; 14:31, 34; 15:31; Jdt 4:14– 15; 11:3; Sir 7:29 – 31; 45:6 – 36; 50:12; 3 Macc. 1:11, 16; 2:1– 20; 4 Macc. 4:9; T. Levi 4:2; 5:2; 8:1– 19; 9:6 – 7; 14:5 – 8; 17:1– 11; T. Isaac 4:32– 42; T. Mos. 7:1– 10; 10:2; T. Sol. 6:4; T. Adam 1:12; Aris. Ex. 87, 92– 93, 95; Jub. 21:7– 18; 30:18 – 20; 31:14, 16; 32:3 – 9; Josephus Ant. 13:1– 2; 63:1– 5; Pss. Sol. 2:3; Odes Sol. 20:1– 10; Ps.–Hec. 187– 188, 199.

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were called with respect to the altar was in representation and brokerage of the presence of the Lord (Lev 18:5). The altar could therefore be the object of stinging critique directed at the priesthood as it was in Joel (e. g., 1:13; 2:17), Amos, and Malachi.¹²⁰ Though θυσιαστήριον is not used in Hebrews to refer to the death of Christ prior to 13:10,¹²¹ it “can be interpreted on the analogy of the sustained use of cultic language in reference to the high priestly work of Christ (cf. 8:1– 5; 9:11– 14, 24– 26; 10:11– 12).”¹²² θυσιαστήριον, according to this reading, is revision, employed metaphorically for the revising of the death of Christ as sacrificial.¹²³ The use of θυσιαστήριον also functions as a spacio-eschatological metaphor for the altar in the eschatological temple (Ezek 41:22; Mal 1:7, 12).¹²⁴ It is at this altar where the new covenant community draws near for fellowship with and performs sacral duties to God. Commands of drawing near and persevering are therapies of desire wherein the community experiences their alienation as a heavenly belonging and their suffering as priestly service.¹²⁵ While it is certainly understandable how 13:10 could have led to Eucharistic readings in the early church,¹²⁶ it is right to be suspicious of such a reading owing the rest of the letter,¹²⁷ and it is certainly overstatement to suggest that the Eucharist is the very theme of Hebrews.¹²⁸ The symbolism behind the Eucharistic, however, should not be quickly abandoned. In covenantal contexts, eating symbolizes fellowship, accord, and presence. Just as Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders supped with the Lord as part of the covenant confirmation ceremony (Exod 24:9 – 11), so the community of the new order eats with God at the altar of the new covenant. “We have an altar,” then, is a communal confession.¹²⁹ Through synecdoche, where all the multifarious sacerdotal parts stand for the whole, the “altar,” to

 Cf. Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple, 75 – 102; Lena–Sofia Tiemeyer, Priestly Rites and Prophetic Rage.  Bruce, Hebrews, 379.  Lane, Hebrews 9 – 13, 538.  Lane, Hebrews 9 – 13, 538; cf. Spicq, L’Épître aux Hébreux, 2:425; cf. Hughes, Hebrews, 578.  R. Williamson, “The Eucharist and the Epistle to the Hebrews,” NTS 21 (1975), 308 – 309.  See Bryan R. Dyer, Suffering in the Face of Death: The Epistle to the Hebrews and Its Context of Situation (LNTS; London: T&T Clark, 2017).  Cyprian is the first to refer to the Eucharistic table as an altar (See Hughes, Hebrews, 578).  For a review of the arguments, see Williamson, “The Eucharist and the Epistle to the Hebrews,” 301– 309; cf. Attridge, Hebrews, 396 n. 85. Cf. the stark admission of Spicq, “On a voulu voir ici une allusion à l’eucharistie . . . mais c’est à tort . . .” (L’Épître aux Hébreux, 2:219).  Thurén, Lobopfer, 83 – 91, 204; as cited in Lane, Hebrews 9 – 13, 538.  Lane, Hebrews 9 – 13, 574.

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which the community is to draw near, encompasses the priestly revision of Christ’s death.¹³⁰ The function of θυσιαστήριον in Hebrews thus refers “to the sacrifice of Christ” in all of its complex reciprocity,¹³¹ and presents a deliberate ambiguity¹³² “so as to recall the entire discussion of Christ’s priestly sacrifice and its benefits” for the community’s imitation.¹³³ In short, revising absence as presence—and vice versa—and repairing desire with christic imitation. As we have seen, worship at the altar was a priestly, polemical affair—inverting absence for presence.¹³⁴ Distantiation is happening,¹³⁵ between groups, ways of worship, approaches to God.¹³⁶ As seen in 12:28, eating at this altar is a “figurative expression” for sacerdotal fellowship and participation—a participation “in the efficacy of Jesus’ sacrifice.”¹³⁷ While some point to the forbidding of eating the atonement sacrifice in Lev 6:30 and 16 as the guiding hermeneutic in 13:10,¹³⁸ this reading misses the subtleties of the rhetoric. Of course, “they” cannot eat of the Day of Atonement sacrifice—it is strictly forbidden. Under this line of argument even the new covenant community could not eat of it. Only the priests within the same solidarity can share the priestly meal of the altar (Lev 22:10; Num 18:9 – 20). Jesus the high priest is sharing his meal with his few, his happy few, his band of brothers.¹³⁹ Everything “has been fundamentally altered by the experience of Jesus Christ.”¹⁴⁰ And it is this experience which is to be the community’s imitation and desire.

 Cf. Koester, Hebrews, 569.  Attridge, Hebrews, 396. On the symbolic use of θυσιαστήριον in the patristic literature, see ibid., 396 n. 89.  Attridge, Hebrews, 396.  deSilva, Perseverance in Gratitude, 498.  Dommershausen, Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament 7:69. Cf. Exod 28:43; 30:20; 40:32; Lev 2:9; 9:7– 8; 10:9; 21:18, 21, 23; 22:3; Num 18:3, 7; Deut 21:5; 2 Chron 13:9; 29:31; Ezek 40:46; 42:13; 43:19; 44:8, 13; 45:14. See Kim, Polemic in the Book of Hebrews, 200.  “One of the basic needs of any group of people, as also that of individuals, is to define their respective identity. Identity is more often than not created by distancing the self or group from the ‘other’, that is, by creating a sense of cultural distance and exclusiveness” (Ithamar Gruenwald, “Intolerance and Martyrdom: From Socrates to Rabbi ‘Aqiva,” in Tolerance and Intolerance in Early Judaism and Christianity, ed. Graham N. Stanton and Guy G. Stroumsa [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998], 18).  Young, “‘Bearing His Reproach,’” 247.  Lane, Hebrews 9 – 13, 539.  E. g., Lane, Hebrews 9 – 13, 537– 39; Koester, Hebrews, 570; Attridge, Hebrews, 397 n. 92; Ellingworth, Hebrews, 709; Filson, ‘Yesterday’, 53.  Shakespeare, Henry V, 4.2.60.  Johnson, Hebrews, 28, 35.

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This θυσιαστήριον and the meal to which the community has access are reflected upon with a later reason as the baseline for perseverance in contradistinction to the θυσιαστήριον and the meal of the old covenant.¹⁴¹ The call to go outside the camp (13:13), and the charge that “we have here no abiding city” (οὐ γὰρ ἔχομεν ὧδε μένουσαν πόλιν; v. 14), further distantiates covenantal communities. The effect is an ironic reversal. The city and its leaders, Jerusalem and her priests, are sites of impurity.

Desire, Imitation, Sacrifice The Epistle to the Hebrews is a revision of traumatic displacement and social conflict and alienation through the symbolic world of the priesthood. In particular, the thematic patterning of the priest sharing the priestly meal with his ménage (Lev 21– 22) governs the logic of right worship and priestly solidarity in the complex assemblage of Heb 13:9 – 10. Particular to the interests of this edited volume on desiring martyrdom are the implications of this revision for communal desire, imitation, and sacrifice. This revision effects a series of sacerdotal shifts: violent death becomes a sacrifice; the transgenerational trauma of a community is mark as membership within the polity of priesthood; somatic insecurity congeals in the sharing of a sacral meal; and desolate space becomes a commemorative place. This is the narrative context in which the events of death and displaced desire signify sacrifice and imitation. This is the emplotment of martyrdom. The language of suffering sits tensively alongside the question of the Epistle’s provenance.¹⁴² The Epistle refers to suffering and conflict following the community’s “enlightenment” (10:32), as well as its abuse, affliction, and shame at the hands of surrounding bodies (10:33). The struggle to endure amidst such suffering is placed within the example of Jesus (cf. 12:3 – 4), and the call to be attentive to the plight of others becomes part of the ethical enactment of their priestly

 Cf. Lane, Hebrews 9 – 13, 500.  On questions of provenance, see the relevant sections in the best commentaries: e. g., Attridge, Hebrews; Herbert Braun, An die Hebräer (HNT 14; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1984); deSilva, A Perseverance in Gratitude; Grässer, An die Hebräer; Robert Jewett, Letter to Pilgrims: A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1981); Koester, Hebrews; Spicq, L’Épitre aux Hébreux; etc. See, too, the many important writings of Gabriella Gelardini on these matters.

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service in solidarity with their high priest (13:3, 10 – 14).¹⁴³ Celsus Spicq proposed the social situation from which the Epistle was written rests with those identified in Acts 6 – 7 and the great crowd of priests who became obedient to the faith (Acts 6:7). Exiled from Jerusalem, perhaps gathered in Rome, these priests long to return to their old life to minister once more in the temple.¹⁴⁴ Such a proposal makes a lot of sense—not least when read alongside careful readings of the Epistle within Flavian-era Rome.¹⁴⁵ The proposal of Spicq also makes sense of the apparent difference within Jewish expressions of fidelity to God. The perplexity, however, is how to factor suffering and persecution within the testimony of the community and wider history.¹⁴⁶ The Epistle to the Hebrews is an important witness to the rhetorical development of these problems in general. The implication of this essay is that the revision of the trauma and shame of violent death works within the community an imitation of desire. That is, just as Jesus desired death, so too should the community. Not just any death. This is the emplotment of martyrdom: self-slaughter becomes the transformation of the self as sacrifice (12:28 – 29). Desiring martyrdom perfects those who had refused succor in the past (11:40, 35). Desiring martyrdom is an imitation of movement from the sacral city into the desolate void of traumatic unbecoming. It was through his sacrifice of himself, through his own blood, that Jesus sanctified a people (13:12). And it is through the sacrifice of this people’s own selves, in their desire for a similar martyrdom, that the past and present are perfected, repaired, in a future, heavenly city (13:13 – 14).

 On these themes see Craig R. Koester, “Hebrews, Rhetoric, and the Future of Humanity,” CBQ 64, no. 1 (2002): 103 – 23; Norman H. Young, “‘Bearing His Reproach’ (Heb 13.9 – 14),” NTS 48, no. 2 (2002): 243 – 261; Young, “Suffering: A Key to the Epistle to the Hebrews,” Australian Biblical Review 51 (2003): 47– 59; N. Clayton Croy, Endurance in Suffering: Hebrews 12:1 – 13 in its Rhetorical, Religious, and Philosophical Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).  Spicq, L’Épitre aux Hébreux, 1:226 – 231. Spicq later modified this view by assuming that the addressees were drawn from the predominantly priestly Essenes (“L ‘Épitre aux Hébreux: Appolos, Jean–Baptiste, Les Hellénistes et Qumran,” RQ, 1 [1958 – 1959], 365 ff.).  See, esp., Harry O. Maier, “‘For Here We Have No Lasting City” (Heb 13:14a): Flavian Iconography, Roman Imperial Sacrificial Iconography, and the Epistle to the Hebrews,” in Hebrews in Contexts, ed. Gabriella Gelardini and Harold W. Attridge (AJEC 91; Leiden: Brill, 2016), 133 – 154; and Maier, “Jesus, the Great High Priest: A Political Reading of Hebrews’ Christology in the Ruins,” in Jesus – Gestalt und Gestaltungen: Rezeptionen des Galiläers in Wissenschaft, Kirche und Gesellschaft, ed. Petra von Gemünden, David G. Horrell, and Max Küchler (Freiburg: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 285 – 298.  Here see the excellent collection of G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), esp. 1– 228.

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Moffit, David M. Atonement and the Logic of Resurrection in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Moore, Nicholas. Repetition in Hebrews: Plurality and Singularity in the Letter to the Hebrews, Its Ancient Context, and the Early Church. WUNT II/388. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015. Moss, Candida R. “The Discourse of Voluntary Martyrdom: Ancient and Modern.” Church History 81, no. 3 (2012): 531 – 551. Moule, C. F. D. “Sanctuary and Sacrifice in the Church of the New Testament.” Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 1 (1950): 37. Neusner, Jacob. “Varieties of Judaism in the Formative Age.” In Formative Judaism: Second Series, 58 – 89. BJS 41. Chico: Scholars, 1983. Olbricht, Thomas H. “Anticipating and Presenting the Case for Christ as High Priest in Hebrews.” In Rhetorical Argumentation in Biblical Texts: Essays from the Lund 2000 Conference, edited by Anders Eriksson, Thomas H. Olbricht, and Walter Übelacker, 355 – 374. Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2002. Origen, Commentary on the Gospel According to John: Books 13 – 32, translated by Ronald E. Heine. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1993. Pardee, Dennis. Ritual and Cult at Ugarit: Writings from the Ancient World. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002. Parkes, James. The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue: A Study in the Origins of Antisemitism. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1961. Pfitzner, V. C. Hebrews. ACNT. Nashville: Abingdon, 1997. Phelps, Teresa Godwin. Shattered Voices: Language, Violence, and the Work of Truth Commissions. Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Ruether, Rosmary Radford. Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti–Semitism. Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1996 (1974). Sanders, E. P. Judaism: Practice and Belief 63BCE – 66CE. Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992. Sandmel, Samuel. Anti-Semitism in the New Testament. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978. Schiffman, Lawrence H. Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls: Their True Meaning for Judaism and Christianity. New York: Doubleday, 1995. Schoedel, William R. Ignatius of Antioch. Hermeneia. Fortress: Philadelphia, 1985. Shiller, Robert J. Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019. Spicq, Celsus. “L ‘Épitre aux Hébreux: Appolos, Jean–Baptiste, Les Hellénistes et Qumran.” RQ, 1 (1958 – 1959). Smith, Mark S. The Rituals and Myths of the Feast of the Goodly Gods of KTU/CAT 1.23: Royal Constructions of Opposition, Intersection, Integration, and Domination. SBLRBS 51. Atlanta: SBL, 2006. Spelman, Elizabeth. Repair: The Impulse to Restore in a Fragile World. Boston: Beacon Press, 2002. Stauffer, Jill. Ethical Loneliness: The Injustice of Not Being Heard. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. Stevens, Wallace. “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction,” in The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1954.

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Stylianopoulos, Theodore G. “Shadow and Reality: Reflections on Hebrews 10:1 – 18.” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 17 (1972): 223 – 224. Taylor, Miriam S. Anti-Judaism and the Early Christian Identity: A Critique of the Scholarly Consensus. SPB 46. Leiden: Brill, 1995. TeSelle, E. Augustine. Abingdon Pillars of Theology. Nashville: Abingdon, 2006. Thate, Michael J. “Exeunt: The Question of Suicide at the Origin of Early Christianity.” In Death and the Afterlife, edited by Candi Cann, 231 – 239. London: Routledge, 2018. Thate, Michael J. The Godman and the Sea: Trauma, Loss, and Anxious Suspense at the Origin of Gospel Writing. Divinations. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. Thompson, James W. Beginnings of Christian Philosophy: The Epistle to the Hebrews. CBQ Monograph Series 13. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1981. Vanhoye, A. La structure littéraire de l’Épître aux Hébreux. StudNeot 1. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1963. Wall, Robert W. and William Lane. “Polemic in Hebrews and the Catholic Epistles.” In Anti– Semitism and Early Christianity: Issues of Polemic and Faith, edited by Craig Evans and Donald Hagner, 166 – 198. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993. White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1980. Williamson, Clark M. A Guest in the House of Israel: Post–Holocaust Church Theology. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993. Williamson, R. “The Eucharist and the Epistle to the Hebrews.” NTS 21 (1975), 308 – 309. Wolfson, H. A. Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wrede, W. Das literarische Rätsel des Hebräerbriefes. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1906. Young, Norman H. “‘Bearing His Reproach’ (Heb 13.9 – 14).” NTS 48, no. 2 (2002): 243 – 261. Young, Norman H. “Suffering: A Key to the Epistle to the Hebrews.” Australian Biblical Review 51 (2003): 47 – 59.

Harry O. Maier

“Who are these clothed in white robes and whence have they come?”: The Book of Revelation and the Spatiotemporal Creation of Trauma Abstract: This essay deploys spatial theory to analyse the rhetorical strategies of Revelation as a text that seeks to produce and hence desires witnesses (martyrs) to expose Roman imperial idolatry. It begins by assessing traditional theories of persecution believed to lie behind or to have prompted Revelation (Nero, Domitian), as well as recent theories that it reflects engagement with the Jewish War and antagonism toward Jews in Asia Minor as a consequence of it (Aune, Marshall), as well as social psychological strategies as compensation for anxiety and imperial colonial social pressures (Yarbro Collins, Emanuel). It argues that none of these theories is satisfying and instead argues that John uses vivid speech (ekphrasis) as well as the rhetorical device of topographia to create a vivid set of contrasting spatial temporal imaginaries with the goal of persuading his audiences to recognize and resist or repent of involvement with an idolatrous economic imperial order. The essay deploys the theorization of Henri Lefebvre and Edward Soja as well as the concept of the chronotope by Mikhail Bakhtin, alongside trauma theory, to describe and analyse the ways in which John’s apocalyptic narrative places characters (witness and idolaters) in different spatiotemporal configurations with representative roles assigned for each set.

Where Have all the Martyrs Gone? Is the Book of Revelation ‘fake news’? This paper considers that question through a spatiotemporal analysis of its portraits of martyrs and villains. There are many witnesses in John’s Revelation – not only holy, but also impious ones. To the former group John assigns the term μάρτυς and its cognates, which the NRSV translates with the words ‘testimony,’ ‘testify,’ and ‘witness.’¹ To the latter group he assigns the word βλασφημία and cognates, rendered by the NRSV as ‘slander,’ ‘blasphemy,’ and ‘curse.’² He celebrates the ‘witnesses’/ ‘tes Rev 1:9; 2:13; 3:14; 6:9; 11:3,7; 12:11,17; 15:5; 17:6; 19:10; 20:4; 22:16,18,20.  Rev 2:9; 13:1,5; 16:9,11,21; 17:3. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110682632-003

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tifiers’ for their suffering and true worship, on account of which they can expect comfort and ultimately reward. The ‘slanderers’/ ‘blasphemers’/ ‘cursers’ he condemns for their idolatry and claims they make against God, for which they will receive punishment and annihilation. John uses this binary to create contrasting speech acts and assigns each to a different spacetime configuration. This essay will explore these spatiotemporalities and their rhetorical function with the help of critical spatial study.³ By placing different kinds of speech in differing times and spaces John wants to ask his audience what kind of speakers they want to be and what spacetime configuration they wish to inhabit. John desires mar-

 With respect to apocalyptic and spatiality study, much attention has been given to Hebrew Bible and Intertestamental literature, for an overview of which see Kelley Coblentz Bautch, “Spatiality and Apocalyptic Literature,” Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel 3 (2016): 273 – 288. Spatial study of Revelation has traditionally charted its cosmic space and its relation to the apocalypse genre: for example, Christopher Rowland, The Open Heaven: A Study of the Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity (London: SCM Press, 1982); Michael Gilbertson, God and History in the Book of Revelation: New Testament Studies in Dialogue with Pannenberg and Moltmann (SNTSMS 124; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 81– 108. Jean-Pierre Ruiz, “Betwixt and Between on the Lord’s Day. Liturgy and the Apocalypse,” SBL Seminar Papers 31 (1992): 654– 672 considers the shifting spatial dimensions from throne room to earth in Revelation. Lourdes Garci´ a Uren˜ a, Narrative and Drama in the Book of Revelation. A Literary Approach, trans. Donald Murphy (SNTSMS 175; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), takes up varying space time dimensions and sleeting as narrative devices in Revelation. Steven J. Friesen, Imperial Cult and the Apocalypse of John: Reading Revelation in the Ruins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 152– 166, offers an “emic” analysis of space and time in Revelation to uncover the various spaces and temporalities the narrative produces and engages. Friesen builds on and refines Leonard L. Thompson, The Book of Revelation. Apocalypse and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) spatial engagement. Using the tools of literary theory, Michael Sommer, “Die literarische Konzeption von räumlicher und zeitlicher Wahrnehmung in der Johannesoffenbarug,” Biblica 96 (2105): 565 – 585 considers the variety and fluidity of spatial temporal configurations as part Revelation’s narrative. Lynn R. Huber, Like a Bride Adorned. Reading Metaphor in John’s Apocalypse. Emory Studies in Early Christianity (New York: T&T Clark, 2007); as well as Thinking and Seeing with Women in Revelation (Library of New Testament Studies; London: T&T Clark/ Bloomsbury, 2013) use conceptual blending/metaphor theory to offer gendered spatial analyses of Revelation. Closest to the kind of engagement with the Apocalypse undertaken here are the studies of Tina Pippin, “The Ideology of Apocalyptic Space,” in Constructions of Space II, ed. Jon L. Berquist and Claudia V. Camp (London: T&T Clark, 2008), 156 – 170; Tina Pippin, “Mapping the End. On Monsters and Maps in the Book of Revelation,” Interpretation 74 (2020), 183 – 196; and especially the ground-breaking analysis of Andrew Devanbu, “The Geography of Mercantile Accumulation under Imperial Rome and its Crisis in the Apocalypse of John. A Spatio-Economic Reading of Revelation 18,” (Th.M. diss., Vancouver School of Theology, 2018) who contrasts the spatiotemporalities of Roman imperial commerce with the modalities narrated by John in Rev 18.

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tyrs not blasphemers and arranges his visions, admonitions and exhortations to achieve that end. Analysis of the overall rhetorical aim of Revelation necessarily involves consideration of its rhetorical exigency, namely the occasion Revelation presumes to respond to through its organization of narrative time and space. The majority of scholars agree that Revelation is a response to some form of imperial persecution. This conforms to the consensus that the source of ancient Jewish and Christian apocalyptic generally is the experience of suffering and/or disappointed expectation. Revelation was written to and for ‘martyrs’ to encourage them to endure and have hope as they awaited liberation from persecution. This account fits Revelation into the early church’s official biography of a marginalized and persecuted minority withstanding the oppressive forces of an evil empire. Its martyrs are the first in a series of victims of imperial violence that mounted as the second and third centuries unfolded. At the outset it is worth noting that as the decades pass the number of ancient martyrs – defined for the moment as those who suffer for Christian faith – is shrinking. A long arch of historical enquiry, beginning in the nineteenth century with Theodore Mommsen and today best represented by Candida Moss, has subjected early Christian martyrdom accounts to close scrutiny and have found that the sums that ancient writers record as the number of people the Romans put to death for their faith do not add up.⁴ Mommsen and a host of historians after him have pointed to the sporadic and local nature of the persecution of Christians and Moss seeks to analyse the rhetorical function of martyrdom stories. Most of this numerical scrutiny has been on the second and third centuries and while the Book of Revelation belongs to the first century, examination of numbers and analysis of rhetorical aims proves equally important for the study of the Apocalypse’s historical context and literary purposes. Scholars have had great difficulty furnishing the Book of Revelation with the historical conditions necessary for its production of martyrs (even conceived in the broadest sense of those who suffer for their testimony). In the first place, the Apocalypse names only one person who has evidently been killed through persecution – Antipas from Pergamon, “my witness, my faithful one, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells” (2:13). There are several other martyrs who appear throughout the text, indeed 144,000 of them, 12,000 from each of the twelve  Theodor Mommsen,”Der Religionsfrevel nach römischsen Recht,” Historische Zeitschrift 64 (1890): 389 – 430; Candida Moss, The Myth of Persecution (New York: HarperCollins,2013); for a chronicle of views, James Corke-Webster, “The Roman Persecutions,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Christian Martyrdom, ed. Paul Middleton (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell 2020), 33 – 50.

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tribes of Israel, “who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb” (7:14), a spectacular number that is of course symbolic of the true and perfect Israel. Another group appears earlier in Rev 6:9 as the subaltern saints: “the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and the witness they had borne [τὰς ψυχὰς τῶν ἐσφαγμένων διὰ τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ διὰ τὴν μαρτυρίαν ἣν εἶχον ].” Where did those “slain for the word of God” come from? Until the twentieth century, most scholars argued that they belong to the age of Nero.⁵ However, since the Neronian persecution happened in Rome and Revelation is composed for audiences in Asia Minor, it is difficult to square what Nero did in the capital with John writing to assemblies two thousand kilometres eastward. Another account is to link the Book of Revelation with the Jewish War.⁶ There is evidence in the reference to the two witnesses in Rev 11:4– 13 (the two witnesses who prophesy “in the street of the great city which is allegorically called Sodom and Egypt”) that Revelation does refer to the events in Jerusalem, although it is not clear whether they should be understood as happening during the Jewish War.⁷ But as with the case of Nero, the problem remains with how to connect the events relating to the conflagration in Roman Palestine to John and the assemblies of western Asia Minor. David Aune’s solution is to promote a two-stage composition hypothesis with John bringing an earlier draft of his experiences of the Jewish War with him to Asia Minor and reworking them there. ⁸ John Marshall by contrast hypothesizes that John was a member of the Asia Minor Jewish Diaspora during the middle of the Jewish War and that he crafted “parables of war” against Rome, to express an expectation of divine intervention and its destruction. For Marshall, the Apocalypse reveals an author conscious of tensions spilling over the boundaries of the war in Roman Palestine to Jewish-pagan relations

 J. A. T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976), 224– 225 and J. Christian Wilson, “The Problem of the Domitianic Date of Revelation,” New Testament Studies 39 (1993): 587– 605 are twentieth century scholars who argue for composition during Nero’s reign. For eighteenth and nineteenth century scholarship, Wilson, 587, n.2.  John W. Marshall, Parables of War: Reading John’s Jewish Apocalypse (Studies in Christianity and Judaism/ Études sur le christianisme et le judaïsme 10; Waterloo; Wilfred Laurier Press, 2001, 201– 206, who argues for a date during the Jewish War and that Revelation reflects elements of tension concerning diaspora Jewish integration in Asia Minor society as a consequence of the conflict.  David E. Aune, Revelation 6 – 16 (Word Biblical Commentary 52B; Nashville, 1998), 598 – 603 presents the various possibilities; Marshall, Parables, 160 – 72 interprets the two witnesses as characters set in the midst of the Jewish War portending Rome’s destruction.  David E. Aune, Revelation 1 – 5 (Word Biblical Commentary 52 A; Nashville: Nelson, 1997), lxix–lxx, who also records a variety of redactional and staged-composition theories.

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in Asia Minor. John at once champions God’s victory over the Romans and vilifies Jewish contemporaries in Asia Minor who have assimilated and integrated too thoroughly into pagan urban life. Marshall acknowledges that there is little if any evidence for the kinds of tensions between Diaspora Jews and others that he imagines the Jewish War produced in Asia Minor. But in either case – whether in expanded visions of a refugee or those of a prophet denouncing assimilation – the number of martyrs John sees in his visions belongs more to the realm of rhetoric than it does to empirical description. By far the most prevalent hypothesis amongst twentieth century and contemporary interpreters has been to date the Book of Revelation to the end of the first century and associate it with a persecution of Christ followers under Domitian. This dating follows the account of Eusebius of Caesarea (His. eccl. 3.18.1– 5; 5.8.5 – 6), drawing on Irenaeus (Adv. haer. 5.30.3), as well as Hegesippus’s and Tertullian’s account of Domitianic harassment of Christians (His. eccl. 3.20.1– 11). J. Christian Wilson traces the shift from a Neronic to the later date to the influence of John B. Lightfoot, who, in a study of 1 Clement, marshalled all the evidence for a persecution by the Flavian emperor of Jews and Christ followers and thereby persuaded Revelation successive generations of commentators to locate the Apocalypse in this period. ⁹ The hypothesis requires that Domitian’s execution of Christians in the capital prompted similar actions in the east.¹⁰ It proves difficult to sustain, however, and reveals Eusebius and Lightfoot after him generalizing from Domitian’s harassment of Roman Jews to persecu-

 Wilson, Problem, 587– 589 notes that this is the majority position of twentieth century commentators English and German commentators. John Barber Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers. Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp. Revised Texts with Introduction, Notes, Dissertations, and Translation. Part 1. Volume 1 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981), 104– 115, marshalled cumulative evidence for a Domitianic persecution and this resulted in a number of commentaries combining Lightfoot’s treatment to promote the hypothesis that Revelation was written at the end of Domitian’s reign in 96 CE: Robert Henry Charles, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Revelation of St. John (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1920), I.xcv; Henry Barclay Swete, The Apocalypse of St John (London: Macmillan, 1917), lxxxv; Isbon T. Beckwith, The Apocalypse of St John. Studies with a Critical and Exegetical Commentary (New York: Macmillan, 1919), 204. German scholarship championed a Domitianic date on a parallel track: Wilhelm Bousset, Die Offenbarung Johannes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1906), 43; Ernst Lohmeyer, Die Offenbarung des Johannes (Handbuch zum Neuen Testament, 2nd ed.; Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1974), 143; Hans Kraft, Die Offenbarung des Johannes (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1974), 221– 223.  For example, Ethelbert Stauffer, Christ and the Caesars. Historical Sketches (London: SCM Press, 1955), 163 – 166.

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tion of Christians. ¹¹ Another wrinkle is to associate historical denunciations of Domitian’s alleged megalomania and arrogation of divine titles to an aggressive imperial cult being imposed upon residents of Asia Minor. The argument is weakened by the fact that descriptions of Domitian’s arrogance largely come from historians writing in a later imperial dynasty with either scores to settle or seeking to contrast his with Trajan’s reign. It further misunderstands the place of the imperial cult in the eastern empire.¹² Some try to solve the mystery of the disappearing martyrs by reference to Pliny’s correspondence with Trajan (Ep. 10.96 – 97), to point to local harassment of believers, a situation that probably is reflected in the account of 1 Peter 4:4,12– 19.¹³ It is important, however, to note the clear reluctance of the emperor to persecute ‘Cristianoi’ for their belief in Christ and the difficulty of squaring this with John’s representation of the Great Whore of Babylon “drunk with the blood of the saints, and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus” (Rev 17:6). Trajan (Ep. 10.97.2) forbids people informing on ‘Cristianoi’ anonymously, perhaps because he knows that people will use accusations to settle old scores. The problem of geography remains with the correspondence when considered more generally: John is writing to churches on or within 150 kms of the west coast of Asia Minor, not to believers in Pontus and Bithynia. If we look at writing that is probably roughly contemporary with the Book of Revelation (Ephesians, the Gospels – especially the Gospel of John, the Book of Acts, and the Pastoral Epistles), out-

 Larry Welborn, “The Date of First Clement,” Biblical Research 29 (1985): 34– 54 scrutinizes and finds unpersuasive Eusebius’ account of members of the family of Flavius Clemens targeted on account of their Christian faith.  For a variety of theories associated with the imperial cult with critique, David E. Aune, Revelation 6 – 16 (Word Biblical Commentary 52B; Nashville: Nelson, 1998), 751– 779; also J. Nelson Craybill, Imperial Cult and Commerce in John’s Apocalypse (Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 132; Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 1996), 55 – 66, who rightly distinguishes local support for the imperial cult from imposition of it from above, but nevertheless adopts later historical treatments to construct an emperor who wanted to be worshiped as divine. Thompson, Revelation, 101 rightly challenges this kind of interpretation of Domitian as a later distortion. For damning historical representation of Domitian after his death and its literary and rhetorical features, see Verena Schulz, Deconstructing Imperial Representation. Tacitus, Cassius Dio, and Suetonius on Nero and Domitian (Mnemosyne, bibliotecha classica Batava, Supplementum 427; Leiden: Brill, 2019).  Thus, for example, Kraybill, Cult, 56 is able only to cite as evidence for the reason for Revelation’s martyrs Pliny’s letter, to make his argument that: “By the time John wrote Revelation, residents of Asia Minor noticed that some Christians drew back from the imperial cult. The refusal of some believers to make any concessions to the cult limited their participation in social and economic life of the region. Suspicious of the motives for such withdrawal from society, some provincials harassed believers or hounded them into court on various charges.”

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side of an oblique reference to the death of John in Jn 21:18 – 19, the chief forms of conflict recounted are between non-Christ following Judaioi fighting with Jewish and Gentile Christ following ones. Ephesians (even if the Ephesus reference in 1:1 is a later interpolation, surely a western Asia Minor text), a text contemporary with Revelation, seems to come out of an assembly of followers that is enjoying remarkable harmony and peace (Eph 2:14– 18; 4:3) and 1 Timothy instructs its audience to pray for civic authorities (1 Tim 2:1– 2). The Book of Acts, probably composed in Asia Minor in the first quarter of the second century, while depicting the corruption of provincial rulers, does not depict magistrates seeking to persecute or harass Christ followers. This has led to a decades long debate which need not concern us here concerning Acts’ treatment of Roman rulers, except to say that it is difficult to harmonize Revelation’s account of martyrdom with what we find in Acts.¹⁴ 1 Peter alone presents a picture of persecution of believers, a reference that makes perfect sense in precisely the situation Pliny describes, where Christians are being harassed by their neighbours. Taken together, the evidence hardly sustains the circular argument of David deSilva that on account of memory of Antipas’s suffering as well as those alleged to come form of an early period, “it is already appropriate to speak of Rome as ‘intoxicated’ with the blood of Jesus’ witnesses (17:6),” an allusion to the whore of Babylon drunk on the blood of the saints.¹⁵ Faced with the vanishing martyrs of Asia Minor, some have turned to psychology to shore up the persecution hypothesis. Adela Yarbro Collins in Crisis and Catharsis: The Power of the Apocalypse, in part rehearsing ideas presented by John Gager in Kingdom and Community: The Social World of Early Christianity, argues that Christians in Asia perceived they were under threat and thus experienced insecurity.¹⁶ Yarbro Collins attributes this perception of threat and experience of insecurity to several causes including memory of the Neronic persecution, antagonism over their beliefs with local Jews, disparities of wealth in

 See Joshua Yoder, Representatives of Roman Rule. Roman Provincial Governors in Luke-Acts (BZNW 209; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), 5 – 40 for the history of debate concerning the treatment of civic authority and the Roman empire in Acts.  David A. deSilva, Seeing Things John’s Way. The Rhetoric of the Book of Revelation (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2009), 55.  Adela Yarbro Collins, Crisis and Catharsis. The Power of the Apocalypse (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984), 84– 110. Collins works with the idea of cognitive dissonance as presented by John G. Gager, Kingdom and Community. The Social World of Early Christianity (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1975). Gager argues that Revelation represents an attempt through myth to overcome the dissonance that arose between Christian belief in election and experience of persecution. Gager argues that there was persecution, Collins contends that there was no explicit persecution, but rather expected and hence perceived harassment.

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Asia Minor, recollection of the Jewish War, harassment by neighbours, eastern antagonism towards Rome, and John’s own banishment to Patmos. The Book of Revelation had the function of displacing and resolving these perceptions and experiences by creating an experience of an imagined future where hope and election would be vindicated, thereby creating a catharsis of negative perceptions and feelings as a psycho-social coping mechanism. This would have been especially effective if John’s Revelation was read publicly in worship. “From a social-psychological viewpoint, the vision of a heavenly reality and of a radically new future functions as compensation for the relatively disadvantaged situation of the hearers or an imaginative way of resolving the tension between expectations and social reality.”¹⁷ Yarbro Collins’ hypothesis rests on the assumption that apocalyptic eschatology is a response to suffering. She recognizes the difficulty of furnishing Revelation with the backdrop of a Neronic or Domitianic persecution, so she creatively reaches more broadly to create a picture of cumulative psychic suffering. John invites his audiences to imagine the martyrs of John’s Revelation as a compensatory strategy to overcome cognitive dissonance and to relieve feelings of insecurity and threat. Another social-psychological reading joins trauma theory together with postcolonial studies to furnish the mise-en-scène for Revelation’s subaltern characters. Sarah Emanuel looks to a general situation of imperial colonial domination and its effects on Asia Minor Jews to help explain Revelation’s narratives.¹⁸ The Apocalypse, which she rightly reads as a Jewish text, functioned as a mechanism to survive communal suffering of Ioudaioi on account of imperial oppression against their ethnic identity. It did so by using humor as a coping mechanism, in which, through veiled mockery, it aimed to “construct an implied Jewish self and erode the dominant transcript in which that self has been deemed ‘Other than.’”¹⁹ Revelation is a “Jewish postcolonial text negotiating communal trauma” whose “representations of Christ, God, and Rome are informed by Roman comic motifs and genres as well as by a narrative use of humor in tradi Yarbro Collins, Crisis and Catharsis, 154.  Sarah Emanuel, Humor, Resistance, and Jewish Cultural Persistence in the Book of Revelation: Roasting Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). Emanuel builds on the recent theorization of Shane J. Wood, The Alter-Imperial Paradigm: Empire Studies and the Book of Revelation (Biblical Interpretation Series 148; Leiden: Brill, 2016), 140 – 149, who expands an understanding of Domitianic persecution Asia Minor Christ followers beyond execution. Shane argues that they could have experienced multiple forms of oppression that they will have associated with Domitian’s reign (for example insults, deception, poverty, threats, exclusion, and so on). Even if such oppression was rarely physically violent it was nevertheless oppressive and occasioned suffering.  Emanuel, Humor, 14.

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tional Jewish texts that functions as a subversive gesture of cultural persistence.”²⁰ The Apocalypse was generated by colonial trauma that prompted a strategy of humor-laced story-telling to expose its oppressors and to give voice to and reconfigure its audience’s suffering.²¹ Emanuel offers a clever reading of Revelation, but – like Yarbro Collins’ theory of perceived crisis – it is question begging because it has to do so much hard work to generate the problem that Revelation allegedly resolves. Both Collins and Emanuel pass over the evidence of Jewish integration into the fabric of Asia Minor society amongst a Jewish diaspora who had lived outside of Roman Palestine for generations. Philip Harland has urged caution with respect to scholarly constructions of imperial Judaism that focus on antagonism and sectarian separation. Instead he gives close attention to material evidence of harmony and integration, especially amongst associations. Attention to Jewish group practice in the form of inscriptions and other material evidence offers a picture quite different from a profile of Asia Minor Jews suffering colonial trauma and in need of a counter narrative to resolve their psychic unease. “[T]he participation of some synagogues and congregations in imperial facets of civic life in Roman Asia demonstrates one of the ways in which they could claim a place within society, tending toward some degree of positive interaction and integration along with other associations in that context.”²² So what to make of the martyrs of the Book of Revelation? Is the whole writing ‘fake news’? The way one answers that question depends as we have seen especially from Adela Yarbro Collins’ and Sarah Emanuel’s treatments on what one makes of John’s rhetoric. My reading of Revelation follows the thesis advanced by Leonard Thompson, Steven Friesen, and Paul Duff, that John’s quarrel in Revelation is not in the first instance with the idolatry of the Roman Empire (which he obviously opposes) but with those whom he castigates as having entangled themselves too closely with its economic and political order.²³ John’s Apocalypse is not a response to trauma, it is rather a warning of traumata to  Emanuel, Humor, 15.  Emanuel, Humor, 61– 125.  Philip A. Harland, Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations: Claiming a Place in Ancient Mediterranean Society (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 237.  Thompson, Revelation; Friesen, Cults; Paul B. Duff, Who Rides the Beast? Prophetic Rivalry and the Rhetoric of Crisis in the Churches of the Apocalypse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); also, Harland, Associations, 239 – 264. In Apocalypse Recalled. The Book of Revelation after Christendom (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), I offer a sustained reading of Revelation with this hypothetical purpose, but without the use of spatiality studies. argues that John is writing with multiple aims, both to challenge those who participate too much Roman imperial life and to comfort those persecuted by it because they resist doing so.

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come, especially for those who, in John’s estimation, are too integrated within the empire’s social and political order. The scholars just cited have posited a number of things may have prompted his warnings: taking part in urban festivals, attending banquets, sharing association meals, competition with other Jews, not exclusively worshiping the God of Israel, competition with others who were advancing a more liberal attitude toward the Empire.²⁴ A precise identification falls outside the scope of this study. It is sufficient to say that whatever the cause, the reason why there are so few martyrs in Revelation is because there were not many of them. John criticizes some of his audience because – as his message to the Laodiceans states – they say, “I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing” (3:17). When in Revelation 18:9 – 19 he depicts the rulers, merchants, and seafarers who mourn over the smoking ruins of the great city because of the loss of political power, markets for luxury goods, and trade he is speaking to an audience that is implicated in the relative prosperity an exploitative economic order has brought it.

The Apocalypse’s Real and Imagined Journeys It is with a view to prophetic critique that we should understand John’s invitation to his listeners to imagine witnesses (martyrs) and blasphemers and his use of vivid speech and graphic representation of space and his strategy of locating them in contrasting spatiotemporalities. The Marxist social geographer Henri Lefebvre furnishes the point of departure for what follows. Lefebvre argues that every society produces a certain space, with its own set of spatial practices, in order to create its own kind of social existence. He furnishes a theory of the social production of space arising from a three-part dialectic between everyday practices and perceptions, representations or theories of space, and a spatial imagination of time, which he designates as ‘l’espace perçu,’ ‘l’espace conçu,’ and ‘l’espace vécu.’²⁵ Everyday practices are dynamic realities created from what Edward Soja, working with Lefebvre’s concepts, calls “the trialectics of spa-

 deSilva, Seeing, 48 – 64 reviews arguments for several of these positions and argues that John is writing with multiple aims, both to challenge those who participate too much in Roman imperial life and to comfort those persecuted by it because they resist doing so. His claim that one of its chief aims is solace for the suffering is less convincing for the reasons stated.  Henri Lefebvre, La Production de l’espace, 4th edition (Paris: Anthropos, 2000).

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tiality.”²⁶ Soja in Thirdspace. Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places applies the terms ‘first,’ ‘second,’ and ‘thirdspace’ respectively to Lefebvre’s ‘l’espace perçu,’ ‘conçu,’ and ‘vécu’ in his analysis of the urban social geography of Los Angeles as located, represented, and lived. A trialectical spatial consideration of Revelation considers the ways the Apocalypse brings its audience to real and imagined spaces through a narrative configuration of perception, representation, and temporal imagination. As Kelley Coblentz Bautch argues, ancient apocalyptic literature “is preoccupied with space.” It takes audiences along on “a seer’s travels through the heavenly realms, to otherworld, to mythical sites, and to other places considered inaccessible.”²⁷ She builds on the analysis of Enoch by Pieter M. Venter who shows how Enoch as journeying narrator focalizes space and charges it with differing kinds of ontological meanings.²⁸ Her focus is on the spatial journeys found in the Enoch apocalypses. We can extend her analysis to analyse John’s narrative journeys in which the seer brings listeners to Patmos where he is “in the spirit on the Lord’s day” (1:9 – 10) and beholds an open heaven (4:1– 2) and then brings his audience through his visions to God’s heavenly throne room (4:2– 5:14), destroyed land and seascapes (6:12– 27; 8:7– 13; 16:4– 12), Jerusalem/Babylon (11:1– 13), war in heaven and the wilderness of a mother’s flight (12:1– 17), beasts on sea and land (13:1– 18), Babylon destroyed (16:17– 19; 18:9 – 19), and the twelve gates and urban garden of a heavenly Jerusalem (20:1– 22:5). John’s visions reproduce real urban centres (the cities of western Asia Minor, Jerusalem, and Rome) and geographies and reimagines them, filling them with a variety of characters whom he casts in leading roles in a variegated spatial trialectic. As these visions unfold, characters inhabit differing combinations of perception, representation, and temporal imagination. John skillfully plays them off one another by assigning them to different spaces, actions, and temporal imaginaries and arranges them in a way that invites his audience to abjure the blasphemers and identify with the witnesses. These spaces are usually gendered: the 144,000 of Rev 7:1– 14

 Edward Soja, Thirdspace. Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 53 – 82. Soja revises Lefebvre’s conceptualization, but his revision falls outside the scope of this discussion.  Coblentz Bautch, Spatiality, 276.  Pieter M. Venter, “Spatiality in Enoch Journeys (1 Enoch 12– 36),” in Wisdom and Apocalypticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Biblical Tradition, ed. Florentino Garcia Martínez (Dudley, MASS: Peeters, 2003), 211– 230, at 211– 212.

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are male virgins (14:4); he casts Babylon as a whore (17:1– 6) and the heavenly Jerusalem as virgin bride (21:2).²⁹ The Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin offers a useful conceptual tool that complements Lefebvre’s and Soja’s spatial theorization for an analysis of the ways Revelation’s characters inhabit differing spatiotemporal realities. He uses the term ‘chronotope’ to describe the ways in which differing genres of literature typically create characters who produce time and space in their reactions, actions, and interpretations of the world around them. We will give the name chronotope (literally, “time space”) to the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature…. In the literary artistic chronotope, spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one carefully thought-out, concrete whole. Time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible; likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history. This intersection of axes and fusion of indicators characterizes the artistic chronotope.³⁰

Bakhtin’s interest is in consideration of genre and chronotopes more generally and his concept has been used to explore apocalypse genre,³¹ but his ideas can be also used to investigate differing chronotopes within particular narratives. Applying Bakhtin’s concept to Revelation, John has the characters of his apocalyptic plot making chronotopes or spatiotemporality by showing things such as what they do, how they perceive and represent the world, the time they imagine and produce, where they perform, and the ways they act. My argument is that these chronotopes belong to a set of rhetorical performances. Returning to Sarah Emanuel’s Revelation study, there is not one representation of trauma in Revelation, the Apocalypse offers two portraits of trauma, by which I mean a response to violent physical and psychic disjunction from normal experience and expectations which results in a refashioning of spatiotempo-

 Huber, Women; Tina Pippin, Death and Desire: The Rhetoric of Gender in the Apocalypse of John (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press), 1992; Stephen D. Moore, Untold Tales from the Book of Revelation. Sex and Gender, Empire and Ecology (Resources for Biblical Study 79; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2014).  Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 84. For a different application of the chronotope concept to Revelation, see Kendra Haloviak Valentine, Worlds at War, Nations in Song. Dialogic Imagination and Moral Vision in the Hymns of the Book of Revelation (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2015).  Michael E. Vines, “The Apocalyptic Chronotope,” in Bakhtin and Genre in Biblical Studies, ed. Roland Boer (Society of Biblical Studies Semeia Series 63; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007, 109 – 118).

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ral narratives.³² Trauma theory focuses on the traumatized self after disruptive psychic experience and in Emanuel’s case is used to analyse the Revelation as a response to traumatized people. My interpretation considers chronotopes as dialectical narrative spatial sites of enacted trauma. In other words, one purpose of John’s narrative is to place his audience in the midst of violent scenes and horrifying timespace configurations to manufacture in them a dislocated set of identities to experience and live. On my reading, trauma is not an outcome of the world behind the text, but a position arising out of the text and placed before the world of the audience. Revelation is not a response to trauma, it is intended as the creation of it in order to achieve its persuasive ends. This retheorization of trauma acknowledges the narrative paradox that John’s Apocalypse requires for its persuasive tactics to work, namely that it narratively places its audience after the narrated events even as it places them in the middle of them. The result is that the spatiotemporal worlds within the text (its chronotopes) situate audiences in multiple positions and thereby craft remembered experiences of time and space, even as it projects them into the present and the future. In order to produce an experience of trauma, John creates two chronotopes: one is produced by the white-robed and subaltern martyrs who suffer for their testimony to Christ and the other is produced at a variety of locations (in the open spaces of wilderness, in the smouldering ruins of Babylon, the city of financial transaction) where idolaters curse God, worship the beast in order to buy and sell, or lament their loss of commerce. One set of them, the subaltern, languish below the altar of God and cry “O sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell upon the earth” (6:10), and are given white robes as a consolation as they await the number of the martyrs to be completed. We see a typical representation of the other at the end of the same chapter where John depicts “the kings of the earth and the great men and the generals and the rich and the strong and everyone, slave and free” suffering the calamities that fall upon them from heaven on account of their manifold acts of wickedness, seeking shelter “in caves and among the rocks of the mountains” and crying, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who has is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come and who can stand before it?” (6:16 – 17). The narrator constructs two sites of trauma to compel his listeners to choose one spatiotemporality or chronotope over the other. Via the conflicting spacetime

 For a discussion of spatiotemporality and trauma together with its political dimensions, Jenny Edkins, Remembering Relationality. Trauma Time and Politics, in Memory, Trauma and World Politics, ed. Duncan Bell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 99 – 115.

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configurations of his narrative’s characters, he places them in the midst of duelling spacetime scenarios. The characters of his apocalypse enact and thereby produce two contrasting perceived, represented, and temporally imagined spaces through narrated performances of practices characteristic of each. As a result, John’s audience is treated to several modes of spacetime travel – sometimes they find themselves in a temporal spatiality of warning that an event is coming that will call them to account (especially in the warnings to the seven churches: Rev 2:5,16,22; 3:3,9,16; also, 14:9 – 11; 16:15; 22:18 – 19), at other times he places them after the event in a spacetime of reward for faithfulness (5:8 – 10; 11:11– 13; 14:1– 5; 15:24; 20:44; 21:7; 22:3 – 5,14) or punishment for idolatry (6:12– 16; 9:20 – 21; 11:9 – 13; 14:17– 20; 16:2– 21; 18:9 – 20; 19:11– 21; 21:8), or still yet in anticipation of them (3:9 – 12; 6:9 – 11; 17:1– 18; 18:21– 24; 20:11– 15), often he puts them in the middle of things where decisions hang in the balance (2:5 – 7, 10 – 11,16 – 17, 22– 29; 3:3, 20 – 22; 14:12), and a few times he puts all three together using a mixture of verb tenses to create a kind of Mobius strip of spacetime past, present and future all existing at once in the same spatiotemporal measure (7:3 – 17; 11:17– 18; 12:7– 12; 14:9 – 11; 18:2– 3; 19; 1– 3,6 – 8). The result is a kaleidoscope of spacetime configurations. The one constant throughout all of these configurations is suffering – coming suffering, soothed suffering, threatened suffering, rewarded suffering, and suffering as punishment.

Spacing Orientations One of the persuasive strategies of apocalyptic is to furnish vivid representations of crisis and then to invite different responses to them through equally graphic depictions of characters responding to events in different kinds of ways.³³ The Book of Revelation is largely organized around such a series of representations and depictions. From chapter 4 onward, it is comprised of a series of representations of spaces that move back and forth between heaven and earth as well as the underworld and on land and sea. In the upper region belongs primarily worship and reward; the lower regions are associated with crime (especially against Revelation’s human protagonists and also against God) and punishment. With the exception of Rev 12, which stages a war in heaven with Satan cast down to earth, the other chapters strictly divide the two spaces until the last two chapters (20:1– 22:5) where a heavenly Jerusalem descends from heaven to a renewed

 For the function of vivid speech in Revelation, see Robyn J. Whitaker, Ekphrasis, Vision, and Persuasion in the Book of Revelation (WUNT 2.410; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015).

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earth. The Apocalypse populates these spaces with male and female heroes and villains. In each space there are people who act according to the roles in which they are typecast. The idolaters reject God and persecute the righteous and have infernal characters motivating their behaviours (13:4,14– 18). The blessed accept God and find themselves in the company of angelic and other heavenly powers who worship God in his throne room, having just passed through persecution, hence demonstrating their faithfulness, or are about to join them. We see this in the contrasting portraits of the subaltern saints of Rev 6:10 – 11 and the generals and so on of 6:15 – 17. By creating such graphic representations of spatialized events, the Book of Revelation practices what ancient rhetoricians would have called ‘topographia,’ namely the vivid representation of space so as to bring listeners along on a rhetorical journey to help make the case the rhetor is wanting to present.³⁴ Topographia is a technical rhetorical term that probably does not fit the genre of ancient apocalyptic because vivid representation of space is a typical feature of Ancient Near Eastern, Christian and Jewish apocalyptic. But to invoke the term here signals something that studies that seek to understand ancient apocalyptic by reference to features of genre too easily pass over, namely that apocalypses invite listeners into spaces, and indeed into sights and sounds and even smells through vivid representation. Revelation is a vividly topographical text and part of John the narrator’s role is to direct the eyes of the listeners to consider one space after another. A central strategy of John’s topographical persuasion is his uses of first-person narration, so that where the narrator looks and what he hears, the listeners also look and hear.³⁵ First person narration serves to bind narrator and listener together. This is a powerful rhetorical strategy. It creates a limited perspective, that is not an omniscient point of view (John is often confused and needs clarification of what he sees [for example, 7:13 – 14; 19:10; 22:8 – 9], which is also a powerful rhetorical means of emphasizing what the implied author wants his lis ‘Topographia’ and ‘topothesia’ are terms Quintilian explains as categories of vivid speech or ekphrasis. Quintilian explains that through vivid topographia audiences “can form a picture not only of the past and thee present, but also of the future of what might have happened [Nec solum quae facta sin aut fiant sed etiam quae future sin aut futura fuerint imaginamur]” (Institutes 9.2.41). He cites Cicero’s teaching that to put something before an audience’s eyes means that “instead of stating that an event took place, we show how it took place, and that not as a whole, but in detail” (Institutes 9.2.40, citing Cicero De orat. 3.202). For discussion see Ann Vasaly, Representations: Images of the world in Ciceronian Oratory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 15 – 39.  For a full treatment of the importance of John’s first-person narration as focalizing the audience’s attention, see Maier, Apocalypse, 55 – 61.

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teners to take special note of), but it also compels the listener to stay close to the narrator and depend on him. The listeners do not get to ask their own questions or to pause in one vision or another, but rather are directed to come along with the narrator and listen in on the explanations given to John’s queries. This effectively “spaces” or spatializes the listeners by compelling them to identify with the narrator and to be where he is and where he looks in much the same way cinematography compels an audience to see through the eyes of the camera to what the director has crafted for viewers to see; cinematography takes viewers out of themselves and places them in various spatiotemporalities.³⁶ The Book of Revelation places listeners in spaces and times but more importantly it spatiotemporalizes them. That is to say, in Revelation narrative time and space becomes the means by which all spaces and times are to be measured and known. This is particularly important because as well as giving listeners a firsthand account of what John sees, he also spatiotemporalizes them by placing them amidst a community of seven churches with a characteristic message addressed to each (2:1– 3:22). Historical critical treatments of John’s seven messages to the seven churches have tended to isolate each message in order to determine what can be known of Christ believers in different locales: John speaks of lukewarm Laodiceans because they live near hot springs and their water is tepid.³⁷ But if one takes the messages as a whole, which is probably the right thing to do given the fact that they are significantly seven messages to seven churches, again the result is spatiotemporalization of the audience: the overall portrait makes the clear case that one is to be one thing and not another, and this sense is reinforced by the fact that the messages modulate from increasing censure for varying degrees of faithlessness to praise for obedience and suffering as the they unfold. Their effect is thus cumulative. This is the same effect of the series of scene changes that comprises the overall structure of the Apocalypse: as listeners move between heaven and earth one receives a cumulative spatiotemporal paedagogy, a kind of vademecum for locating oneself amidst the strange sights and sounds of the narrative world and directions about which neighbourhoods to visit and which ones to steer clear of.

 Celestino Deleyto, “Focalisation in Film Narrative,” Atlantis 13 (1991): 159 – 177 reviews theoretical applications to film.  Colin J. Hemer, The Letters to the Seven Churches in their Local Setting (Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 11; Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 1989) represents a classic example of this kind of analysis.

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One Damn Thing After Another One half of the spatiotemporality Revelation creates, namely the idolatrous one, is made through a repeating cycle of calamities organized in series of sevens (seven trumpets, plagues, bowls: 8:2– 9:20; 11:15 – 18; 15:1– 16:20), a vision of the whore of Babylon and her destruction (17:1– 18), a threefold dirge of economic producers who have discovered the end of their prosperity through the destruction of Babylon (18:9 – 19), the defeat of Satan once and then again after a thousand year interval (19:17– 20:10), and a representation of two beasts who cause the peoples of the earth to worship them, and who link devotion to them with commerce (13:1– 18). This makes for a chronotopia I call “one damn thing after another,” which forms a narrative architecture for placing the suffering and defeat of the idolatrous. Perhaps the most rhetorically effective use of spatiotemporality is in Rev 18 where John invites us into the timescape of a fallen Babylon. This is an enormously rich and complex passage that could furnish a fascinating spatiotemporal study on its own. Space allows for only a few observations to help illustrate the case being made here for John’s rhetorical spatiotemporal creation and its effective spacing of listeners. In the first place, this is a chronotopia: as the visions have unfolded, John offers pictures of things that are going to happen through on-sight reporting, thus making the future present in a paradoxical pastime narration, after the event as it were. John’s narration of future events suddenly lurches into a new chronology by placing listeners after the event of Babylon’s destruction by God for its idolatry, which is vividly portrayed through his account of the great whore of Babylon in Ch. 17. At the end of Ch. 17 the tense is future. John sees a seven-headed and ten-horned beast and then hears the explanation: “The ten horns that you saw, they and the beast will hate the harlot, they will make her desolate and naked, and devour her flesh and burn her up with fire…. And the woman that you saw is the great city which has dominion over the kings of the earth” (17:16,18). At 18:1– 4, 9 – 19 John is now after the promised destruction and on the scene of the destroyed Babylon. My interest is especially in the threefold lament in 18:9 – 19. Three sets of characters comprise a threefold dirge as they consider their loss with the destruction of Babylon: the kings of the earth (vs. 9 – 10), the merchants of the earth (11– 17), and shipmasters and seafarers and sea merchants (17– 19), each concluded with the same refrain, “Alas! Alas! Thou great city, thou might city, Babylon In one hour has thy judgment come.” The effect of the refrain is magnified by onomatopoeia and assonance:

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οὐαὶ οὐαί, ἡ πόλις ἡ μεγάλη, Βαβυλὼν ἡ πόλις ἡ ἰσχυρά, ὅτι μιᾷ ὥρᾳ ἦλθεν ἡ κρίσις σου.

The result of this is that not only are we witnesses to a destruction, we are at the scene of it and we hear with John’s ears a lament that is contemporary with the time of narration. To put it differently, we are witness to a trauma, and as witnesses we are placed in the midst of trauma, much like when we view a newscast and find ourselves in the middle of carnage and decide to look away rather than be a voyeur on others’ suffering and lament. Here John makes us look and hear. In doing so, through ekphrasis and topographia his narrative places us in a chronotopia and effectively spatiotemporalizes us by listening in on the way the practice of lament makes space vivid and visible.

Hallelujah Spaces On the other side of trauma lies Hallelujah. If there are temporal earthscapes of one damn thing after another climaxing in the dirges of those who have lost the benefits of Babylon, there are heavenscapes that create an alternative spatiotemporality by way of worship. The entire Book of Revelation is cast as an account of what happened one day on Patmos when John was “in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day” (1:10) and received the revelation he is commanded to write. The fact that the entire set of revelations are placed within the context of worship already lends to the visions a unique spatiotemporal quality. To put it differently, listeners are “spaced” in worship (4:1– 5:14; 14:1– 5; 15:2– 4; 19:1– 8) and thus whatever they hear and see and wherever they go they do so in the context of liturgical time and space. This has an important role to play because John’s rhetorical goal is to persuade listeners that it is in the company of the worshiping that they want to be and remain and not suffer the slings and arrows of idolatrous misfortune. The structuring of the visions and teachings from a heavenly perspective (visually, audibly, locally, temporally) creates a privileged position for John to make his message most compelling. If there is one set of traumata that unfold in the earthly chronotopiae of the damned, there is another set of them that lie behind the pictures of praise in heaven. John is careful to describe those who praise God as people who have washed their robes in the blood of the lamb, as we saw in his vision of the subaltern saints of Rev 5. But later in 7:13, after John sees the 144,000 white robed representatives of the 12 tribes of Israel, he asks, “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and whence have they come?” I said to him, “Sir, you know.” And he said to me, “These are they who have come

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out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb. Therefore, they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night within his temple; and he who sits upon the throne will shelter them with his presence. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, for the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (7:13 – 17). Here there is an anticipation of the final vision of Revelation 22:1– 5, of the heavenly Jerusalem come down to earth where the same promises of freedom from hunger and grief as well as of living water appear. The whole scene is strikingly placed at the start of the chapter: After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth so that no wind could blow on earth or sea or against any tree. I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, having the seal of the living God, and he called with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to damage earth and sea, saying, “Do not damage the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have marked the servants of our God with a seal on their foreheads.” And I heard the number of those who were sealed, one hundred forty-four thousand, sealed out of every tribe of the people of Israel…. (7:1– 4)

John refers to harm as well as endurance. When he asks, “Who are these….?” he is placing his listeners ideally as amongst their number. However, the coming tribulation which is here presented as something that has already occurred makes the vision a study of a scene following the trauma of martyrdom. Yet, as we have seen, there is no historical trauma to speak of, or at least the ones that have to date been invoked to account for such a text as this fail to survive historical scrutiny. My contention is that rather than a highly poetic representation of suffering that has been experienced (either in reality or psychically, following Yarbro Collins and Emanuel), this and other passages like it should be understood as vivid topographia designed to place listeners in a certain place and amongst a set of experiences in order to achieve the rhetorical aim John has before him. That aim is to persuade listeners that they do not want to be where and when the idolaters are, namely in the world where they seek after merchandise via the empire and his emperor, but rather where and when the witnesses are: in worship. To answer John’s question: “Who are these clothed in white robes and whence have they come?”, the answer is: You are! Or at least you are so, ideally. John is like a director who wants to cinematize listeners by casting them in potential featuring roles and performances on differing screens. By placing before them different scenes of idolatry, calamity, worship, and beatitude he puts them in space and time and thus spatializes them as actors in a

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cosmic drama unfolding around them. The effect is to create a rhetorical tour de force. John wishes to prepare his listeners for Hallelujah choruses by inviting the audience into virtual experiences of them.

And so…? Who then are these martyrs? Where do they reside? To where have they disappeared? How shall we solve the mystery of the disappearing martyrs of Asia Minor? They have been there all along where we have been looking with eyes wide shut, blinded by the lenses of traditional historical criticism. The martyrs are you and I and they are of two types, with each created by and for its characteristic spatiotemporality. There you are as idolaters cursing God for the calamities befalling you because you do not properly worship and honor God. There you are singing Hallelujahs with your white robes washed in the blood of the lamb. It is a choice between traumata and there is no third option. At the outset of our discussion I posed the the question whether Revelation is fake news. Attention to the rhetoric of John’s reveals that this is ultimately a theological question and not historical one. It is indeed fictional news, but whether it is fake or not depends on decisions one makes that are not of purely academic interest. But then, spacetime apocalyptic rarely is happy to leave one comfortably behind the pages of a book.

Bibliography Aune, David E. Revelation 1 – 5. Word Biblical Commentary 52 A. Nashville: Nelson, 1997. Aune, David E. Revelation 6 – 16. Word Biblical Commentary 52B. Nashville: Nelson, 1998. Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981. Bautch, Kelley Coblentz. “Spatiality and Apocalyptic Literature.” Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel 3 (2016): 273 – 288. Beckwith, Ibson T. The Apocalypse of St John: Studies with a Critical and Exegetical Commentary. New York: Macmillan, 1919. Bousset, Wilhelm. Die Offenbarung Johannes. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1906. Charles, Robert Henry. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Revelation of St. John, ICC. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1920. Corke-Webster, James. “The Roman Persecutions.” In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Christian Martyrdom, Paul Middleton (ed), 33 – 50. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell 2020. Craybill, J. Nelson. Imperial Cult and Commerce in John’s Apocalypse. Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 132. Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 1996. Deleyto, Celestino. “Focalisation in Film Narrative.” Atlantis 13 (1991): 159 – 177.

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deSilva, David A. Seeing Things John’s Way: The Rhetoric of the Book of Revelation. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2009. Devanbu, Andrew. “The Geography of Mercantile Accumulation under Imperial Rome and its Crisis in the Apocalypse of John: A Spatio-Economic Reading of Revelation 18.” Th.M. diss., Vancouver School of Theology, 2018. Duff, Paul B. Who Rides the Beast? Prophetic Rivalry and the Rhetoric of Crisis in the Churches of the Apocalypse. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Edkins, Jenny. Remembering Relationality. Trauma Time and Politics. In Memory, Trauma and World Politics, Duncan Bell (ed.), 99 – 115. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Emanuel, Sarah. Humor, Resistance, and Jewish Cultural Persistence in the Book of Revelation: Roasting Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Friesen, Steven J. Imperial Cult and the Apocalypse of John: Reading Revelation in the Ruins. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Gager, John G. Kingdom and Community: The Social World of Early Christianity. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1975. Gilbertson, Michael. God and History in the Book of Revelation: New Testament Studies in Dialogue with Pannenberg and Moltmann. SNTSMS 124. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Haloviak Valentine, Kendra. Worlds at War, Nations in Song: Dialogic Imagination and Moral Vision in the Hymns of the Book of Revelation. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2015. Harland, Philip A. Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations: Claiming a Place in Ancient Mediterranean Society. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003. Hemer, Colin J. The Letters to the Seven Churches in their Local Setting. Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 11. Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 1989. Huber, Lynn R. Like a Bride Adorned. Reading Metaphor in John’s Apocalypse. Emory Studies in Early Christianity. New York: T&T Clark, 2007. Huber, Lynn R. Thinking and Seeing with Women in Revelation. Library of New Testament Studies. London: T&T Clark/Bloomsbury, 2013. Robinson, J. A. T. Redating the New Testament. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976. Kraft, Hans. Die Offenbarung des Johannes. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1974. Lefebvre, Henri. La Production de l’espace, 4th ed. Paris: Anthropos, 2000. Lightfoot, Joseph Barber. The Apostolic Fathers. Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp. Revised Texts with Introduction, Notes, Dissertations, and Translation. Part 1. Volume 1. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981. Lohmeyer, Ernst. Die Offenbarung des Johannes. Handbuch zum Neuen Testament, 2nd ed. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1974. Maier, Harry O. Apocalypse Recalled: The Book of Revelation after Christendom. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002. Marshall, John W. Parables of War: Reading John’s Jewish Apocalypse. Studies in Christianity and Judaism/ Études sur le christianisme et le judaïsme 10. Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier Press, 2001. Mommsen, Theodor. Der Religionsfrevel nach römischen Recht.” Historische Zeitschrift 64 (1890): 389 – 430. Moore, Stephen D. Untold Tales from the Book of Revelation: Sex and Gender, Empire and Ecology. Resources for Biblical Study 79. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2014.

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Moss, Candida. The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom. New York: HarperCollins, 2013. Pippin, Tina. “Mapping the End: On Monsters and Maps in the Book of Revelation.” Interpretation 74 (2020), 183 – 196. Pippin, Tina. “The Ideology of Apocalyptic Space.” In Constructions of Space II, Jon L. Berquist and Claudia V. Camp (eds.), 156 – 170. London: T&T Clark, 2008. Pippin, Tina. Death and Desire: The Rhetoric of Gender in the Apocalypse of John. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992. Rowland, Christopher. The Open Heaven: A Study of the Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity. London: SCM Press, 1982. Ruiz, Jean-Pierre. Betwixt and Between on the Lord’s Day: Liturgy and the Apocalypse. SBL Seminar Papers 31 (1992): 654 – 672. Schulz, Verena. Deconstructing Imperial Representation. Tacitus, Cassius Dio, and Suetonius on Nero and Domitian. Mnemosyne. bibliotecha classica Batava, Supplementum 427. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Soja, Edward. Thirdspace, Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. Sommer, Michael. “Die literarische Konzeption von räumlicher und zeitlicher Wahrnehmung in der Johannesoffenbarug.” Biblica 96 (2105): 565 – 585. Stauffer, Ethelbert. Christ and the Caesars: Historical Sketches. London: SCM Press, 1955. Swete, Henry Barclay. The Apocalypse of St John. London: Macmillan, 1917. Thompson, Leonard L. The Book of Revelation: Apocalypse and Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Uren˜ a, Garci´a. Narrative and Drama in the Book of Revelation: A Literary Approach. SNTSMS 175. Translated by Donald Murphy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Vasaly, Ann. Representations: Images of the world in Ciceronian Oratory. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Venter, Pieter M. Spatiality in Enoch Journeys (1 Enoch 12 – 36). In Wisdom and Apocalypticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Biblical Tradition, Florentino Garcia Martínez (ed.), 211 – 230. Dudley, MASS: Peeters, 2003. Vines, Michael E. “The Apocalyptic Chronotope.” In Bakhtin and Genre in Biblical Studies. Society of Biblical Studies Semeia Series 63, Roland Boer (ed.), 109 – 118. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007. Welborn Larry. “The Date of First Clement.” Biblical Research 29 (1985): 34 – 54. Whitaker, Robyn J. Ekphrasis, Vision, and Persuasion in the Book of Revelation. WUNT 2.410. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015. Wilson, J. Christian. “The Problem of the Domitianic Date of Revelation.” NTS 39 (1993): 587 – 605. Wood, Shane J. The Alter-Imperial Paradigm: Empire Studies and the Book of Revelation. Biblical Interpretation Series 148. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Yarbro Collins Adela. Crisis and Catharsis: The Power of the Apocalypse. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984. Yoder, Joshua. Representatives of Roman Rule: Roman Provincial Governors in Luke-Acts. BZNW 209. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014.

Christopher A. Frilingos

Murder at the Temple: Space, Time and Concealment in the Proto-gospel of James Abstract: A prequel to and expansion of the canonical infancy narratives, the Proto-gospel of James enlarges the role of the priest Zacharias, spouse to Elizabeth and father to the infant John the Baptist. When the agents of Herod question him about his baby, Zacharias replies that he does not know the child’s whereabouts. Eventually, Herod’s servants murder the priest in the temple. While most scholars treat the death of Zacharias as a martyrology, this chapter proposes a different interpretation. It tests the story of Zacharias against the genre of ancient martyrology and compares it with the account in 2 Chronicles of the stoning of the biblical Zechariah in the “house of the Lord.” Then it considers patterns and resemblances that may be found broadly in the Proto-gospel of James. Cycles of liturgical time emerge as well as correspondences between the secret depths of physical spaces and the complexity of familial bonds. Is the death of Zacharias about the heavenly glory of “desiring martyrs” or does it instead explore the strength of earthly ties? Does Zacharias die for God or for Elizabeth and John?

Introduction The late-second or third-century CE Proto-gospel of James is a prequel to the canonical infancy narratives.¹ Readers learn, for example, about the parents of Mary as well as how Mary met Joseph. The account also builds upon traditions already present in the canonical gospels, such as the “Massacre of the Innocents” (Matt. 2:16 – 18).² In the Proto-gospel of James, Herod’s order to “kill every infant, two years and under” threatens adults as well as children. Herod sends out servants to execute his command. The agents arrive at the “Temple of the Lord” and question the high priest Zacharias, husband of Elizabeth and father of John: “Where have you hidden your son?” Zacharias denies knowledge of their whereabouts: “I  Unless otherwise indicated, text and translation are from “The Proto-gospel of James,” in The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations, eds. Bart D. Ehrman and Zlatko Pleše, 31– 71 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).  Paul Foster concludes that the author of the Proto-gospel of James “did not regard the infancy gospel accounts of Matthew and Luke as a fixed template that should not be rewritten” (“The Reception of the Canonical Gospels in the Non-Canonical Gospels,” Early Christianity 4 [2013]: 281– 309, 288). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110682632-004

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am a minister of God, constantly attending his temple. How could I know where my son is?”³ Readers know where. In the preceding chapter, Elizabeth flees with John and seeks “a place to hide.” Finding none, she calls out, “Mountain of God, receive a mother with her child.” The mountain splits open. Within its depths, a divine light shines on Elizabeth and child, “for an angel of the Lord was with them, protecting them.”⁴ Back in the temple, Zacharias faces mortal danger. Threatened by the servants of Herod, he declares: “I am God’s witness (martys) if you shed my blood. For the Master will receive my spirit, since you will be shedding innocent blood in the forecourt of the Lord’s Temple.”⁵ The servants kill Zacharias and depart. “Zacharias was murdered around dawn,” the Proto-gospel of James reports, “but the sons of Israel did not know that he was murdered.” Later that day, “at the time of greeting,” other priests enter the temple and find the spilled blood of Zacharias has turned to “stone” (lithos).⁶ What the priests do not find is a body. The corpse of Zacharias is missing.⁷ Scholars tend to file the account under martyrology. ⁸ My own book, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, makes this observation: “Zacharias declares that he is dying as a martyr, and thus the spectacle immediately becomes part of the symbolic universe of Jewish and Christian martyr accounts.”⁹ The time has come to reconsider such claims. Two recent studies of the Proto-gospel of James prompt me to do so, though neither specifically addresses the death of Zacharias. Lily Vuong shows that the Proto-gospel of James, unlike many other late antique Christian sources, offers a positive depiction of the temple and ritual purity.¹⁰ Michael

 Prot. Jas. 22.1– 23.1. For text and commentary, see Émile de Strycker, La forme la plus ancienne du Protévangile de Jacques. Recherches sur la papyrus Bodmer 5. (SH 33; Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1961), 377– 392.  Prot. Jas. 22.3 – 4.  Μάρτυς ειμὶ τοῦ θεοῦ (Prot. Jas. 23.3).  Two references to the hardening of Zacharias’s blood: αἶμα πεπηγὸς (Prot. Jas. 24.2); τὸ αἶμα αὐτοῦ λίθον γεγενημένον (Prot. Jas. 24.3).  Prot. Jas. 23.3 – 24.3.  For example, P. A. van Stempvoort, “The Protevangelium Jacobi, the Sources of its Theme and Style and their Bearing on its Date,” in Studia Evangelica III, ed. F. L. Cross, 410 – 426 (AkademieVerlag, Berlin, 1964), connects the third-century date of the text to the presence of martyrology.  Christopher A. Frilingos, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph: Family Trouble in the Infancy Gospels (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 102– 103.  Lily C. Vuong, Gender and Purity in the Protevangelium of James (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), esp. pp. 193 – 239.

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Rosenberg contends that the Proto-gospel of James resists or seems at least to imply an alternative to an anatomical model of virginity.¹¹ According to Vuong and Rosenberg, the Proto-gospel of James goes against the grain. Can something unexpected also be found in the story of Zacharias? I think so. What seems at first to be a martyr account turns out to be something different. A brief experiment in changing the frame can be instructive. Consider, for example, the story as a murder mystery. There are clues, such as the petrified blood of Zacharias, and puzzles, such as the missing body. And like a murder mystery, the narrative evinces a fascination with motive and, more broadly, mental state. What was the motive of the killer or killer(s)? What was going on in the mind of the victim? To ground such concerns in the details of the present case file: What, if anything, does Zacharias actually know about the location of Elizabeth and John? Why do the killers think Zacharias knows more than he lets on? As the results of this genre testing indicate, there may be more to the killing of Zacharias than martyrology. This chapter argues that a new understanding can be found in an array of spatial and temporal features in the account. These features summon a feeling of uncanniness, or what might be compare to the late antique sense of “cosmic sympathy” as described by C. M. Chin.¹² Scattered through the story are dramatic instances of spatial and temporal concealment. Consider, for example, the symmetry of Elizabeth finding a miraculous hiding place in the heart of a mountain and the questions that Herod’s agents put to Zacharias about hiding John – events that seem to occur simultaneously in the Proto-gospel of James. Or the picture of his fellow priests waiting for Zacharias to emerge from the temple and make his customary greeting, while remaining in the dark about his murder.¹³ Before exploring patterns and resemblances, the chapter first examines more deeply and argues against the connection to martyrology, at least according to the way in which the genre tends to be defined by scholars.¹⁴ The ensuing con-

 Michael Rosenberg, Signs of Virginity: Testing Virgins and Making Men in Late Antiquity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 90 – 116.  C. M. Chin, “Cosmos,” in Late Ancient Knowing: Explorations in Intellectual History, eds. C. M. Chin and Moulie Vidas (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2015), 99 – 116.  For good introductions to critical thinking about space, literary sources, and the study of early Christianity, see esp. Laura S. Nasrallah, Christian Responses to Roman Art and Architecture: The Second-Century Church and the Spaces of Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 7– 12; and Harry O. Maier, Picturing Paul in Empire: Imperial Image, Text and Persuasion in Colossians, Ephesians and the Pastoral Epistles (New York: Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2013), 1– 34.  That said, I do not deny that many early Christians identified Zacharias as a martyr. See Tony Burke and Sarah Veale’s forthcoming translation of a later account based on the Proto-gospel of

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structive interpretation involves patterns and resemblances in the Proto-gospel of James. I focus on cycles of liturgical time as well as correspondences between the secret depths of physical spaces and the complexity of familial bonds. Doing so turns the theme of “desiring martyrs” away from heavenly glory and toward earthly ties. While the martyrological discourse of late antiquity places love of God above all other kinds of love, the story of Zacharias pivots precisely on one of these other kinds of love. For whom does Zacharias die? Not for God, but for Elizabeth and John.

Not Dying for God How do we know a martyr account when we see one? A classic discussion by Elizabeth Castelli, Visions and Voyeurism, notes that “the centrality of spectacle” distinguishes martyrology.¹⁵ The death of Zacharias in the Proto-gospel of James, despite what I have written elsewhere, is not a spectacle.¹⁶ It takes place away from the public eye. The ever-watchful God of the Proto-gospel of James eventually announces to a priest that Zacharias has been murdered. But the only human witnesses are the killers themselves. The Proto-gospel of James is unequivocal on this point: “Zacharias was murdered around dawn, but the sons of Israel did not know that he was murdered.”¹⁷ The conspicuous absence of narrative spectators is the tip of the iceberg. To pursue further the question of martyrology, I turn to the wide-angle of Daniel Boyarin’s study, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism. ¹⁸ In it Boyarin seeks to understand how martyrology harnessed the religious desires of late antique Jews and Christians. Stories of “dying for God” are,

James (“The Martyrdom of Zechariah,” in New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, vol. 3, ed. Tony Burke [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, forthcoming], ). My concerns are to ask whether this specific account reflects the genre as defined by modern scholars as well as to lay out what we may be able to see in the account if we apply a different framework.  Elizabeth A. Castelli, Visions and Voyeurism: Holy Women and the Politics of Sight in Early Christianity (Berkeley, CA: Center for Hermeneutical Studies, 1994), 11. See too ibid., Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 104– 133.  See n.9 above.  Prot. Jas. 23.3.  Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999).

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as Maia Kotrosits might suggest, instruments for channeling affect.¹⁹ Further, Boyarin maintains that the evidence blurs the line that scholars have drawn between late antique Judaism and Christianity. “We must think of circulating and recirculating motifs, themes, and religious ideas in the making of martyrdom,” Boyarin suggests, “a recirculation between Christians and Jews that allows for not simply a litany of origins and influence.”²⁰ Boyarin’s study is apt for two reasons. First, it makes room for the contents of sources, like the Proto-gospel of James, that defy claims of a hard and fast difference between Judaism and Christianity in late antiquity.²¹ Second, Dying for God constructs a three-pronged model of martyrology, a convenient heuristic device against which to measure the account of the death of Zacharias. Below I take each of Boyarin’s traits in turn – glossing them in italics – and then follow with commentary on differences that surface in comparison to the account of Zacharias in the Proto-gospel of James. ²²

Trait One: Speech Act The discourse involves a “ritualized and performative speech act.” This means reciting the Shema in rabbinic examples. For Christians, it is the declaration, “I am a Christian.” Is there a speech act in the murder of Zacharias? Martys appears here, and it is tempting to think of its usage as echoing that of martyrological examples. The Martyrdom of Perpetua, for example, includes a clear example of a speech act. In an exchange with her father, Perpetua directs his attention to a

 For an introduction to affect and the study of early Christianity, see Maia Kotrosits, Rethinking Early Christian Identity: Affect, Violence, and Belonging (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015), 21– 45. For a contemporary case study of the discourse of martyrology focusing on stories about the death of Cassie Bernal at Columbine High School in 1999, see Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory, 172– 196.  Boyarin, Dying for God, 118. Or, stated differently: “The ‘invention’ of martyrdom, far from being evidence for Christian influence on Judaism or the opposite, is mostly plausibly read as evidence for the close contact and the impossibility of drawing sharp and absolute distinctions between these communities or their discourses throughout the period” (Dying for God, 117). Annette Yoshiko Reed, Jewish-Christianity and the History of Judaism: Collected Essays (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), explores a constellation of relevant issues with erudition and insight.  Boyarin does not himself discuss the Proto-gospel of James. On Jewish-Christianity and the Proto-gospel of James, see Vuong, Gender and Purity, esp. 193 – 239, and Timothy J. Horner, “Jewish Aspects of the Protoevangelium of James,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 12 (2004): 313 – 335.  For Boyarin’s list of traits and discussion, see Dying for God, 95 – 96.

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vase: “Could it be called by any other name than what it is?” she asks. When the father answers No, Perpetua goes on to say: “Well, so too I cannot be called by any other name than what I am, a Christian.”²³ Perpetua’s speech is a defiant act of identity formation. In announcing it, Perpetua constructs a self that belongs to heaven rather than earthly society. Breaking down North African martyr accounts, including Perpetua’s, Candida R. Moss contends: “Being and becoming a Christian in these texts involves rejecting other identity markers and resisting the normal social structures and values that ordered Roman society.”²⁴ Perhaps the most crucial social structure at risk in this account is the household, a problem that rears up, for example, in the tense dialogue between Perpetua and her father.²⁵ Moreover, Perpetua separates herself from her own child as part of expressing her Christian identity. Perpetua’s mother-child relationship, L. Stephanie Cobb notes, is “a bond that had to be severed if she was to give herself over fully to God and attain martyrdom.”²⁶ While Zacharias’s invoking of “God’s witness” may seem to point to martyrology, we should bear in mind that the conflict is over information, not the construction of the self. In context the forensic connotation of martys takes precedent. Agents convey Herod’s threat to the witness: “For you know that I can shed your blood with my hand.” Zacharias responds boldly in kind: “I am God’s witness if you shed my blood.” He goes on to say, “For the Master will receive my spirit, since you will be shedding innocent blood in the forecourt of the Lord’s Temple.” The follow-up statement serves as a self-curse, a word of honor. In other words, Zacharias’s statements form an oath. As a recent study of oathtaking in antiquity explains: The oath may be defined as a practice where a divinity or higher power is invoked as the witness and guarantor of a certain statement or a promise. What separates the oath from a regular promise or vow is the self-curse that the swearer invokes as a part of the ritual. The feature adds extra seriousness to the ritual and it acts as a safeguard against perjury. From

 Martyrdom of Perpetua 3. Text and translation in Herbert Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972).  Candida R. Moss, Ancient Christian Martyrdom: Diverse Practices, Theologies, and Traditions (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 139.  L. Stephanie Cobb, Dying to Be Men: Gender and Language in Early Christian Martyr Texts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 97– 102, is excellent on the gender politics of the argument between father and daughter. See, too, Kate Cooper, “A Father, a Daughter, and a Procurator: Authority and Resistance in the Prison Memoir of Perpetua of Carthage,” Gender and History 23 (2011): 685 – 702, esp. 691– 693.  Cobb, Dying to Be Men, 103.

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a practical perspective the oath is an affirmation by the sweared that is intended to bind an individual’s “conscience before the civil authority, other people, or even before oneself.”²⁷

Indirect support for my theory may be found in a variant containing a more explicit form of self-curse: “God is [my] witness that I do not know where my son is.”²⁸ At least one scribe, copying the Proto-gospel of James, recognized that Zacharias takes a vow in his standoff with Herod’s agents. In isolation, Zacharias’s declaration may not appear as an obvious act of oath-taking. But the dialogue runs parallel to instances earlier in the Proto-gospel of James. These relate to Mary’s unexpected pregnancy. When Joseph discovers it, he snaps at her, asking, how did this happen? Mary answers by swearing, “As the Lord my God lives, I do not know.”²⁹ Later, both Mary and Joseph are interrogated by Zacharias himself. The priest accuses them of sexual impropriety, and both Mary and Joseph underscore their denials with vows. Mary says, “As the Lord my God lives, I am pure before him and have not known any man.” Joseph says, “As the Lord my God lives, I am pure toward her.”³⁰ Like Mary and Joseph, Zacharias swears to God as a safeguard under the pressure of interrogation. Even with the vow, there is ambiguity in Zacharias’s words. He does not straightforwardly deny knowing the location of Elizabeth and John. Rather, he answers the questions of Herod’s agents with a question of his own: “How could I know where my son is?” All of the people swept up in Herod’s brutal policy of genocide are blameless; Zacharias does not lie when he protests his innocence. But does Zacharias tell the whole truth about what he knows or does not know?

 Nathaniel P. DesRosiers, “Oath and Anti-Oath: Alternating Forms of Community Building in the Third Century,” in Religious Competition in the Third Century CE: Jews, Christians, and the Greco-Roman World, eds. Jordan D. Rosenblum, Lily C. Vuong and Nathaniel P. DesRosiers (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2014), 93 – 104, 93. I thank Lily Vuong for this reference.  See Apocryphal Gospels, Ehrman and Pleŝe, 68 n. 112. On the statement’s difficult syntax and the range of variants, see Harm R. Smid, Protevangelium Jacobi: A Commentary (Assen: van Gorcum, 1965), 159 – 161; and de Strycker, La Forme la plus ancienne, 180 – 181.  Prot. Jas. 13.3.  Prot. Jas. 15.3 – 4.

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Trait Two: Religious Mandate The discourse implies “fulfilling of a religious mandate per se.” In Christian examples, this is found in the imitation of Christ. In Jewish examples, it is the injunction to “love the Lord with all one’s soul.” Does the death of Zacharias “imply the fulfilling of a religious mandate per se?” Admittedly, the death of Zacharias is full of liturgical imagery. When Zacharias does not come out to meet the other priests, one of them goes into the sanctuary and discovers the congealed blood “beside the altar.” He hears a divine voice say, “Zacharias has been murdered, and his blood will not be wiped away until the avenger comes.”³¹ Zacharias is memorialized as a victim of murder rather than as a kind of sacrifice. His blood is not found upon the altar but beside it. Where readers might expect to find at least an implied association with the martyrological economy of atonement, the story does not easily support it. At the same time, some readers will pick up on features of the canonical accounts of the crucifixion of Jesus. When all the priests go into the sanctuary to look over the scene, the “paneling around the Temple cried out and they ripped their clothes from top to bottom.” In the gospels of Matthew and Mark, the curtain in the temple is torn from top to bottom when Jesus is crucified (Matt. 27:51/ Mark 15:38). Lukan parallels are likewise significant. The resonant theme of innocence, for example, is sounded strongly in the Lukan passion account: “When the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God and said, ‘Certainly this man was innocent’” (Luke 23:47). Further, Zacharias’s promise that the “Master will receive my spirit” resonates with a Lukan prayer found on the lips of Jesus and of Stephen (Luke 22:46 and Acts 7:59). At the same time, one might note countervailing absences of Lukan elements, such as prayers for the forgiveness of enemies.³² Rather than forgiveness, the voice in the temple in the Proto-gospel of James swears vengeance.³³ The promise of an avenger leads away from passion ac On the afterlife of this image, see Oded Irshai, “The Christian Appropriation of Jerusalem in the Fourth Century: The Case of the Bordeaux Pilgrim,” Jewish Quarterly Review 99 (2009): 465 – 486. On the body in Christian martyr traditions, see L. Stephanie Cobb, Divine Deliverance: Pain and Painlessness in Early Christian Martyr Texts (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016), esp. 126 – 130.  See Shelly Matthews, Perfect Martyr: The Stoning of Stephen and the Construction of Christian Identity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), esp. 99 – 130.  See Matthews, Perfect Martyr, 109. On vengeance and martyrology, Margo Kitts observes: “Death and pain are ethological facts but in iconic representation deduce the brute reality of violence and can assume socio-symbolical significance in launching revenge and a discourse about martyrdom, all at the same time” (“Religion and Violence from Literary Perspectives,”

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counts and towards the biblical story about the priest Zechariah, whose stoning in the “house of the Lord” appears in 2 Chronicles. The episode includes the following detail: “As he [Zechariah] was dying, he said, ‘May the LORD see and avenge!’” (2 Chr. 24:22). A late-antique Jewish debate over the efficacy of blood sacrifice, carefully investigated by Ra‘anan Boustan, puts the killing of Zechariah front and center.³⁴ While one source, the Story of Ten Martyrs, casts the death of righteous martyrs as atoning sacrifices, the midrash Lamentations Rabbati uses the specific case of the stoning of the biblical Zechariah to displace martyrological logic: his death is a murder and not a redemptive sacrifice. Not every killing was immediately translated into a paradigm of suffering and atonement. If, as seems likely, the Proto-gospel of James uses the biblical account of Zechariah’s death as a template, then the killing of Zacharias, husband of Elizabeth and father of John, is rooted in a story of murder, not martyrdom.³⁵

Trait Three: In Love with God The discourse implies “erotic elements.” Martyrs embrace death because “they are passionately in love with God,” not because they are afraid of disappointing God. ³⁶ Boyarin relates his third trait to the intensification of erotic themes and imagery in fourth-century sources, such as Prudentius’s Christianizing poem, “The Passion of Agnes.”³⁷ But sources from earlier centuries likewise illustrate eroticization. Early Christian stories describe the withering of affection for fiancées, in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence, eds. Mark Juergensmeyer, Margo Kitts, and Michael Jerryson [New York: Oxford University Press, 2013], 410 – 423, 418).  Ra‘anan Boustan, “Confounding Blood: Jewish Narratives of Sacrifice and Violence in Late Antiquity,” in Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice, eds. Jennifer Knust and Zsuzsanna Várhelyi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 265 – 286.  Cf. Matt 23:25/Luke 11:51. On the conflation and confusion of biblical “Zechariahs” in the canonical gospels, see the detailed discussion by Charlene McAfee Moss, The Zechariah Tradition and the Gospel of Matthew (Berlin: De Grutyer, 2008), esp. 103 – 104. On later Jewish and Christian traditions, see Jean-Daniel Dubois, “La mort de Zacharie: mémoire juive et mémoire chrétienne,” Revue des Études Augustiniennes 40 (1994): 23 – 38.  Boyarin’s larger point is that late antique martyr accounts stress love and passion rather than the discipline of earlier accounts, such as stories of the Maccabean martyrs about overcoming fear, mastering emotions and dying with fortitude. On mastering emotions, see Tessa Rajak, “Dying for the Law,” in Portraits: Biographical Representation in the Greek and Latin Literature of the Roman Empire, eds. M. J. Edwards and Simon Swain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 39 – 67.  See Virginia Burrus, “Reading Agnes: The Rhetoric of Gender in Ambrose and Prudentius,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 3 (1995): 25 – 46.

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spouses, parents, and children. Grown in its place is what Kate Cooper calls “an otherworldly passion,” as seen, for example, in the Acts of Thecla and the Martyrdom of Perpetua. ³⁸ Across different genres, Christians wrote about what it is like to fall in love with God. The death of Zacharias, however, lacks this theme. First, note that Herod and his agents seem wholly uninterested in the devoutness of Zacharias. When the servants of Herod confront Zacharias, they do not ask about his service to God, they ask about his son: “Where have you hidden your son?”³⁹ Later, they pose the question again, couching it in Herod’s own intimidating voice: “Tell me the truth, where is your son? For you know that I can shed your blood with my hand.”⁴⁰ As for Zacharias himself, he responds to the agents by first mentioning his priestly assignment: “I am a minister of God, constantly attending his temple. How could I know where my son is?”⁴¹ Zacharias lays stress on duty; his devotion to work keeps him from knowing anything at all about the goings-on in his household. Although his service brings him in close contact with the divine presence, his initial response conveys a sense of weariness, the strain of clocking in and out rather than the pious rapture of martyrs. Learning about Zacharias’s work life is not the object of Herod’s agents, nor, I would suggest, is it at this moment the storyteller’s main concern. Domestic life is the problem, which is why Zacharias’s rhetorical question gives pause. On the surface it seems to express a disregard for his family’s well-being. But this seems unlikely in the case of Zacharias, and, anyway, Herod clearly does not believe it to be true. He sends the agents back. What, then, should readers make of Zacharias’s rhetorical response? What does he know or not know about the location of Elizabeth and John? No matter how closely readers identify with Zacharias, they are in the same position as Herod, guessing at whether Zacharias is withholding information, whether his words tell the whole truth. It is an ambiguity reverberating through the spatial and temporal references to concealment in the surrounding narrative.

 Kate Cooper, The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996) 44.  Prot. Jas. 23.1.  Prot. Jas. 23.2.  Prot. Jas. 23.1.

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Cosmic Sympathy in Time and Space C. M. Chin’s elegant essay, “Cosmos,” explores the significance of patterns and resemblances in the world of late antiquity, and how such correspondences supported different kinds of knowing. Highly educated authors such as Plotinus and Origen engage with a finely wrought model of “cosmic sympathy,” a view that “because all things are enchained, the cosmos is ultimately mundane.”⁴² But the same sense of an enveloping web of legible, if not always comprehensible, similarities was widely felt.⁴³ The everyday version of “cosmic sympathy” is reflected in the contents of the tenth-century Geoponika, a compilation of much earlier sources of farming advice. As Chin summarizes: Although this sympathy may have manifested in a variety of ways, the fact that it would manifest was not in serious doubt . . . The procession of days consisted of patterns, agricultural, meteorological, and bodily that structured what could be known and that structured the physical sensations in which they were known. This knowledge of the cosmos and its effects was embedded in the direct bodily sensation of daily life and its participation in the yearly, monthly, and weekly patterns of agrarian existence.⁴⁴

In my view, what Chin describes should not be equated with the helplessness we might feel at the global collection and dissemination of personal details through social-media platforms. The “sensation” of cosmic sympathy was not a passive experience. Rather, it is better conceived of as a dynamic movement between knowing and being known, between not understanding and seeking to understand.⁴⁵ Patterns of daily life make the Proto-gospel of James a rich, world-constructing narrative. The gospel begins with the arrival of the “great day of the Lord” and “the sons of Israel offering their gifts,” a liturgical pattern set in time and

 C. M. Chin, “Cosmos,” in Late Ancient Knowing: Explorations in Intellectual History, eds. C. M. Chin and Moulie Vidas (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2015), 99 – 116, 100.  Chin observes that “the principle of universal correspondence, as well as its attendant ambiguities and discomforts, was widespread, as the flourishing of sympathetic practices sometimes called magic, sometimes called technē, sometimes called astrology, and sometimes called worship makes clear” (“Cosmos,” 100). Later, Chin remarks that the “potential for ambiguity in the correspondence of cosmic actors and elements means that cosmic knowledge may resemble many things but requires time (that movement of cosmic bodies) to achieve its correct correspondence” (“Cosmos,” 107).  Chin, “Cosmos,” 102.  According to Chin, patterns of daily life belong to a system of cosmic knowledge—of knowing: “knowing, being known, and being used to know” (“Cosmos,” 101).

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space.⁴⁶ Later, Joachim, the future father of Mary, participates, offering his gifts and examining “the priest’s leafed mitre as he went up to the altar.”⁴⁷ So, too, these early scenes describe disruptions: Joachim is at first blocked from offering his gifts at the usual time and place because he is childless; and when Anna, his spouse, laments their circumstances, she alludes to agricultural cycles: “Woe is me. What am I like? I am not like this soil, for even this soil produces its fruit in its season and blesses you, O Lord.”⁴⁸ Elsewhere, in a moment that continues to attract and baffle interpreters, Joseph describes himself and the landscape through which he strides coming to a sudden halt: “But I, Joseph, was walking, and I was not walking. I looked up to the vault of the sky, and I saw it standing still, and into the air, and I saw that it was greatly disturbed, and the birds of the sky were at rest . . . I saw a flock of sheep being herded, but they were standing still.”⁴⁹ Whatever role this passage plays in the arc of the story, I am struck by the sympathy between Joseph and world. The rest in a musical score is embodied by observer and observed, by knower and known. At the same time, this one-way relation is undone by the resemblances. Rather than separate signs to be read and understood, instances of “standing still” play off one another and come together. Joseph and landscape are knitted together. Sky, birds, and sheep are all frozen in time and space like Joseph himself. He belongs to this world and, thus, is known by it. Another set of patterns and resemblances comes through in the murder of Zacharias. Liturgical time plays a role in building dramatic tension. Recall that Zacharias is murdered away from the public eye: “Zacharias was murdered around dawn, but the sons of Israel did not know that he was murdered.”⁵⁰ A sense of something being amiss is felt by his fellow priests only when the time arrives for Zacharias to emerge from the temple and greet them: “Zacharias did not come out to meet them, as was his custom.”⁵¹ The passage of time, marked by custom and liturgical acts, keeps hidden from view the horror that has befallen Zacharias. The passage of time continues to echo throughout the ep Prot. Jas. 1.2  Prot. Jas. 5.1.  Prot. Jas. 3.3.  Prot. Jas. 18.2. For an eschatological framing, see François Bovon, “The Suspension of Time in Chapter 18 of Protevangelium Jacobi,” in The Future of Early Christianity: Essays in Honor of Helmut Koester, eds. Birger A. Pearson, A. Thomas Kraabel, George W.E. Nickelsburg, and Norman R. Petersen (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1991), 393 – 405. For a more recent reader-response study, see Eric Vanden Eykel, “But Their Faces Were All Looking Up”: Author and Reader in the Protevangelium of James (London: Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2016).  Prot. Jas. 23.3.  Prot. Jas. 24.4.

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isode. Once news of Zacharias’s murder reaches the public, “All the tribes of the people heard and grieved for him, mourning for three days and nights.” The episode concludes with a nod to liturgical time as well as to the Lukan scene of Symeon holding the infant Jesus in the temple: “After three days the priests deliberated whom to appoint in Zacharias’s place, and the lot fell to Simeon. For this is the one who learned from a revelation of the Holy Spirit that he would not see death until he should see the Christ in the flesh.”⁵² For one scholar, the concluding allusion to Simeon “seeing Christ in the flesh” is an example of “timeless exegesis” on the part of the author of the Proto-gospel of James that “telescopes” biblical narrative into early Christian storytelling.⁵³ On the contrary, I suggest that it is not timelessness but the account’s palpable awareness of time that invites scrutiny. The surreptitious nature of the killing; the passage of time during which “the sons of Israel” remain in the dark about the murder of Zacharias; the disruption of the routine of priestly greeting: time both keeps hidden and calls attention to. As it is with time, so too with space. A consistent theme of the way that the Proto-gospel of James describes holy sites are places that only a select few are able to enter and know. Early in the account, Anna turns the bedroom of baby Mary into a “sanctuary” (agiasma) into which she invites only the “undefiled daughters of the Hebrews.”⁵⁴ Later, when Mary is brought up to the temple to live, she is there “cared for like a dove, receiving food from the hand of an angel.” In the same chapter we encounter another angel in the temple when Zacharias alone enters the “Holy of Holies” to pray about what to do with the twelve-year-old Mary.⁵⁵ Sacred space is the domain of human and divine V.I.P.’s. Readers may be reminded of the exclusivity of sacred space when the priests stand outside the temple, awaiting Zacharias’s customary greeting after he is killed. More than this, what happens in the wake of Zacharias’s murder works out spatial exclusivity in images of concealment and preservation. Although the killing of Zacharias would seem to be an act of desecration, it is noteworthy that a divine presence still dwells within the temple, declaring: “Zacharias has been murdered, and his blood will not be wiped away until the avenger comes.”⁵⁶ All that remains of Zacharias, his blood, has turned to stone beside the altar. The murder of Zacharias, an event blocked from view by the physical surroundings of the temple, is sud    

Prot. Jas. 24.3 – 4. Van Stempvoort, “The Protoevangelium Jacobi,” 423. Prot. Jas. 6.1. Prot. Jas. 8.1– 2. Prot. Jas. 24.2.

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denly memorialized within the same space, as the news of his killing is “reported to all the people of Israel.”⁵⁷ The tandem of concealment and preservation are likewise attached to a different physical space. The built landscape of the temple is anticipated by the natural landscape of the “mountain of God” to which Elizabeth flees with her baby: “Straight away the mountain split open and received her.”⁵⁸ Like the temple, which remains divinely inhabited, the mountain shelters an angel of the Lord “who was with them, and protecting them.”⁵⁹ Elizabeth and John remain safe from harm in a place unknown to Herod and his agents. Perhaps their hiding place is unknown to all, Zacharias included. Yet the convergence of temporal patterns and spatial resemblances in the murder of Zacharias suggests otherwise. Consider another correspondence: What is the significance of Zacharias’s petrified blood?⁶⁰ The image contains both temporal and spatial aspects: temporal in the slowing down of flow, the hardening of liquid; and spatial in the role of stones as a raw material of buildings and natural landscapes. While Elizabeth and John become part of the mountain of God, Zacharias becomes part of the temple, both parties concealed and preserved. The stony blood of Zacharias, the temple, and the mountain resonate with one another. They are in sympathy.⁶¹ What knowledge do they keep hidden in secret depths?

Conclusion In conclusion, I return to the rhetorical question Zacharias poses to the agents of Herod. On the one hand, we might read it as a denial: “How could I know where my son is?” On the other hand, we might suspect that Zacharias equivocates. In other words, we are left with at least two options: One, Zacharias in fact does not know where John is. Or, two, Zacharias knows but conceals his knowledge with a rhetorical smokescreen. He answers a question with a question. Readers might wonder how Zacharias would acquire such knowledge about the flight of Elizabeth and John, and then remind themselves that, in the Proto-gospel of James,

 Prot. Jas. 24.3.  Prot. Jas. 22.3.  Prot. Jas. 23.3.  See Boustan’s discussion of the “seething blood” of Zechariah in rabbinic tradition (“Confounding Blood,” 277– 278).  For a discussion of different ancient Jewish views of the relation between temple and cosmos, see Jonathan Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple: Symbolism and Supersessionism in the Study of Ancient Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 111– 144.

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temple is a site where information is supernaturally communicated. Ambiguity persists. Readers may not gain access to the precise contents of Zacharias’s inner thoughts, but the uncertain meaning of his words suggests that something churns beneath the surface. It is left up to readers to think over what is there. Perhaps for ancient readers, correspondence was the guide. If we believe that Zacharias kept something hidden for his household’s sake then he becomes the mirror image of the mountain that protects Elizabeth and John. Like the mountain, Zacharias is split open, his blood spilling across the temple floor. Like the mountain, he protects Elizabeth and John. The story of Zacharias dying for his family is neither a martyrology nor a murder mystery. It is a love story.

Bibliography Boyarin, Daniel. Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999. Boustan, Ra‘anan. “Confounding Blood: Jewish Narratives of Sacrifice and Violence in Late Antiquity.” In Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice, edited by Jennifer Knust and Zsuzsanna Várhelyi, 265 – 286. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Bovon, François. “The Suspension of Time in Chapter 18 of Protevangelium Jacobi.” In The Future of Early Christianity: Essays in Honor of Helmut Koester, edited by Birger A. Pearson, A. Thomas Kraabel, George W.E. Nickelsburg, and Norman R. Petersen, 393 – 405. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1991. Burke, Tony and Sarah Veale. “The Martyrdom of Zechariah.” In New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, vol. 3, edited Tony Burke. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, Forthcoming. Burrus, Virginia. “Reading Agnes: The Rhetoric of Gender in Ambrose and Prudentius.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 3 (1995): 25 – 46. Castelli, Elizabeth A. Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Castelli, Elizabeth A. Visions and Voyeurism: Holy Women and the Politics of Sight in Early Christianity. Berkeley, CA: Center for Hermeneutical Studies, 1994. Chin, C. M. “Cosmos.” In Late Ancient Knowing: Explorations in Intellectual History, edited by C. M. Chin and Moulie Vidas, 99 – 116. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2015. Cobb, L. Stephanie. Divine Deliverance: Pain and Painlessness in Early Christian Martyr Texts. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016. Cobb, L. Stephanie. Dying to Be Men: Gender and Language in Early Christian Martyr Texts. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Cooper, Kate. “A Father, a Daughter, and a Procurator: Authority and Resistance in the Prison Memoir of Perpetua of Carthage.” Gender and History 23 (2011): 685 – 702. Cooper, Kate. The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996.

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DesRosiers, Nathaniel P. “Oath and Anti-Oath: Alternating Forms of Community Building in the Third Century.” In Religious Competition in the Third Century CE: Jews, Christians, and the Greco-Roman World, edited by Jordan D. Rosenblum, Lily C. Vuong and Nathaniel P. DesRosiers, 93 – 104. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2014. Dubois, Jean-Daniel. “La mort de Zacharie: mémoire juive et mémoire chrétienne.” Revue des Études Augustiniennes 40 (1994): 23 – 38. Ehrman, Bart D. and Zlatko Pleše, eds. The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Eykel, Eric Vanden. “But Their Faces Were All Looking Up”: Author and Reader in the Protevangelium of James. London: Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2016. Foster, Paul. “The Reception of the Canonical Gospels in the Non-Canonical Gospels.” Early Christianity 4 (2013): 281 – 309. Frilingos, Christopher A. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph: Family Trouble in the Infancy Gospels. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017. Horner, Timothy J. “Jewish Aspects of the Protoevangelium of James.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 12 (2004): 313 – 335. Irshai, Oded. “The Christian Appropriation of Jerusalem in the Fourth Century: The Case of the Bordeaux Pilgrim.” Jewish Quarterly Review 99 (2009): 465 – 486. Kitts, Margo. “Religion and Violence from Literary Perspectives.” In The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence, edited by Mark Juergensmeyer, Margo Kitts, and Michael Jerryson, 410 – 423. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Kotrosits, Maia. Rethinking Early Christian Identity: Affect, Violence, and Belonging. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015. Klawans, Jonathan. Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple: Symbolism and Supersessionism in the Study of Ancient Judaism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Maier, Harry O. Picturing Paul in Empire: Imperial Image, Text and Persuasion in Colossians, Ephesians and the Pastoral Epistles. New York: Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2013. Matthews, Shelly. Perfect Martyr: The Stoning of Stephen and the Construction of Christian Identity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Moss, Candida R. Ancient Christian Martyrdom: Diverse Practices, Theologies, and Traditions. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012. Moss, Charlene McAfe. The Zechariah Tradition and the Gospel of Matthew. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008. Musurillo, Herbert. Acts of the Christian Martyrs. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972. Nasrallah, Laura S. Christian Responses to Roman Art and Architecture: The Second-Century Church and the Spaces of Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Rajak, Tessa. “Dying for the Law.” In Portraits: Biographical Representation in the Greek and Latin Literature of the Roman Empire, edited by M. J. Edwards and Simon Swain, 39 – 67. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Reed, Annette Yoshiko. Jewish-Christianity and the History of Judaism: Collected Essays. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018. Rosenberg, Michael, Signs of Virginity: Testing Virgins and Making Men in Late Antiquity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Smid, Harm R. Protevangelium Jacobi: A Commentary. Assen: van Gorcum, 1965.

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Stempvoort, P. A. van, “The Protevangelium Jacobi, the Sources of its Theme and Style and their Bearing on its Date.” In Studia Evangelica III, edited by F. L. Cross, 410 – 426. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin, 1964. Strycker, Émile de. La forme la plus ancienne du Protévangile de Jacques. Recherches sur la papyrus Bodmer 5. SH 33. Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1961. Vuong, Lily C. Gender and Purity in the Protevangelium of James. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013.

Jan N. Bremmer

Roman Judge vs. Christian Bishop: The Trial of Phileas During the Great Persecution Abstract: The steady stream of new texts and translations since the early 1960s has enabled us to acquire a much better picture of the trial and martyrological tradition of Phileas, bishop of Thmuis, a city in Lower Egypt, who was martyred on 4 February 305. Admittedly, we cannot claim to be able to reconstruct the original official account of the trial, but the Greek (a Chester Beatty papyrus), Coptic, Latin and Ethiopic versions do seem to come close to the official acta. At the same time, we have an early account in the Bodmer papyri that shows that already at an early stage, perhaps no more than half a century later, the original account became literarily adapted and theologized. The reports concentrate on the confrontation of the judge, who is seemingly better informed regarding early Christianity than is suggested regarding other judges by earlier martyrs’ acts, and the bishop. The time of the trial is reflected in the clear authority of the (later) Bible books and the importance attached to sacrifice. In our secularising world, it is not easy to understand, let alone sympathise, with Phileas’ steady refusal to sacrifice. For the eventual hegemony of Christianity, though, Phileas was the right man at that particular time and place, and later generations could only admire his steadfastness, as the many surviving versions of his martyrdom still attest.

In the eighth book of his Church History, Eusebius introduces us to Phileas, the bishop of Thmuis, a city in Lower Egypt and the capital of the Mendesian nome.¹ He briefly describes Phileas’ trial and death, but also quotes extensively from a letter the bishop had written to his flock during his imprisonment,² detailing the tortures of those who had refused to sacrifice (HE 8.9.7– 10.12). Unfortunately, Eusebius does not date the death of Phileas, and the time of composition of the former’s great work is much debated. Its most recent discussion remains undecid M.I. Bakr and H. Brandl, “Various Sites in the Eastern Nile Delta: Thmuis,” in Egyptian Antiquities from the Eastern Nile Delta. Museums in the Nile Delta, vol. 2, ed. M.I. Bakr and H. Brandl (Cairo and Berlin 2014), 79, 294– 301; see also many publications by Katherine Blouin.  For other examples of martyrs’ letters written in prison, see J.N. Bremmer, Maidens, Magic and Martyrs in Early Christianity (Tübingen, 2017), 440. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110682632-005

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ed, but it seems safe to say that the edition of the Church History that included Book 8 appeared at some moment between about 315 and 325.³ In addition to Eusebius, we only had an old edition of the Latin report of Phileas’ trial and execution, which had been published by Ruinart (1657– 1709) in his long authoritative collection of the early Christian martyrs’ Acts,⁴ but which did not give the date of his trial. This state of affairs would change dramatically, though, from the 1960s onwards.

Modern Discoveries of New Sources It rarely happens that such an unsatisfactory situation changes by what can only be called a tsunami of new sources, some of which even originated not that long after the actual events and, perhaps, even within living memory.⁵ Such proximity of accounts of a trial to its actual date is unique in the history of early Christian martyrdom. This continuous stream of new editions and sources regarding Phileas’ martyrdom started in the early 1960s, when the Bollandist François Halkin (1901– 1988) published a critical edition of the Latin Acta of his trial and execution, which starts with the beginning of his trial (henceforth: La).⁶ Only one year later, the papyrologist Victor Martin (1886 – 1964) published one of the Bodmer papyri with a more elaborate account of the trial of Phileas with the title “Apolo-

 J. Corke-Webster, Eusebius and Empire (Cambridge, 2019) 57– 60 (with recent bibliography); J.M. Schott, Eusebius of Caesarea, The History of the Church: A New Translation (Oakland, 2019), 26 – 28.  Th. Ruinart, Acta primorum martyrum sincera et selecta (Regensburg, 18593), 519 – 521. For Ruinart, see F. Dolbeau, “Le Nain de Tillemont, conseiller de Dom Ruinart, durant la préparation des Acta primorum martyrum (1689),” in Le Nain de Tillemont et l’historiographie de l’Antiquité romaine (Paris, 2002), 79 – 110; É. Rebillard, Greek and Latin Narratives about the Ancient Martyrs (Oxford, 2017), 11– 13.  For a more extensive account, see A. Bausi, “Dalla documentazione papiracea (P. Bodmer XX e P. Chester Beatty XV) alle raccolte agiografiche: la lunga storia degli Acta Phileae in versione etiopica,” Adamantius 21 (2015): 155 – 170.  F. Halkin, “L’Apologie du martyr Phileas de Thmuis (Papyris Bodmer XX) et les Actes latins de Phileas et Philoromus,” Analecta Bollandiana 81 (1963): 19 – 27, reprinted with English translation by H. Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 344– 353 (whose numbering I follow) and by F. Halkin, Martyrs grecs (IIe–VIIIe s.) (London: Ashgate, 1974), Ch. X, updated in A. Pietersma, The Acts of Phileas Bishop of Thmuis (Geneva: Patrick Cramer, 1984), 103 – 108, and improved by G. Kortekaas and G. Lanata, “Acta Phileae,” in A.A.R. Bastiaensen et al., Atti e passioni dei martiri (Milano: Einaudi, 1987), 28 – 314, who are followed by H.R. Seeliger and W. Wischmeyer, Märtyrerliteratur, herausgegeben, iibersetzt, kommentiert und eingeleitet (Berlin and Boston: de Gruyter, 2015), 228 – 266.

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gy” (henceforth: Bo).⁷ The date of the papyrus is debated, but probably “around the middle or in second half of the fourth century.”⁸ Twenty years later, Albert Pietersma surprised the scholarly world with the publication, together with a translation and some notes, of another account of Phileas’ martyrdom coming from the Chester Beatty papyri (henceforth: Be),⁹ a collection acquired by Alfred Chester Beatty (1875 – 1968), who, together with Martin Bodmer (1899 – 1971), probably was the foremost collector of early Christian papyri in a time when provenance was not yet the burning issue it has become today. Again, the date is not certain, but, like the Bodmer papyrus, it was probably written within fifty years of the death of Phileas.¹⁰ It was my former Groningen colleague George Kortekaas (1928 – 2014), who produced a first synthesis of the new discoveries in an excellent commentary in 1987. As he persuasively concluded, we can see a big difference in the structure of Be and Bo. The first one, which is supported in this respect by La, presents a report of the final session of the martyr with the Roman judge Culcianus. The questions of the latter are scattershot and do not show a logical argument. On the other hand, Bo, which has the title Apology, gives information about the previous sessions but has clearly been reworked to provide a logical argument and is rhetorically expanded with miracles of Christ and contains more vocabulary of the New Testament. La is close to Be, but contains a passage about another martyr, Philoromus, which has been derived from Rufinus’ (Hist. eccl. 8.9.7– 8) translation of Eusebius.¹¹ Consequently, the Latin translation will date after the beginning of the fifth century but is still very early.¹² By all accounts, Be and La are the closest to an official record of the trial, the so-called acta. ¹³

 V. Martin, Papyrus Bodmer XX. L’Apologie de Philéas, évêque de Thmouis (Cologny/Geneva, 1964), reprinted with English translation by Musurillo, Acts, 328 – 45, improved by Pietersma, Acts of Phileas, 85 – 99, who is followed by Kortekaas and Lanata, “Acta Phileae,” 316 – 336 and Seeliger and Wischmeyer, Märtyrerliteratur, 228 – 258 (whose numbering I follow).  P. Orsini, “Palaeographic Method, Comparison and Dating: Considerations for an Updated Discussion,” Accessed May 22, 2020, http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/search? q= phileas, nuancing B. Nongbri, God’s Library (New Haven and London, 2018), 49 – 50, 207.  Pietersma, Acts of Phileas, 33 – 83, followed by Kortekaas and Lanata, “Acta Phileae,” 281– 315 and Seeliger and Wischmeyer, Märtyrerliteratur, 228 – 266.  Pietersma, Acts of Phileas, 13 – 14.  Cf. T. Christensen, Rufinus of Aquileia and the Historia Ecclesiastica, Lib. VIII–IX, of Eusebius (Copenhagen, 1989), 65 – 78.  Cf. P.L. Schmidt, “Passio beati Phileae episcopi de civitate Thmui,” in Handbuch der lateinischen Literatur der Antike, vol. 5, ed. R. Herzog (Munich, 1989), 531– 532: “Dieser Bericht, der keine liturgische Umrahmung aufweist, dürfte aller Wahrscheinlichkeit nach sehr frühen Datums sein”(532).

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However, the discoveries did not end with this synthesis. In 2002, Alessandro Bausi published, with an Italian translation, an Ethiopic version of Phileas’ martyrdom (henceforth: Et), which, as he shows, largely follows Be and was most likely translated from the Greek. In comparison with Be and La, Et has some lacunae, which are mostly due to a missing page in the original Greek manuscript rather than to a conscious omission.¹⁴ Et (1) also is the first source that not only mentions the day and month of Phileas’ death, as we already knew from early Latin saints’ calendars,¹⁵ but also the year: AD 305. This date is most important, but has been overlooked by Hans Hauben in his study of the Melitian schism as well as by Tim Barnes in his study of Phileas.¹⁶ The date has now been confirmed by the publication of a fragment in 2010 of a probably sixth-century Coptic translation of the Acts of Phileas (henceforth: Co), deriving from a miniature codex which was left unfinished.¹⁷ The fragment conforms to the beginning of the Acta Phileae in La and Et and will probably have been the translation of the lost beginning of Be. The close connection between Be, La, Co and Et can now be easily seen in the handsomely produced edition by Seeliger and Wischmeyer (note 6), who print the text of Be, Bo, La, Co and Et in parallel columns with translations (Co and Et only in German translation).

 See the substantial introduction by G. Kortekaas to his edition of Be, Bo and La in Bastiaensen, Atti e passioni, 249 – 277 and “De Acta van Phileas,” in A. Hilhorst (ed.), De heiligenverering in de eerste eeuwen van het christendom (Nijmegen, 1988), 136 – 150.  A. Bausi, La versione etiopica degli Acta Phileae nel Gadla samāʿtāt (Naples, 2002), whose numbering I follow.  Cf. H. Delehaye, Acta Sanctorum Novembris, II pars posterior (Brussels, 1931), 77; A. Borst, Der karolingische Reichskalender und seine Überlieferung bis ins 12. Jahrhundert, vol. 1 = MGH, Libri memoriales 2.1 (Hannover, 2001), 550 – 551, with many references in notes 5 and 6.  H. Hauben, Studies on the Melitian Schism in Egypt (AD 306 – 335), ed. P. Van Nuffelen (Franham, 2012) XIV.739; T.D. Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography and Roman History (Tübingen, 2010), 142.  G. Schenke, “P.Köln 492: Das Martyrium des Phileas von Thmuis,” in Kölner Papyri (P.Köln), vol. 12, ed. C. Armoni et al. (Paderborn, 2010), 188 – 192 and “Ein koptischer Textzeuge der Acta Phileae,” in Honi soit qui mal y pense. Studien zum pharaonischen, griechisch-römischen und spätantiken Ägypten zu Ehren von Heinz-Josef Thissen, ed. H. Knuf et al. (Leuven, 2010), 609 – 615, to be read with a correction by A. Bausi, “The Coptic Version of the Acta Phileae,” Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies Newsletter 8 (2014): 11– 13.

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The Problem of Authenticity Having seen the recent discovery of new sources and the plausible proximity of Be, La and Et to the official acta of the Roman trials, the problem naturally arises to what extent we can trust this Christian account to come close to the historical reality?¹⁸ The question is not easy to solve. Rebillard has recently argued that no extant interrogation scene of the martyrs conforms entirely to the protocol style of the papyri, but he notes that after 260 there is a strong continuity between the official records and the martyr narratives.¹⁹ Although Rebillard does not mention this, it is important to observe that the increasing numbers of papyri and inscriptions published in recent decades have shown that legal protocol could be more detailed than just the bare essentials of the trial and more varied depending on the province than was argued in a long time authoritative study by Revel Coles.²⁰ Here we should also note that the dialogue between a Roman magistrate and the martyr conforms to a pattern of a dialogue between the magistrate and an accused which became more normal in the course of the second century.²¹ In a study of the media, the English sociologist John B. Thompson has argued that media appropriations are active, selective and creative processes through which “media products, which have been disconnected from their context of production, are re-embedded in particular locales and adapted to the material and cultural conditions of reception.”²² This is also the case with the early

 For an informative survey of the history of research into the martyrs’ Acts, see D. Praet, “Legenda aut non legenda? The Quest for the Literary Genre of the Acts of the Martyrs,” in Wiley Blackwell Companion to Christian Martyrdom, ed. P. Middleton (Oxford, 2020), 151– 183.  Rebillard, Greek and Latin Narratives, 17– 20.  As was noted especially by R. Haensch, “Das Statthalterarchiv,” Zs. der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Rom. Abt. 100 (1992), 209 – 317 and “Typisch römisch? Die Gerichtsprotokolle der in Aegyptus und den übrigen östlichen Provinzen tätigen Vertreter Roms. Das Zeugnis von Papyri und Inschriften,” in Monumentum et instrumentum inscriptum, H. Börm et al. (Stuttgart, 2008), 117– 125; see also C.P. Jones, “A Petition to Hadrian of 129 CE,” Chiron 39 (2009): 445 – 461. Coles: R. Coles, Reports of Proceedings in Papyri (Brussels, 1966), whose list has been updated by B. Kelly, Petitions, Litigation, and Social Control in Roman Egypt (Oxford, 2011), 368 – 380; add P.Köln 10.414; P. Worp 27; D. Colomo, “Kopie eines Protokolls einer Gerichtsverhandlung,” in Charisterion per Revel A. Coles. Trenta testi letterari e documentari dall’Egitto (P.Coles), ed. G. Bastianini et al. (Florence, 2015), 109 – 117.  A. Bryen, “Martyrdom, Rhetoric, and the Politics of Procedure,” Classical Antiquity 33 (2014): 243 – 280.  J.B. Thompson, “Social Theory and the Media,” in Communication Theory Today, ed. D. Crowley and D. Mitchell (Stanford, 1994), 27– 49 at 44; see also his The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media (Stanford, 1995). I owe this reference to Birgit van der Lans.

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Christian martyr Acts. In the process of reception, they were cut, sometimes rewritten and adapted to new circumstances, such as their usage in the liturgy. In many ways we can compare these reports to modern newspaper accounts of trials. These are of course also, by nature, selective and may focus on specific persons in the trial. Yet these limitations do not preclude their historicity. There is no reason, then, to reject a priori the historical value of all the martyrs’ Acts. As Rebillard rightly argues, we should “examine the extant texts on their own terms, and use only external evidence when dating their composition.”²³ In the end, there is no satisfactory solution to the problem of authenticity that covers all cases, and we will have to be content with the fact that we can reconstruct the original ipsissima verba in the trials only to a certain extent without ever being able to reach absolute certainty. The trials of the martyrs were recorded,²⁴ and their records were preserved in the archives of the governors, where they could be consulted.²⁵ Thus, the possibility cannot be excluded that the author of the Acta Phileae had access to an official account. Seeliger and Wischmeyer state that for both accounts (Be and Bo) “liegt … die Fiktion eines Gerichtsprotokolls zugrunde,”²⁶ but they offer no proof for this statement. Given the chronological proximity of the accounts to the actual trial, this is also less likely. What we have are two accounts of which Be seems very close to the original account of the official trial, even if selectively, but Bo is already elaborated in various ways and further removed from the actual report. La and Et are close to Be but not identical, and it remains possible that both translations go back to somewhat different versions of the original. Ancient copies of non-authoritative texts could always be varied, adapted, abbreviated or enlarged in order to respond to the needs of their readers and audiences. We probably will never know wie es eigentlich gewesen, but that does not mean that we need to declare every account of an early Christian martyrdom to be a literary fiction.

 Rebillard, Greek and Latin Narratives, 21.  Cf. Vita Cypriani 11.1: et quid sacerdos Dei proconsule interrogante responderit, sunt acta quae referant; W. Ameling, “Zwei epigraphische Bemerkungen zum Martyrium Pionii (c. 9, 1; c. 23),” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 198 (2016): 68 – 74 at 68 – 71 (recording).  For the accessibility of the legal archives, see B. Anagnostou-Canas, “La documentation judiciaire dans l’Égypte romaine,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome (Antiquité) 112 (2000): 753 – 779; B. Kelly, “Petitions with Requests for Registration from Roman Egypt,” in Recht haben und Recht bekommen im Imperium Romanum: Das Gerichtswesen der Römischen Kaiserzeit und seine dokumentarische Evidenz, ed. R. Haensch (Warsaw, 2016), 407– 456.  Seeliger and Wischmeyer, Märtyrerliteratur, 269.

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With these caveats in mind, I will now turn to a discussion of the Acta Phileae, as preserved in Bo, Be, Co, La, and Et, in a kind of running commentary in which I will offer a series of comments on the text as we have it. Obviously, I have to be selective as a full commentary would transcend the available space. As Kortekaas has given us an excellent philological commentary, I will concentrate more on those aspects that seem to me to be relevant to a discussion of time and place. I will start with Bo (§ 3) as it gives some glimpses of what preceded the actual trial with the confrontation between the Roman governor and our martyr, continue with Be (§ 4), and conclude with some final considerations (§ 5).

The Apology of Phileas (Bo) Before we turn to the final trial, we first have to note that the Apology of Phileas (Bo) provides a brief glimpse of the beginning of the trial. It begins by calling Phileas “bishop of Thmuis” (Bo 1).²⁷ Eusebius (HE 8.13.7) calls Phileas a bishop in an enumeration of the four Egyptian bishops – Phileas, Hesychius, Pachymius, Theodore – who were executed during the Great Persecution, and Phileas alone, with the other bishops or with his fellow martyr Philoromus, is sometimes quoted as a victim by later Byzantine historians as well as by early Latin chronicles and martyrologies, although the latter sometimes locate him under Decius.²⁸ Phileas’ bishopric of Thmuis is also mentioned by Eusebius (HE 8.9.7), but it has now turned up as well in the recently published Ethiopic translation of a history  See also the portraits of Phileas by Th. Baumeister, “Der ägyptische Bischof und Märtyrer Phileas,” in Garten des Lebens, ed. B. von Stritzky and Ch. Uhrig (Altenberge, 1999), 33 – 41, reprinted in his Martyrium, Hagiographie und Heiligenverehrung im christlichen Altertum (Rome, 2009), 107– 112; A. Nobbs, “Phileas, Bishop of Thmouis,” in Egyptian Culture and Society, Studies in Honour of Naguib Kanawati, 2 vols, ed. A. Woods et al. (Cairo, 2010), 1.93 – 1.97.  Byzantine: Theophanes, Chron., 12.21, ed. de Boor (alone); Anonymus, Historia imperatorum, 2, line 266, ed. Ladevaia (with other martyrs); Nicephorus, HE 7.16, who mentions the Eusebian four, which is not surprising as he used Eusebius as a source, cf. G. Gentz and K. Aland, “Die Quellen der Kirchengeschichte des Nicephorus und ihre Bedeutung für die Konstituierung des Textes der älteren Kirchenhistoriker,” Zeitschift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 42 (1949): 104– 141 at 124; G. Gentz, Die Kirchengeschichte des Nicephorus Callistus Xanthopulus und ihre Quellen, ed. F. Winkelmann (Berlin, 1966), 73. Latin: Theophanes, Chron., 2.79, 5, tr. Anastasius Bibliothecarius (810 – 878: Phileas); Frechulfus (ca. 824– 851), Hist. 2.3.14 (Phileas); Wandalbertus (ca. 848), Carmina, ed. Duemmler (MGH Poetae 2), 580, line 70 (with Philoromus); Regino (d. 915), Chronicon, ed. Kurze (MGH, Script. rer. Germ. 50), 10, lines 17– 18 (with Philoromus); Marianus Scotus (1028 – 1082), Chronicon, ed. Waitz (MGH Script. 5), 520 line 12 (with Philoromus).

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of the Alexandrian Episcopate, which has a slightly fuller version of the wellknown letter by Phileas and three other bishops to Melitius about his ordinations in their bishoprics.²⁹ In the Apology (Bo 1), Phileas is called not only “bishop of Thmuis” but also “official (archôn) of Alexandria.” The vague reference to a kind of Alexandrian magistracy suggests a certain chronological distance from the trial as it seems to be intended to elevate Phileas to a higher status than just being a bishop and can hardly be accepted as a historical fact, as normally bishops were elected from amongst the local clergy.³⁰ Another possibility, which perhaps is equally plausible, would be that it derives from Eusebius’ combination of Phileas’ martyrdom with that of Philoromus, of whom he says that he had an office of no small importance in the imperial administration at Alexandria (HE 8.9.7). Yet this possible derivation does not exclude the fact that Phileas was an important man. We know from slightly later papyri that a bishop could be a rich landowner,³¹ and this will have been the case with Phileas too, as according to Eusebius (HE 8.9.7) he had held important positions. The Apology mentions that he was questioned five times, the last time even in the company of 20 clerics, although the number of clerics seems exceptional (Bo 2 with K[ortekaas] ad loc.). The Apology also mentions rackings by legionaries of the legs of martyrs beyond the fourth peg (Bo 1),³² apparently a very painful torture.³³ The tortures and imprisonment of Phileas fully fit the persecutions under Diocletian, of which he would be one of the many victims. These persecu-

 A. Bausi and A. Camplani, “The History of the Episcopate of Alexandria (HEpA): Editio minor of the fragments preserved in the Aksumite Collection and in the Codex Veronensis LX (58),” Adamantius 22 (2016): 249 – 302 at 291 (§ 47). Letter: A. Martin, Athanase d’Alexandrie et l’église d’Égypte au ive siècle (328 – 373) (Paris, 1996), 324– 327.  E. Wipszycka, “Les élections épiscopales en Égypte aux VIe–VIIe siècles,” in Episcopal Elections in Late Antiquity, ed. J. Leemans et al. (Berlin and Boston, 2011), 259 – 291.  P. van Minnen, “The Roots of Egyptian Christianity,” Archiv für Papyrusforschung 40 (1994): 71– 85 at 77– 78.  The mention of “legionaries” is disputed and Seeliger/Wischmeyer print “actonarii,” but that term is not attested in the time of Phileas. “Legionaries” is hardly attested in Phileas’ time either: the only example is P.Lond. 3.1254, which is only dated palaeographically to the fourth century; in any case, K’s ληγιωνάριων should rather be λεγεωνάριων. Peter van Minnen (email 2– 5 – 2020) suggests στατιωνάριων, which, if palaeographically possible, would fit much better, as these soldiers are mentioned during the Diocletianic persecution, cf. P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Note Agiografiche 8 (Vatican City, 1935), 9 note 1.  For this torture, see P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Scritti agiografici, 2 vols (Vatican City, 1962), 1.401– 1.412.

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tions were undoubtedly unevenly divided over the Empire. They were less severe in the West, but much more dramatic in the East,³⁴ in Egypt in particular.³⁵ In recent scholarship, there is a tendency towards minimising the number of victims of the Christian persecutions or even denying the actual happening of persecutions, witness the provocative title of Candida Moss’ 2013 study The Myth of Persecution: how early Christians invented a story of martyrdom. This trend has been continued by James Corke-Webster in his recent stock taking,³⁶ according to which “it is interesting that the majority (of the papyri concerning the Diocletian persecutions) concern financial aspects, namely the confiscation of property.”³⁷ This observation suggests that we can be fairly relaxed about the number of martyrs, but it does not mention the early papyri regarding Phileas, the Coptic martyrdom of Stephanos of 305,³⁸ the martyrdom of Dioskoros of 307 (P.Oxy. 50.3529), which is confirmed by later Syriac and Latin translations,³⁹ or the many martyrs mentioned in liturgical calendars, letters about festivals and

 See most recently, D.V. Twomey and M. Humphries (eds), The Great Persecution (Dublin, 2009); R. Bratož, “Die diokletianische Christenverfolgung in den Donau- und Balkanprovinzen – Verzeichnis der Opfer der Christenverfolgungen in den Donau- und Balkanprovinzen,” Diokletian und die Tetrarchie. Aspekte einer Zeitenwende, ed. A. Demandt et al. (Berlin and New York, 2004), 115 – 140, 209 – 252; I.-A. Tudorie,”The Great Persecution of Diocletian and its Consequences,” in Costantino il Grande alle radici dell’Europa, ed. E. Dal Covolo and G. Sfameni Gasparro (Vatican City, 2014), 105 – 120 (with many earlier references); S. Mitchell, “Hagiography and the Great Persecution in Sebastea and Armenia Minor,” and Early Christianity in Asia Minor and Cyprus, ed. S. Mitchell and P. Pilhofer (Leiden, 2019), 49 – 77.  Cf. A. Hidding, “Geschichte, Legende, Mythos. Die Diokletianische Christenverfolgung in Ägypten,” in Interkulturalität: Kontakt – Konflikt – Konzeptionalisierung, ed. S. Beck et al. (Wiesbaden, 2017), 59 – 72.  C. Moss, The Myth of Persecution (New York, 2013); J. Corke-Webster, “The Roman Persecutions,” in Middleton, Companion to Christian Martyrdom, 33 – 50. For a more balanced survey, see W. Kinzig, Christenverfolgungen in der Antike (Munich, 2019).  Corke-Webster, “Roman Persecutions,” 46, referring to P.Oxy. 33.2673, P.Harr. 2208; P.Oxy. 33.2665 and their discussion by A. Luijendijk, Greetings in the Lord (Cambridge MA, 2008) 191– 215.  P. Van Minnen, “The Earliest Account of a Martyrdom in Coptic,” Analecta Bollandiana 113 (1995): 13 – 38; E. Wipszycka, “On the Governor’s Jurisdiction during the Persecution of Christians,” in Au-delà des frontières. Mélanges de droit romain offerts à Witold Wolodkiewicz, 2 vols, ed. . Zablocka et al. (Warsaw, 2000), 2.1077– 1083.  H. Quentin, “Passio S. Dioscori,” Analecta Bollandiana 24 (1905): 321– 342; P. Allard, “La Passion de saint Dioscore,” in Mélanges Godefroid Kurth, 2 vols (Liège and Paris, 1908), 2.61– 2.72; H. Quentin and E. Tisserant, “Une version syriaque de la Passion de S. Dioscore,” Analecta Bollandiana 39 (1921): 333 – 345 (translation from the Syriac into Latin).

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charity, magical amulets and oracular tickets.⁴⁰ One also misses mention of the fact that the recently published history of the Alexandrian episcopate records a number of 642 martyrs for Alexandria alone.⁴¹ Naturally, these traditions have to be properly scrutinised and we need not maximalise the number of martyrs, but a discussion should be made on the basis of all available evidence, not just by an arbitrary selection. One of the differences of this last great persecution was the increase in cruelty in comparison with earlier ones. Therefore, it is not surprising that Bo mentions the rackings, but also that Phileas had to walk barefooted and chained from Thmuis to Alexandria, where he was thrown into prison. The mention of torture appeals to our emotions, and emotions help to remember traumatic events, the details of which may remain etched in our memories. Yet the earlier Christians did not focus on violence as much as later generations after the persecutions when the fine arts and so-called epic passions painted the Roman magistrates and their cruelties in the most lurid colours.⁴² In the case of Phileas, the reason for mentioning the violence might have been the cruelty of the torture but probably also the fact that this happened to a bishop, a notable of the town and not a commoner – a phenomenon that must have been pretty uncommon to the inhabitants of Thmuis. In Alexandria, Phileas was cursed and beaten, but they also told him during the third and fourth questionings: “You killed many because you did not sacrifice. Pierius saved many by submitting” (Bo 2). The mention of Pierius is rather allusive, and it is hard to imagine that somebody writing an account of Phileas a couple of decades after the facts would have inserted this name without any explanation. At the time of Phileas, though, Pierius’ sacrifice would have been a well-known event. He was a learned presbyter, perhaps the teacher of Pamphilus, the teacher of Eusebius, and a forerunner of the later ascetics by his life

 For these, see A. Hidding, The Era of the Martyrs: Remembering the Great Persecution in Late Antique Egypt (Berlin and Boston, 2020); another early testimony has been plausibly added by P.J. Sijpesteijn, “P. Mich. inv. 33: A Fragment of a Martyrology?,” Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 31 (1994): 121– 124.  Bausi and Camplani, “History of the Episcopate of Alexandria,” 275 (§ 23); for later traces of the number, see also W. Telfer, “St. Peter of Alexandria and Arius,” Analecta Bollandiana 67 (1949): 117– 130 at 126; P. Devos, “Une passion grecque inédite de S. Pierre d’Alexandrie,” Analecta Bollandiana 83 (1965): 157– 187 at 167.  Fine arts: M. Amodio, “Violenza celata, evocata, sublimata: ‘martirii sventati’ nell’arte cristiana delle origini,” Analysis Archaeologica 2 (2016): 5 – 14 and “Violenza ed emozioni: il linguaggio delle immagini nella Roma tardo-antica,” in La storia delle religioni e la sfida dei pluralismo, ed. S. Botta et al. (Brescia, 2017), 342– 350. Epic passions: H. Delehaye, Les Passions des martyrs et les genres littéraires (Brussels, 1921).

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of extreme poverty, but apparently, he had given in to the requirement to sacrifice (below).⁴³ His ‘lapse’ must have been a real catch for the Roman government and surely well trumpeted in Alexandria.⁴⁴ Phileas was probably not the only future martyr who was confronted with Pierius’ example. However, the account of Bo does not give us an answer of Phileas, but it continues with the interrogation of the bishop by the Roman prefect Clodius Culcianus, the point where Be, Co, Et and La also start, although Be lacks the beginning lines which we can reconstruct from the other translations: presumably its manuscript had lost its first page. It is this interrogation that will occupy us for the rest of our analysis.

The Acta Phileae (Be) Before we start our discussion, it is good to realise that a record of a Roman judicial trial usually consisted of four elements, which have been set out clearly by Bernhard Palme.⁴⁵ From his more detailed exposition, I note the following elements as of importance to our case: (1) Introductory formulas: reference to the commentarii, from which the transcription is extracted; name and title of the officeholder and date … The causa is stated by the names of the contending parties (A pros B, Party A vs. Party B).⁴⁶ (2) Body of the proceedings, in which the actual trial, from the opening speech of the plaintiff (or his lawyer) through to the judgment, is rendered. The parties’ pleas and objections as well as the remarks of the judge are recorded in oratio recta … It is not until the late Severan dynasty that it becomes customary to refer to the judge with a full form of address. (3) The judgment (krisis) is the most important part of the transcript and is always begun on a new line. It is rendered in oratio recta which, especially at the

 Eusebius Hist. eccl. 7.32.30; Jerome De vir. illustr. 76; T.D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge MA and London, 1981), 198; R. Lorenz, “Eine Pierius – Memoria in Alexandrien,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 99 (1988): 87– 92; Martin, Athanase d’Alexandrie, 145 – 146; J. Gascou, “Pourquoi Eusèbe ne mentionne-t-il pas le martyre de Piérios?,” Antiquité Tardive 22 (2014): 79 – 82; L.J. Stevens, “The Origin of the de Boor Fragments Ascribed to Philip of Side,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 26 (2018): 631– 657.  For the comparable, albeit earlier, case of Euctemon, see Martyrium Pionii 15.2, 16.1, 18.13.  B. Palme, “Roman Litigation: Reports of Proceedings,” in Law and Legal Practice in Egypt from Alexander to the Arab Conquest, ed. J.G. Keenan et al. (Cambridge, 2014), 482– 502 at 486.  J. Dijkstra, “A Bilingual Report of Proceedings with the First Consular Date to 433 C.E. in the Papyri,” in Sixty-Five Papyrological Texts Presented to Klaas A. Worp on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, ed. F.A.J. Hoogendijk and B.P. Muhs (Leiden, 2008), 203 – 212 (no. 27), has shown that the introductory formulas were in Latin since Diocletian.

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beginning of the second century, accentuated the complete and literal rendition … the direct addresses begin with eipen, “he said,” and sometimes with apekrinato, “he answered.” (4) Concluding section: Following the verdict, further administrative measures can be referred to in a very succinct way. The official certification, from the beginning of the second century, by the anegnôn (“I have read / checked it”) of a clerk follows frequently. When we compare this structure with our text, we can conclude that our account is only an excerpt of a much fuller transcript and concentrates on those elements of the trial which the author thought of relevance for his Christian readers. But the main lines set out by Palme are easily recognisable and support the strong impression of Be (Co, Et and La) being based on the official trial record. As already said, I will concentrate on what seem to me the most important and/ or interesting aspects, starting with providing literal quotes of the record in order to give an idea of the nature of our evidence, but subsequently summarising the text and refraining from commenting on all quotations of the Scriptures, which anyway can easily be found in the edition of Kortekaas, as these do not really contribute to a better understanding of the trial and what was at stake. According to the Coptic version, with which Et (1) agrees, the record starts as follows: In the 21st (year of reign) of Diocletian and Maximian (AD 305), on the 10th [day] of (the month of) Mecheir (4 February), they placed Phileas, the bishop (ἐπίσκοπος) of Thmuis, [on] the dock (βῆμα); (and) publicly: Culcianus said to him: “Can you be sensible?”. Phileas said: “I am always sensible and I take care of sensibleness” (tr. Bausi).

The account mentions the date but not the source or the function of the presiding judge, and we are immediately moved to the Roman court room, as it says that Phileas is placed on the dock. During the actual interrogation, the judge and his assessors were sitting on a semi-circular tribunal, the tribunal or bêma. ⁴⁷ In front of and below him there was a platform, which in Greek is also, rather confusingly, sometimes called bêma, but in Latin catasta, gradus or, as in La, ambon. ⁴⁸ On this platform, suspects were interrogated and tortured.⁴⁹ The interrogation happened in public, as is also noted in our passage

 H. Gabelmann, Antike Audienz- und Tribunalszenen (Darmstadt, 1984), 172– 174; L. Robert, Le martyre de Pionios, prêtre de Smyrne (Washington DC, 1994), 107– 108; add Acta Pauli et Theclae 16.  For the term, see J.-J. Aubert, “The Setting and Staging of Christian Trials,” in Spaces of Justice in the Roman World, ed. F. de Angelis (Leiden, 2010), 277– 309 at 300.  Passio Perpetuae 6.2; Martyrium Theodoti 6; Eusebius Hist. eccl. 8.9.5; P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Scritti agiografici, 2 vols (Rome, 1962), 1.57, 94, 231; 2.6.

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and as is often attested,⁵⁰ but it could also take place in a secluded space, the secretarium, as we will see momentarily. With Phileas on the dock, the Acts dispenses with the preliminary questions and comes straight to the point by giving the floor to the presiding judge, the prefect of Egypt Clodius Culcianus. The latter was the praefectus augustalis of Egypt in the years 301– 307, during which he persecuted “myriads of Christians” (Eus. HE 9.11.4), and was indeed ‘remembered’ as a most cruel persecutor in Greek, Latin and Coptic martyr Acts.⁵¹ His opening question to Phileas about being sensible is most interesting as it reflects a recurring reproach of the Christians that they are not sensible people. To start with Pliny (Ep. 10.96.4: fuerunt alii similis amentiae), this Roman characterisation of the Christian faith as a madness is a recurring accusation in the martyrs’ Acts and accounts of Christian trials, as we frequently hear the vocabulary of dementia, furor, μανία, μωρία and ἀ (πό)νοια.⁵² Yet the idea clearly precedes the confrontation with the Christians, as in Livy’s account of the Bacchanalia scandal the consul opposes the furor of the superstitiosi (Bacchus followers) to the bona mens of the Assembly.⁵³ The idea of the bona mens is still invoked by Galerius in the famous 311 tolerance edict of Serdica, albeit for the very last time.⁵⁴ It is not surprising, then, that a good decade after the Edict of Milan Constantine, when issuing a law that prohibited the setting up of pagan statues, to practise divination or even to sacrifice at all, speaks of the ‘polytheist madness’, thus turning the tables in the vocabulary used,⁵⁵ just as Christians already had started to label paganism as supersti-

 Many references in Bausi, “La lunga storia,” 163 note 39.  J. Lallemand, L’administration civile de l’E´gypte de l’ave`nement de Diocle´tien a` la cre´ation du dioce`se (284 – 382) (Brussels, 1964), 238; A.H.M. Jones et al. (eds), The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, I: A.D. 260 – 395 (Cambridge, 1971), 233 – 234; add A. Pietersma and S.T. Comstock, “Cephalon. A New Coptic Martyr,” in Studies in Philology in Honour of R.J. Williams, ed. G.E. Kadish and G.E. Freeman (Toronto, 1982), 113 – 126 at 115 – 116; Sijpesteijn, “P. Mich. inv. 33: A Fragment of a Martyrology?”  Cf. Lucian Peregrinus 14; Acta Scilitanorum 8; Passio Cypriani 4.1: Passio Marcelli 1; Martyrium Agapae 3.7 (cf. also 4.2 and 5.I); Martyrium Pionii 19.7, 20.2; Martyrium Irenaei 3.4; Martyrium Eupli 2.3; Passio Abitinensium martyrum 10.6.  Livy 39.16.5: optare igitur unusquisque vestrum debet, ut bona mens suis omnibus fuerit. si quem libido, si furor in illum gurgitem abripiet…  Lactantius De mortibus persecutorum 34: … ut etiam Christiani, qui parentum suorum reliquerant sectam, ad bonas mentes redirent, cf. V. Veselina and D. Dimitar (eds), Serdica Edict (311 AD): Concepts and Realizations of the Idea of Religious Toleration (Sofia, 2014).  Eusebius Vita Const. 2.45.1: τῆς πολυθέου μανίας; similarly, Eusebius De laude Constantini 8.9; CTh 16.10.2 (issued by Constantine’s sons: insania).

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tio, another well-known reproach to them.⁵⁶ We can observe, then, in our trial a fixed idea of the Roman upper class, which we can follow for over four centuries and which suggests that the Roman administration had made little efforts to understand what moved the Christians even after having persecuted them for about two centuries. Naturally, Phileas stresses that he is fully sensible, and the prefect perhaps thought that this was pretty clear as he continues with what surely must have been the main stumbling block for Phileas. The beginning has been lost in Be and I give it according to La, but after the mention of the Scriptures I proceed with Be, although the end, about the advocate, has also been lost by Be and is again supplied by La (and Et): Culcianus said: ‘Sacrifice to the gods’. Phileas answered: ‘I do not sacrifice’. Culcianus said: Why not?’’ Phileas answered: ‘because the sacred and divine Scriptures say: “He who sacrifices to other gods except to the Lord God alone shall be destroyed”’. Culcianus said to him: ‘Sacrifice to the Lord alone’. He replied: ‘I will not sacrifice, for God does not want such sacrifices. For the sacred and divine Scriptures say: “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? Says the Lord; I have had enough (Is. 1.11 LXX). I do not want burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of lambs and the blood of billy goats. And do not offer wheaten flour” (Is. 1.11 Vetus Latina with K. ad loc). And one of the advocates said: ‘Are you on trial now for wheaten flour or is it a matter of life and death?’

Here, we hear the theme of sacrifice for the second but certainly not the last time. The altercation introduces us to the main problem for Christians during the Great Persecution: the fact that they had to sacrifice. The obligation had been first introduced by Decius, and in this respect he was followed by all subsequent persecuting emperors. In the fourth edict of Diocletian, dating probably to the early months of 304 AD, he also ordered all the inhabitants of the empire to sacrifice to the gods on pain of death.⁵⁷ For his refusal, Phileas appeals to the “sacred and divine Scriptures.” The same expression occurs in the letter to his flock (Hist. eccl. 8.10.2) and indeed will be his personal expression as the combination does not occur elsewhere in our literature. From the late second century onwards, Christian intellectuals

 M. Kahlos, “Religio and Superstitio: retortions and phases of a binary opposition in Late Antiquity,” Athenaeum 95 (2007): 389 – 408.  Eusebius Mart. Pal. 3, 1, cf. Lactantius De morte 14.4; S. Corcoran, The Empire of the Tetrarchs: Imperial Pronouncements and Government, AD 284 – 324 (Oxford, 20002), 182– 183; G.E.M. de Ste. Croix, “Aspects of the “Great” Persecution,” in his Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy, ed. M. Whitby and J. Streeter (Oxford, 2006), 35 – 78 (first published in Harvard Theological Review 47 [1954]: 75 – 113) and “The Fourth Edict in the West and the Date of the Council of Elvira,” ibid., 79 – 98.

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started to use the expression “divine Scriptures” in addition to Paul’s “holy Scriptures” (Rom 1:2),⁵⁸ but they never combined the two expressions which Phileas seems to employ here in order to give his words the utmost weight. The answer of Phileas with his long quotation of the prophet Isaiah clearly did not fall well with one of the counsellors (advocati/dikologoi), and his irritated remark fits an official record. In the martyrs’ Acts, these counsellors are rarely mentioned (but see below), as not being of importance to the testimony of the martyrs, but in the Acts of Phileas they receive more attention than in any other early Christian writing.⁵⁹ Culcianus asks in return: “In what sort of sacrifices does this god of yours take pleasure” (La 2)? A very telling remark, as he evidently cannot understand that somebody would not sacrifice. As such, his question is also an interesting illustration of the pivotal place of sacrifice in ancient religion. Phileas’ answer, “God takes pleasure in a pure heart, sincere feelings and sacrifices of true words” (Be, La 2: 1 Tim 1:5, 2 Tim 2:22), clearly did not satisfy Culcianus, who again urges him to sacrifice. Phileas refuses and gives as reason: “I never learned it” (οὐδὲ γὰρ ἔμαθον). Kortekaas (ad loc.) thinks that the phrase means that he wants to say: we Christians have not been educated like that. But the testimony is perhaps more interesting, as it suggests that Phileas’ parents were Christians.⁶⁰ The publication of the papyrus with the beginning of the martyrdom of Dioskoros (§ 3) also gives us early Christians, as the martyr, who was executed in 307, relates that his father was a reader in the church. Phileas, then, is an example of the early Christianisation of Egypt. Similarly, Antony, the first great hermit, was the son of Christian parents unlike, for example, Pachomius, the founder of the coenobitic movement.⁶¹ The presence of Christians in Egypt before Constan-

 Cf. J.N. Bremmer, “From Holy Books to Holy Bible: an Itinerary from Ancient Greece to Modern Islam via Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity,” in Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism, ed. M. Popović (Leiden, 2010), 327– 360 at 350 – 351.  For the dik(ai)ologoi/advocati, see Tertullian, ad Scap. 4.1.3 – 4; Passio Dativi 7.1; G. Lanata, ‘Avvocati nei processi contro cristiani?’, Materiali per una storia della cultura giuridica 12 (1993): 277– 290; J.A. Crook, Legal Advocacy in the Roman World (London, 1995), who seems to have overlooked Phileas; C. Humphress, Orthodoxy and the Courts in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2007), 93 – 132; K. Tuori, “A Place for Jurists in the Spaces of Justice?,” in Spaces of Justice, ed. De Angelis, 43 – 65.  Contra Martin, Athanase d’Alexandrie, 643, who suggests that Phileas came from ‘milieux païens’.  Cf. J.N. Bremmer, ‘Athanasius’ Life of Antony: Marginality, Spatiality and Mediality’, in Marginality, Media, and Mutations of Religious Authority in the History of Christianity, ed. L. Feldt and J.N. Bremmer (Leuven, 2019), 23 – 45; Ch. Barthel, ‘The Conversion of Pachomius Revisited’, Scrinium 15 (2019): 30 – 43.

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tine cannot be quantified with any certainty, but their number must have been already quite impressive, judging by the number of earlier papyri identified as Christian ones, and Phileas’ parents evidently belonged to them.⁶² Culcianus does not give up very quickly and his next questions are most interesting: “Did not Paul sacrifice?” and “Did not Moses sacrifice?” (Be 2). Phileas denies this of course, but, curiously, states that the Judeans used to sacrifice in Jerusalem but now also do so at places abroad. And indeed, there seem to be indications that some Diaspora Jews sacrificed the paschal lamb.⁶³ Still, the dialogue shows that Culcianus, if perhaps only gradually in the course of his interrogations, had learned something about the faith of the Christians. It is less surprising, though, that he had heard about Moses who, after all, figures in various classical authors, both Greek and Latin.⁶⁴ It is perhaps more amazing that he knows of Paul, although his knowledge should not be overrated, as we will see shortly. When Phileas again refuses to sacrifice, Culcianus tells him that his psychê is at stake, probably meaning his life, as taken by Et (14), whereas La (2) translates it as anima, “soul.” Unlike Culcianus, Phileas then interprets psychê as “soul” but he adds that he also cares for the body. Interestingly, Culcianus then asks if the body will rise again (Be 3). The dialogue seems abbreviated at this point, as Bo (6) has Culcianus express his amazement at this Christian doctrine to such an extent that he even repeats his question. The Bodmer papyrus is rather fragmentary here, but it seems that Phileas talks about damnation, righteousness and eternal life. Perhaps understandably, Culcianus has no interest in these matters and he again urges Phileas to sacrifice. The judge now returns to the topic of Paul and asks: “Did not Paul deny (the faith)?” When Phileas responds with a strong no, Culcianus asks who then did deny? He clearly must have heard about Peter,⁶⁵ but Phileas refuses to answer.

 E.A. Judge, Jerusalem and Athens (Tübingen, 2010), 140 – 155, also published as “The Puzzle of Christian Presence in Egypt Before Constantine,” in Egyptian Culture and Society, ed. Woods, 1.263 – 278; see also below § 5. It is a real deficit of D. Frankfurter, Christianizing Egypt (Princeton and Oxford, 2018) that he does not discuss these early examples.  Julian apud Cyrillus Alex. C. Iul. 9.22. 8 – 17, ed. Kinzig/Brüggemann; Jerome Ep. 112.15; A. Guttmann, ‘The End of the Jewish Sacrificial Cult’, Hebrew Union College Annual 38 (1967): 137– 148 at 146 note 46,  R. Bloch, ‘Moses, Jewish and Pagan Image of’, in Encyclopedia of Ancient History, vol. 8, ed. R. Bagnall et al. (Oxford, 2013), 4603 – 4604.  An interesting reference, which is lacking in recent books about Peter: M. Bockmuehl, Simon Peter in Scripture and Memory (Grand Rapids, 2012); Peter in Early Christianity, ed. H.K. Bond and L.W. Hurtado (Grand Rapids, 2015); The Early Reception and Appropriation of the Apostle Peter (60 – 800 CE), ed. R. Dijkstra (Leiden, 2020).

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At this point, Culcianus changes tack, swears by the genius of the emperors and orders the bishop to do likewise.⁶⁶ From our text, it is not clear what Culcianus’ idea is with this oath. Admittedly, we do have various instances in earlier martyrs’ Acts in which Christians are asked to swear by the emperor’s genius, or have actually done so, as in the martyrdoms of Polycarp (9.2, 3; 10.1), Apollonius (3) and Pionius (8.14).⁶⁷ In all of these cases, the imperial oath clearly signifies a renouncing of the Christian faith, and Culcianus may well have intended the same for Phileas as a less offensive way of satisfying the obligation to sacrifice. In a well-known article on the imperial cult and the persecutions, Fergus Millar (1936 – 2019) stated that the imperial cult played no role in the Tetrarchic persecutions. The article appeared in 1973, and thus he could not yet know the Chester Beatty papyrus, but our passage with the plural of the emperors (Be 4: the plural also in Et, but not in La) suggests that he perhaps was a bit premature with his observation.⁶⁸ After Phileas’ refusal to swear, Culcianus returns to the subject of Paul and cleverly asks “Was Paul not a persecutor?” (Be 4). This is hastily denied by Phileas, and Culcianus perhaps did not know enough to follow up his question, but the Christian account may also have left out this somewhat embarrassing part of Paul’s life. However, the limits of Culcianus’ knowledge about Paul become quickly visible in his next question: “Was Paul not a common man? Wasn’t he a Syrian? Did he not discourse in Syrian?” (Be 4), which shows that he had not read anything by Paul. Again, Phileas doesn’t know how quickly to deny this inferior linguistic position of Paul and stresses that he discoursed in Greek and trumped everybody in wisdom. That is hard to stomach for Culcianus and he asks if Paul even surpassed Plato. Phileas naturally agreed and even adds, somewhat unconvincingly, that Paul was even more philosophical than

 The genius is not easy to define, but see D. Fishwick, The Imperial Cult in the Latin West, vol. ii–1 (Leiden, 1987), 375 – 86; see also S. Antolini and S.M. Marengo, “Dediche servili al genius dei padroni,” in Esclaves et maîtres dans le monde romain, ed. M. Dondin-Payre and N. Tran (Rome, 2017), 129 – 140 (add: CIL VIII.27943; AE 1902.223).  See also R.M. Grant, “Sacrifices and Oaths As Required of Early Christians,” in Kyriakon: Festschrift Johannes Quasten, 2 vols, ed. P. Granfield and J. Jungmann (Münster, 1971), 1.12– 17, reprinted in his Christian Beginnings: Apocalypse to History (London, 1983), Ch. 6.  F. Millar, “The Imperial Cult and the Persecutions,” in Le culte des souverains = Entretiens Hardt XIX, ed. W. den Boer (Geneva-Vandœuvres, 1973), 145 – 175 (discussions included) at 163, repr. in his Government, Society and Culture in the Roman Empire (Chapel Hill and London, 2004), 298 – 312 at 311; similarly, De Ste Croix, Christian Persecution, 41 note 27. I do not understand how Pietersma, Acts of Phileas, 42 can write: “Be does not call for modification in that view, though one presumes that Phileas would have been expected to repeat the oath of the prefect.”

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all the (Greek) philosophers (Be 5) – an interesting statement in the light of efforts by contemporary theologians to turn Paul into an ancient philosopher.⁶⁹ Faced with the obstinacy of the bishop, Culcianus poses a modern sounding question: “don’t you have a conscience (syneidêsis)?” (Be 5), the Greek term here being used in the meaning of “consciousness of right or wrong doing” (LSJ s.v. 4).⁷⁰ When Phileas states he has, Culcianus asks him why his conscience does not make him think of his wife, children and brothers. The question is well posed, and the theme will return later in the Acts. But Phileas responds with saying that his conscience for God takes precedence according to the Divine Scripture, which is here used in the singular, perhaps a sign of the developing Christian canon. It is typical for the cultural and religious distance between the judge and the bishop that the former now asks “Which god (Be 6)?” This problem of the identity of the Christian god must have been one that kept puzzling Culcianus, as in the Passion of Dioskoros, he also asks the martyr: “Which god do you obey” (La: cui deo obaudis?)? Phileas responds with a formula which often recurs in the martyrs’ Acts and which is based on Psalm 146.5 – 6: “the God, who made heaven and earth, the seas, and all that is in them, the founder, the demiurge, the Lord.”⁷¹ The formula contrasted the invisibility of the pagan gods with the works of the Christian God which were visible everywhere. As Phileas clearly goes on and on with his theological ideas, the counsellors stop him and ask why he does oppose the prefect. When the bishop answers: “He asks me and I answer him (Be 6),” the judge insists again on him sacrificing. But Phileas appeals to the example of Socrates who also cared more for his soul than for his wife and children. At a relatively early stage of the persecutions, intellectual Christians started to cite the case of Socrates, as we can see already in Lucian’s Peregrinus (12), where he reports that the Christians called Peregrinus a “new Socrates”; indeed, Christian martyrs were quite often associated with Soc-

 Cf. Saint Paul and Philosophy. The Consonance of Ancient and Modern Thought, ed. G.J. van der Heiden et al. (Berlin and Boston, 2017).  For the meaning of syneidêsis in Late Antiquity, see also J. Stelzenberger, Syneidesis, Conscientia, Gewissen (Paderborn, 1963), 43 – 57.  A. Hamman, “La confession de la foi dans les premiers actes des martyrs,” in Epektasis: Mélanges patristiques offerts au Cardinal Jean Daniélou, ed. J. Fontaine and Ch. Kannengiesser (Paris, 1972), 99 – 105, repr. in his Études Patristiques (Paris, 1991), 321– 327; L. Perendy, “Deum qui fecit caelum et terram”: Identifying the God of Christians in the Acts of Martyrs,” in Martyrdom and Persecution in Late Antique Christianity, ed. J. Leemans (Leuven, 2010), 221– 239: J.M. Kozlowski, “Unum Deum colo qui fecit terram et mare et omnia quae in eis sunt. The Formula of Creation and its Functions in the Acts of the Christian Martyrs,” Vetera Christianorum 54 (2017): 99 – 110.

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rates.⁷² It was one of the ways early Christians tried to occupy the moral high ground in the debate with their intellectual opponents and persecutors. Culcianus does not follow the bishop in this direction, but asks the challenging question: “Was Christ a god (Be 7)?” The Latin translation, Deus erat Christus? (La 4.3), may suggest that the translator thought that the judge inquires about the nature of Christ in relation to God Himself, which is understandable at his chronological distance, whereas the Greek rather suggests a more general question regarding the precise nature of the divinity of Christ: the Roman judge could have been hardly interested in Christian Christological speculations! In any case, Culcianus clearly seems to be interested in this question, as according to the Passion of Dioskoros, he also asks: Christus deus est? ⁷³ Phileas naturally assures him that Christ is a god and illustrates his divinity with a whole series of miracles as related in the Gospels, such as the raising from the dead, healing of lepers and making the deaf hear again – a kind of argumentation that fitted his time, which had an overriding interest in such feats.⁷⁴ Yet, Culcianus does not give up that easily and continues with the question: “Was the god crucified (Be 7)?” The question seems somewhat abbreviated in Be and is expressed more clearly in Bo (8) and Et (31): “How can he, being a god, be crucified?” Culcianus would probably have heard from deities that had died, such as Osiris and Dionysos,⁷⁵ but certainly never of gods that had been crucified, one of the most humiliating executions of antiquity.⁷⁶ Rather surprisingly, in his answer Phileas also sideswipes the Jews, as he says that “the sacred Scriptures (Be 8: note the plural again), on which the Jews rely…” Unfortunately, the papyrus has a lacuna here, but La (4) has Etenim sacrae scripturae praedixerant, quas ludaei putant se tenere, sed non tenent and Et (12) “the sacred Scriptures had predicted that the Jews would do that.” It is not clear why Phileas again wanted to say something nasty about the Jews. Was this because of the long-

 See, more recently, W. Rordorf, “Socrates in de christelijke literatuur van de eerste eeuwen, “ in Evangelie en beschaving. Studies bij het afscheid van Hans Roldanus, ed. H.S. Benjamins et al. (Zoetermeer, 1995), 69 – 93; G. Roskam, “The Figure of Socrates in the Early Christian Acta Martyrum, “ in Martyrdom and Persecution, ed. Leemans, 241– 256; L.S. Cobb,”Polycarp’s Cup: Imitatio in the Martyrdom of Polycarp, Journal of Religious History 38 (2014): 224– 240; M.W. Holmes, “Intertextual Death: Socrates, Jesus, and Polycarp of Smyrna,” in Intertextuality in the Second Century, ed. D.J. Bingham and N.J. Clayton (Leiden, 2016), 51– 61.  Quentin, ‘Passio S. Dioscori’, 325.  Cf. H. Drake, A Century of Miracles: Christians, Pagans, Jews, and the Supernatural, 312 – 410 (Oxford, 2017).  The literature about dying and rising gods is endless. For a solid up-to-date account, see J.G. Cook, Empty Tomb, Resurrection, Apotheosis (Tübingen, 2018), 56 – 143.  J.G. Cook, Crucifixion in the Mediterranean World (Tübingen, 20192).

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standing feud between Egyptians and Judeans/Jews? Or had Jews become visible in Thmuis? We simply do not know, and given that the relationships between Christians and Jews differed from place to place and time to time,⁷⁷ speculation would not be helpful. With this last answer, the trial approaches its end. Culcianus stresses that he could have tried Phileas in his hometown but had not done so as a favour to him (Be 8; La 5). Phileas thanks him but also urges him to condemn him. But Culcianus has one more question for him: “Was Paul a god (Be 9)?” The question must have nagged him, as we find the same question in the Passion of Dioskoros, in which, according to the Latin translation, he asks Dioskoros: Paulus deus fuit? ⁷⁸ As in that Passion, we do not hear of any reaction by Culcianus to the answer of the martyrs. Instead, Culcianus tells him that he will spare him because of his brother (below). Additionally, he also says that if he (Phileas) had been needy and therefore had come into this folly (that is, had become a Christian: he uses again the term “folly” as before) – a nice testimony to the charity of the early Christians⁷⁹ – he would not spare him (Be 10).⁸⁰ But as Phileas clearly is a wealthy man, he deserves to be saved. The whole passage is a telling illustration of the ruling Roman class justice brazenly and publicly practised.⁸¹ Probably sensing the mood of Culcianus and perhaps also out of sympathy with Phileas, who still insists on being executed, and his brother, the lawyers tell the judge: “he has sacrificed in the secretarium (Be 10).” The latter chamber is first mentioned in the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs (1), although the notice may be due to a later insertion.⁸² However this may be, in Roman trials a kind of preliminary investigation often took place in a more secluded area in which altars were present, whereas the trial itself and the pronunciation of the verdict occur-

 Cf. W. Kinzig, “Juden und Christen in der Antike. Trennungen, Transformationen, Kontinuitäten und Annäherungen,” in Among Jews, Gentiles and Christians in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. R. Hvalvik and J. Kaufman (Trondheim, 2011), 129 – 156.  Quentin, ‘Passio S. Dioscuri’, 326.  P.W. van der Horst, “Organized Charity in the Ancient World: Pagan, Jewish, Christian,” in Jewish and Christian Communal Identities in the Roman World, ed. Y. Furstenberg (Leiden, 2016), 116 – 133.  Cf. Amm. Marc. 27.3.15, who shows that a bishop does not necessarily has to be rich.  J. Krause, “Arm und Reich in der spätantiken Stadt,” in Einblicke in die Antike: Orte – Praktiken – Strukturen, ed. Ch. Ronning (Munich, 2006), 223 – 236 and Gewalt und Kriminalität in der Spätantike (Munich, 2014), 283: ‘ausgeprägte Klassenjustiz’.  Thus R. Haensch, “Römische Amtsinhaber als Vorbilder für spätantike Bischöfe?,” in The Representation and Perception of Roman Imperial Power, ed. L. de Blois et al. (Amsterdam, 2004), 117– 135 at 121.

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red in a public space as is here the case.⁸³ The lawyers can thus pretend that Phileas had sacrificed before the governor had arrived in court. Unfortunately, the papyri of both Be and Bo are lacunose at this moment. La (6) mentions that Culcianus now points Phileas to his wife, but the passage is absent from Et, just as the reference to his wife in his response in La is absent from Et and Be (11), which starts again at the end of Phileas’ answer. The absence could well be due to a later insertion of the wife in La,⁸⁴ but a reference to Phileas’ relatives is also lacking in the passage in Bo and Et about the supplication of Phileas (see below). It is, perhaps, easier to imagine that La goes back to a slightly different Greek text, from which all references to Phileas’ family had been removed. Phileas’ response in La (6; in addition to the mention of his wife) and Et (44) is a confession of his faith: “The saviour of all our souls is the Lord Jesus Christ,⁸⁵ whom I serve in chains (La). It is he who has called me to the inheritance of his glory (Be 11).” The important notion here is that Phileas not only praises Christ and calls himself a future heir of his glory,⁸⁶ but also that he “serves” him. Et (44) is even more explicit and, perhaps, closer to the original, when it says “(the Lord), whose slave I am and serve in chains.” Candida Moss calls it a response “in the nonchalant manner typical of martyrs,”⁸⁷ but this misjudges the seriousness of Phileas. Being a “slave of Christ,” or “slave of God,” is a sign of total devotion, which in early Christianity is also expressed with the Greek verb latreuô, “to serve.” It is this very special, exclusive relationship with Christ that makes the martyr renounce all earthly relationships.⁸⁸ That is  Cf. Kortekaas ad loc., with a learned note; R. Färber, Römische Gerichtsorte (Munich, 2014), 235 – 281 (on the secretarium) at 256 – 267. See also Aubert, ‘Setting and Staging of Christian Trials’, 284 with a full list of late antique mentions of secretarium; add Rufinus, Hist. eccl. 7.30.9: intra ecclesiam vero tribunal sibi multo altius quam fuerat, extrui et thronum in excelsioribus conlocari iubet, secretarium quoque sterni et parari, sicut iudicibus saeculi solet.  Thus Bausi, La versione etiópica, 50.  Saviour is a familiar Christological title, cf. H. Linssen, “ΘΕΟΣ ΣΩΤΗΡ? Entwicklung und Verbreitung einer liturgischen Formelgruppe,” Jahrbuch fur Liturgiewissenschaft 8 (1928): 1– 75; C. Böttrich, “Gott und Retter”: Gottesprädikationen in christologischen Titeln,” Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 42 (2000): 217– 236; M. Karrer, “Jesus, der Retter (Sôtêr): zur Aufnahme eines hellenistischen Prädikats im Neuen Testament,” Zeitschrift für die neutestamentiche Wissenschaft 93 (2002): 153 – 176; F. Jung, Soter: Studien zur Rezeption eines hellenistischen Ehrentitels im Neuen Testament (Münster, 2002).  For the notion of the martyr as a divine heir, see C. Moss, The Other Christs (Oxford, 2010), 149 – 172.  Moss, The Other Christs, 157.  This meaning of ‘slave of Christ’ is well seen by M.J. Harris, Slaves of Christ: a New Testament metaphor for total devotion to Christ (Downers Grove, 2001). For the later, quite normal, usage,

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also why in the reports of their executions martyrs style themselves as followers, sometimes even imitators, of Christ.⁸⁹ When we do not realise this total devotion and deeply felt conviction, we cannot understand the willingness of martyrs to die for Christ. The counsellors do not give up all hope yet and tell the judge: “Phileas asks for an adjournment (Be 11: σκέ]ψιν αἰτεῖται).” Pietersma translates the phrase with “time for reflection,” but the Latin translation dilatio is a technical legal term for “adjournement” (K. ad loc.), which the Greek term is not. The result of the request is the same, a gain of time, but the Greek allows Culcianus to answer that he will give him time for reflection (σκέψασθαι). Given that the later passions épiques often picture the Roman magistrates as bloodthirsty persecutors, it is good to notice that, in fact, the Roman judges often offered martyrs delays ranging from three hours to three months, as Culcianus does here.⁹⁰ Unlike the popular image, capital punishment seems to have been less practised in late Antiquity than during the early Principate.⁹¹ When Phileas rejects the offer, “the lawyers, the court all together, the logistes and all of his relatives embraced his feet and begged him to have regard for his wife and concern for his children (La 6).” After the mention of the logistes, Be has a lacuna, and both Bo (16 – 17) and Et (47) omit the mention of his relatives. As with the reference to his wife, then, only La contains references to his relatives. But even without the relatives, the audience witnesses a most unusual spectacle: not only the court as a whole, except of course Culcianus, but also the logistes throw themselves at the feet of Phileas in a gesture that is typical

note P.J. Sijpesteijn,”Apphus and Pascentius: servi dei tempore,” Archiv für Papyrusforschung 40 (1994) 69 – 70; R. Haensch, “Bescheidenheit ist eine Zier: Der Gebrauch der Demutsformel δοῦλος θεοῦ in den Kirchenbauinschriften der spätantiken Patriarchate Antiochia und Jerusalem,” in Social Status and Prestige in the Graeco-Roman World, ed. A.B. Kuhn (Stuttgart, 2015), 315 – 339.  M. Pellegrino, Ricerche patristiche, 2 vols (Turin, 1982), 1.385 – 703 passim; I. Kinnard, “Imitatio Christi in Christian Martyrdom and Asceticism: A Critical Dialogue,” in Asceticism and Its Critics: Historical Accounts and Comparative Perspectives, ed. O. Freiberger (Oxford, 2006), 131– 150; Moss, The Other Christs and Ancient Christian Martyrdom (New Haven and London, 2012), 49 – 76. The theme remains important in the later passions épiques: M. Taveirne, “Das Martyrium als imitatio Christi: Die literarische Gestaltung der spätantiken Märtyrerakten und -passionen nach der Passion Christi,” Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 18 (2014):167– 203.  For examples, see J. den Boeft and J.N. Bremmer, ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae’, Vigiliae Christianae 35 (1981): 43 – 56 at 47– 8; add Passio Felicis 18; the Coptic martyrdom of Colluthus in E.A. Reymond and J.W. Barns, Four Martyrdoms from the Pierpont Morgan Coptic Codices (Oxford, 1973), 146.  Krause, Gewalt und Kriminalität, 279.

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of the self-humiliation in supplication scenes.⁹² The mention of the logistes is rather striking, as this highly important office had only been instituted by Diocletian in AD 303. The logistes (curator civitatis) was the chief executive of the city and the nome,⁹³ and one may wonder why he was present at the trial. Eusebius (HE 8.9.7) mentions the presence of another important official, Philoromus, at the trial, and it seems that the standing of Phileas had aroused the curiosity of this official. For the ancient reader, the supplication scene must have been impressive and have raised their emotional involvement with the martyr, the more so, as Phileas rejects their pleas, claiming “that his parents and relatives are the apostles and martyrs” (La 6, cf. Matthew 12.46 – 50); once again, only La mentions his relatives. Whether the reference is a later insertion or not, the feeling is well attested in the martyrs’ Acts and shows one of the problems that Christianity must have caused for many a family, just as it may happen in Moslem families today in cases of defection to or sympathy for ISIS.⁹⁴ At this point, La inserts the already mentioned episode about the martyr Philoromus, who is mentioned in Eusebius (Hist. eccl. 8.9.7) in connection with Phileas, and whose martyrdom was joined with that of Phileas by Rufinus in his Latin translation of Eusebius (§ 1), but the absence of the martyrdom in Et also demonstrates its later insertion. The original, though, continues with a last and, surely, desperate intervention by Phileas’ brother, who is qualified by La (8) and Et (49), although not by Be (11), as one of the counsellors. There is a striking parallel in the contemporary Passio Abitinensium martyrum (17.9 – 13), where, similarly, the brother of the young Christian Victoria, also an advocatus and presumably still pagan, tries to save her, but in vain as the

 The classic, perceptive study is J. Gould, “Hiketeia,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 93 (1973): 74– 103, reprinted with Addendum in his Myth, Ritual Memory, and Exchange (Oxford, 2001), 22– 74; see also F.S. Naiden, Ancient Supplication (Oxford, 2006).  B.R. Rees, “The Curator Civitatis in Egypt,” Journal of Juristic Papyrology 7– 8 (1953 – 1954): 83 – 105; Lallemand, L’ administration civile de l’Égypte, 108 – 113; A. Bowman, “Oxyrhynchus in the Early Fourth Century: “Municipalization” and Prosperity,” Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 45 (2008): 31– 40; full list in P.Oxy. 54, p. 223; add P.Oxy. 60.4083 – 85.  K. Bradley, “Sacrificing the Family: Christian martyrs and their kin,” Ancient Narrative 3 (2003): 150 – 181, reprinted in his Apuleius and Antonine Rome: Historical Essays (Toronto, 2012), 104– 125; supplemented and corrected in Bremmer, Maidens, Magic and Martyrs, 20 – 25. Moslem families: A. Amarasingam and L.L. Dawson, “I LEFT TO BE CLOSER TO ALLAH”. Learning about Foreign Fighters from Family and Friends (London, 2018) = https:// www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Families_Report.pdf, Accessed 11 May 2020, with thanks to Pieter Nanninga.

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young woman declares that the Christians are her brothers.⁹⁵ The concordance of La and Et suggests that the qualification of counsellor was part of the original and may support the idea that Be has abbreviated the original in a few passages to minimise the attention to Phileas’ family, the more so as also Eusebius mentions that the judge exhorted the martyrs “to take pity on themselves and to spare their wives and children (HE 8.9.8).” The brother calls out: “Phileas asks for a pardon (αἰτεῖτα[ι ἀμνηστίαν).” Pietersma, to whom we owe the conjecture, translates with “amnesty,” but that is perhaps too modern a term. The brother, who is after all a jurist, may have used the term as the only Greek equivalent available to translate the Latin abolitio (La 8), which can be both an imperial pardon and a setting aside of the sentence.⁹⁶ As could be expected, Phileas rejects his brother’s appeal to the Judge, and, instead, stresses his gratefulness to the emperors and the governor. The scene in the courtroom ends with the lapidary statement: “Thereafter Phileas went out (Be 12; La 8; Et 52).” It is important to note that with his exit, the official acta will have ended as well. These never supply a record of the actual execution and words uttered at that moment. When we therefore speak of ‘authentic’ evidence, we have to differentiate between the actual court proceedings and the conclusion of the martyrdom. Whereas the proceedings are often abbreviated and re-focussed, they are still based on an official record. The execution and pious words following the court case are much more vulnerable to current concerns or liturgical needs, and they often become differentiated in the course of the textual tradition. This is clearly the case also with the end of Phileas. When the bishop “had arrived at the place where he would be beheaded, he stretched his arms towards the east and cried out” (Be 12 [only until “beheaded”]; La 9; Et 52),” but what he actually said is not easy to reconstruct. The end of Be (13 – 14) is highly fragmentary and the beginning of Phileas’ prayer in Be is lost, but La (9) and Et (53) clearly differ in their beginnings, as the former

 For the text, see P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Note agiografiche 8 (Vatican City, 1935), 1– 71, transl. M.A. Tilley, Donatist Martyr Stories (Liverpool, 1996), 33 (slightly adapted); Seeliger and Wischmeyer, Märtyrerliteratur, 311– 359, cf. F. Dolbeau, “La “Passion” des martyrs d’Abitina: remarques sur l’établissement du texte,” Analecta Bollandiana 121 (2003): 273 – 296; A. Dearn, “The Abitinian Martyrs and the Outbreak of the Donatist Schism,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 55 (2004): 1– 18.  W. Waldstein, Untersuchungen zum römischen Begnadigungsrecht: Abolitio – indulgentia – venia (Innsbruck, 1964), 88 – 126; W. Geerlings, “Römisches Recht und Gnadentheologie. Eine typologische Skizze,” in Homo Spiritalis. Festgabe für Luc Verheijen OSA zu seinem 70. Geburtstag, ed. C. Mayer et al. (Würzburg, 1987), 357– 377; Krause, Gewalt und Kriminalität, 223, 241, 275 – 279.

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starts with: “My dearest little children” and the latter with: “You pagans, you Jews and you Christians.” The fact that all mention Christ sitting over the cherubim (Be 14, La 9, Et 61) shows that both translations have used part of the original, just as in both translations (La 9; Et 55) the mention of the Devil, who was seen as the great opponent of the martyrs,⁹⁷ suggests his presence in the original. Sometimes we can see that Et concurs with Be, as when both mention the suffering of “Christians” in Phileas’ prayer (Be 14, Et 59), which is probably a reference to the confession by the martyrs of being Christians,⁹⁸ a confession that sufficed to have them executed. On the whole, though, it seems that La has abbreviated the original ending, whereas Et seems to have expanded on it.⁹⁹ The original version will have ended with the actual execution of Phileas, who was beheaded, the proper punishment for Roman upper-class citizens. The fact that both Be and Bo are followed by Psalms in their papyri, suggests to Cornelia Römer that “both versions were used in services contemporaneously.”¹⁰⁰ This may be the case, but it would be the oldest surviving example of the reading of martyrs’ Acts in churches.

Final considerations Let us conclude with a few final considerations: 1. I first want to stress again that in Be we have a unique text, which probably sticks closely to the official acta: the Coptic, Ethiopic and Latin translations together enable us to reconstruct the original martyr’s Acts to a very large extent, which presents a sober view of the trial without the exaggerations of later epic passions.¹⁰¹ Both Be and Bo date from the middle of the fourth century or perhaps a bit earlier in the case of the former and later in the case of the latter, and we may even wonder if Eusebius did not know (one of) these accounts, as he was clearly familiar with the trial (Hist. eccl.

 Moss, The Other Christs, 89 – 102.  For a full list of this confession, see Bremmer, Maidens, Magic and Martyrs, 9 note 30, where Phileas is wrongly mentioned as containing a direct testimony.  See the commentary by Bausi, La versione etiópica, 52– 54.  Thus, in her review of Pietersma, C. Römer, Journal of Hellenic Studies 110 (1990): 272– 73.  The evidence as discussed by me does not support the qualification by S.R. Huebner, “Soter, Sotas, and Dioscorus before the Governor: The First Authentic Court Record of a Roman Trial of Christians?,” Journal of Late Antiquity 12 (2019): 2– 24 at 3 that “All testimonies present a more or less heavily revised and embellished dialogue between Phileas and the Roman governor of Egypt, Clodius Culcianus, probably loosely based on the lost court acts.”

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8.9.7– 10.1). We also note that the torture of the rackings beyond the fourth peg (Bo 1) is mentioned by Phileas in the letter to his flock (His eccl. 8.10.8), which may suggest that the author of Bo knew Eusebius or that Phileas’ letter still circulated in Bo’s time. The account focuses on the bishop and the judge. It is, in modern terms, a legal or courtroom drama, so familiar from the movies.¹⁰² By all accounts, the appearance in the dock of a wealthy bishop must have been an exceptional spectacle. Admittedly, in our case we do not have a jury or an underdog lawyer, but otherwise we can imagine the scene without too many efforts. The judge with his assessors is sitting on a semi-circular high bench. The accused stands on a somewhat raised platform below them. They are surrounded by a public, consisting, of course, of Phileas’ wife and children, but also of high officials and, presumably, curious pagans and Christian supporters. Yet the place receives virtually no attention in this account. At the beginning we hear of the dock (bêma: Co, La 1, Et 2), and at the end there is the mentioning of the place of execution, which is not further specified (Be 12, La 9, Et 52), but may have been outside the city, as it was usual at the time.¹⁰³ That is all. There are no close ups of the court room and the camera, so to speak, only incidentally zooms in at others than the two protagonists. The space is not important here. It is the confrontation between the judge and the bishop that is the exclusive focus of our literary camera. Time is different, depending on how we define it. We hear nothing about the time of the clock. We have no idea how long the trial lasted, when it started or when it ended. We know the day, 4 February 305, but that is all. Apparently, clock time was not important in our case, at least not for the author and, probably, neither for his readers. It is also interesting to see that the day was preserved in saints’ calendars in the West, but the year itself was clearly no longer considered important, whereas it still was mentioned in versions close to the trial account.

It is different when we ask if the account is typical of a certain moment in time and, if so, to what extent. In other words, when reading the martyrdom, do we get a feeling of a certain moment in history? Could a scholar, having found the papyrus without any date, also have located the event in, say, AD 200 or 310? Naturally, there are several indications of its historical moment because of the  Cf. Law and Film: representing law in movies, ed. S. Machura and P. Robson (Cambridge, 2001); P. Bergman and M. Asimow, Reel Justice: The Courtroom goes to the Movies (Kansas City, 20062).  Krause, Gewalt und Kriminalität, 255.

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occurrence of the names of the main protagonists in other writings. Phileas is mentioned by Eusebius and dated to the Great Persecution, as he is by the newly published history of the Alexandrian episcopate (§ 3). The period in office of Culcianus is well known through various papyri as being from about 301– 307 (§ 4), and the function of logistes was created in 303 (§ 4), which gives an independent terminus post quem. The date of 305, then, fully fits what we know about the protagonists from other sources. However, it is more interesting to observe that Phileas probably attests to the increasing presence of Christians in the Empire or, perhaps, Egypt in particular. The number of Christians empire-wide at the time of the Great Persecution is of course highly debated and will never be established with any certainty. When we think of 10 % we may be wrong, but probably not that much,¹⁰⁴ and 20 % seems reasonable for Egypt itself.¹⁰⁵ It would thus not be a strange thought that a Roman governor who had to put Christians on trial had acquired a basic knowledge of Christianity. And indeed, there is no other surviving account of a martyrdom in which the Roman judge displays such an interest in the details of the Christian faith as Phileas. In this respect, Culcianus could be a representative of his time. Yet when we take a closer look at Culcianus’ questions, it quickly appears that he has only a superficial knowledge of the (not so) new faith, even though he has heard of Christ, Moses, Paul and the resurrection. He himself, though, although only being a member of the equestrian order, still adheres to the traditional upper-class idea of non-traditional cults being demonstrations of madness (§ 4). One may well wonder to what extent this lack of interest will not have been one of the causes of the demise of traditional Roman religion, as its representatives clearly did not take the trouble to acquaint themselves with their most dangerous opponent in any depth. On the other hand, Phileas demonstrates the rock-solid belief and trust in Christ which we find in virtually all martyrs’ Acts.¹⁰⁶ It is this total devotion to Christ that sustains him and makes him reject all appeals to consider his family and his own life. We can also see from his remarks that the later Bible already is fully authoritative for him. The books of the Old and New Testament are ‘sacred

 For the number, still see the suggestive article by Keith Hopkins (1934– 2004): “Christian Number and its Implications,” Journal of Early ChristianStudies 6 (1998): 184– 226, reprinted in Hopkins, Sociological Studies in Roman History (Cambridge, 2018), 432– 80.  M. Choat, “Egypt’s Role in the Rise of Christianity, Monasticism, and Regional Schisms,” in A Companion to Greco-Roman and Late Antique Egypt, ed. K. Vandorpe (Oxford, 2019), 449 – 471 at 469.  Cf. J.N. Bremmer, “God and Christ in the Early Martyr Acts,” in Monotheism and Christology in Greco-Roman Antiquity, ed. M. Novenson (Leiden, 2020), 222– 248.

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and divine’ writings, which can be quoted to support his arguments. Although not yet officially accepted, the later canon is already more than just being in statu nascendi. ¹⁰⁷ This development points to a time well after the second century. Yet the main focus for both protagonists is sacrifice, as appears from the fact that words connected with sacrifice, as thyô, thysia etc., occur about 20 times in this relatively brief text. This prominence is not surprising. Since Decius, we can see an increasing importance for the Christians of a refusal to sacrifice as a touchstone for their belief. The development is clearly manifested in the contemporary apologetic works of Arnobius and Eusebius, of whom the former devotes the first half of the final book of his treatise Against the Nations (7.1– 25) to an extensive critique of animal sacrifice,¹⁰⁸ whereas the latter includes a wide-ranging discussion of sacrifice in his Preparation for the Gospel (Praep. ev. 4.9 – 23). This attention fits the time of our Acts, as the Fourth Edict ordered universal imposition of the sacrifice test.¹⁰⁹ And indeed, later martyr Acts often have the obligation to sacrifice and its subsequent refusal at a prominent place in their accounts.¹¹⁰ However, we know from papyri that some Christians negotiated the obligation to sacrifice.¹¹¹ It will be the contested nature of this accommodating attitude that has led the author of this martyrdom to focus his lenses on Phileas’ stubborn refusal to sacrifice, which we can also observe in the latter’s letter to his flock, in which he mentions the “abominable sacrifice” and quotes from Exo-

 The literature on the rise of the canon is endless. For a good state of the art, see K. Schmid and J. Schröter, Die Entstehung der Bibel (Munich, 20192).  J.A. North, “Arnobius on Sacrifice,” in Wolf Liebeschuetz Reflected, ed. J.F. Drinkwater and B. Salway (London, 2007), 27– 36 at 31– 36; see also the working text, Italian translation and commentary by Ch.O. Tommasi, Arnobio, Contro i pagani (Rome, 2017).  Most recently, J. Rives, “Cult Practice, Social Power, and Religious Identity: The Case of Animal Sacrifice,” in Juden, Christen, Heiden?, ed. S. Alkier and H. Leppin (Tübingen, 2018), 71– 88; “Animal Sacrifice and Euergetism in the Hellenistic and Roman Polis,” Religion in the Roman Empire 5 (2019): 83 – 102; “Roman Empire and Roman Emperor: Animal Sacrifice as an Instrument of Religious Convergence,” in Religious Convergence in the Ancient Mediterranean, ed. B.J. Collins and S. Blakely (Atlanta, 2019), 523 – 540 and “Animal Sacrifice and the Roman Persecution of Christians (2nd–3rd Centuries CE),” in Religious Violence in Antiquity, ed. J. Dijkstra and C. Raschle (Cambridge, 2020), 177– 202.  From the edition by Musurillo, Rives, “Animal Sacrifice,” 200 compares: “Conon (no. 13), Julius the Veteran (no. 19), Agape and her companions (no. 22), Irenaeus (no. 23), Crispina (no. 24), Euplus (no. 25), and Phileas (no. 27).” The fact that some of these are clearly fictitious, such as the one of Conon, does not diminish the value of the observation.  Cf. A. Luijendijk, “Papyri from the Great Persecution: Roman and Christian Perspectives,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 16 (2008): 341– 369, who at 346 calls our Acts a “Christian literary text,” which does not do justice to the version Be.

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dus “whoever sacrifices to any god, other than the Lord alone, shall be devoted to destruction (22:20, tr. NRSV).” There can be no doubt what Phileas expected from his parishioners: his uncompromising stance and willingness to die was the attitude to imitate and not that of giving in to the Roman authorities, which in Phileas’ and, we may assume, the author of his Acts’ opinion was incompatible with Christian identity. In our secularising world, it is not easy to understand, let alone sympathise, with such an attitude. For the eventual hegemony of Christianity, though, Phileas was the right man at that particular time and place, and later generations could only admire his steadfastness, as the many surviving versions of his martyrdom still attest.¹¹²

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Harris, Murray, J. Slaves of Christ: A New Testament metaphor for total devotion to Christ. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2001. Heiden, Gerrit, J. van der, et al., eds. Saint Paul and Philosophy. The Consonance of Ancient and Modern Thought. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2017. Hidding, Aaltje. “Geschichte, Legende, Mythos. Die Diokletianische Christenverfolgung in Ägypten.” In Interkulturalität: Kontakt – Konflikt – Konzeptionalisierung, edited by Susanne Beck et al., 59 – 72. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2017. Hidding, Aaltje. The Era of the Martyrs: Remembering the Great Persecution in Late Antique Egypt. Berlin and Boston: The Gruyter, 2020. Hilhorst, Anton, ed. De heiligenverering in de eerste eeuwen van het christendom. Nijmegen: Dekker & Van de Vegt, 1988. Holmes, M. W. “Intertextual Death: Socrates, Jesus, and Polycarp of Smyrna.” In Intertextuality in the Second Century, edited by D.Jeffrey Bingham and Clayton N. Jefford, 51 – 61. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Hopkins, Keith. “Christian Number and its Implications.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 6 (1998): 184 – 226. Horst, P.W. van der. “Organized Charity in the Ancient World: Pagan, Jewish, Christian.” In Jewish and Christian Communal Identities in the Roman World, edited by Ya’ir Furstenberg, 116 – 133. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Huebner, Sabine R. “Soter, Sotas, and Dioscorus before the Governor: The First Authentic Court Record of a Roman Trial of Christians?” Journal of Late Antiquity 12 (2019): 2 – 24. Humphress, Caroline. Orthodoxy and the Courts in Late Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Jones, Arnold, H.M. et al., eds. The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, I: A.D. 260 – 395. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971. Jones, Christopher, P. “A Petition to Hadrian of 129 CE.” Chiron 39 (2009): 445 – 461. Judge, Edwin A. Jerusalem and Athens: Cultural transormation in Late Antiquity. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010. Jung, Franz. Soter: Studien zur Rezeption eines hellenistischen Ehrentitels im Neuen Testament. Münster: Aschendorff, 2002. Kahlos, Majastina. “Religio and Superstitio: retortions and phases of a binary opposition in Late Antiquity.” Athenaeum 95 (2007): 389 – 408. Karrer, Martin.”Jesus, der Retter (Sôtêr): zur Aufnahme eines hellenistischen Prädikats im Neuen Testament.” Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 93 (2002): 153 – 176. Kelly, Benjamin. Petitions, Litigation, and Social Control in Roman Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Kelly, Benjamin. “Petitions with Requests for Registration from Roman Egypt.” In Recht haben und Recht bekommen im Imperium Romanum: Das Gerichtswesen der Römischen Kaiserzeit und seine dokumentarische Evidenz, edited by Rudolf Haensch, 407 – 456. Warsaw: Warsaw University, 2016. Kinnard, Isabelle. “Imitatio Christi in Christian Martyrdom and Asceticism: A Critical Dialogue.” In Asceticism and Its Critics: Historical Accounts and Comparative Perspectives, edited by Oliver Freiberger, 131 – 150. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Kinzig, Wolfram. Christenverfolgungen in der Antike. Munich: C.H. Beck, 2019.

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Kinzig, Wolfram. “Juden und Christen in der Antike. Trennungen, Transformationen, Kontinuitäten und Annäherungen.” In Among Jews, Gentiles and Christians in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, edited by Reidar Hvalvik and John Kaufman, 129 – 156. Trondheim, Tapir Academic Press, 2011. Kortekaas, G. and Giulia Lanata. “Acta Phileae,” in Antonius A.R. Bastiaensen et al., Atti e passioni dei martiri. Milano: Einaudi, 1987. Kozlowski, Jan M. “Unum Deum colo qui fecit terram et mare et omnia quae in eis sunt. The Formula of Creation and its Functions in the Acts of the Christian Martyrs.” Vetera Christianorum 54 (2017): 99 – 110. Krause, Jens-Uwe. “Arm und Reich in der spätantiken Stadt.” In Einblicke in die Antike: Orte – Praktiken – Strukturen, edited by Christian Ronning, 223 – 236. Munich: Utz, 2006. Krause, Jens-Uwe. Gewalt und Kriminalität in der Spätantike. Munich: C.H. Beck, 2014. Lallemand, Jacqueline. L’administration civile de l’E´gypte de l’ave`nement de Diocle´tien a` la cre´ation du dioce`se (284 – 382). Brussels: Palais des Académies, 1964. Lanata, Giulia. “Avvocati nei processi contro cristiani?” Materiali per una storia della cultura giuridica 12 (1993): 277 – 290. Leemans, Johan., ed. Martyrdom and Persecution in Late Antique Christianity. Leuven: Peeters, 2010. Linssen, Heinrich. “ΘΕΟΣ ΣΩΤΗΡ? Entwicklung und Verbreitung einer liturgischen Formelgruppe.” Jahrbuch für Liturgiewissenschaft 8 (1928): 1 – 75. Lorenz, R. “Eine Pierius – Memoria in Alexandrien.” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 99 (1988): 87 – 92. Luijendijk, AnneMarie. Greetings in the Lord: Early Christians and the Oxyrhynchus Papyri. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. Luijendijk, AnneMarie. “Papyri from the Great Persecution: Roman and Christian Perspectives.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 16 (2008): 341 – 369. Machura, Stefan and Peter Robson, eds. Law and Film: Representing Law in Movies. Cambridge: John Wiley & Sons, 2001. Martin, Annick. Athanase d’Alexandrie et l’église d’Égypte au ive siècle (328 – 373). Rome: École Française de Rome, 1996. Martin, V. Papyrus Bodmer XX. L’Apologie de Philéas, évêque de Thmouis. Cologny/Geneva, 1964. Millar, Fergus. “The Imperial Cult and the Persecutions.” In Le culte des souverains = Entretiens Hardt XIX, edited by Willem den Boer, 145 – 175. Geneva-Vandœuvres: Fondation Hardt, 1973. Minnen, Peter van. “The Earliest Account of a Martyrdom in Coptic.” Analecta Bollandiana 113 (1995): 13 – 38. Minnen, Peter van. “The Roots of Egyptian Christianity,” Archiv für Papyrusforschung 40 (1994): 71 – 85. Mitchell, S. “Hagiography and the Great Persecution in Sebastea and Armenia Minor.” In Early Christianity in Asia Minor and Cyprus, edited Stephen Mitchell and Philipp Pilhofer, 49 – 77. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Moss, Candida. The Myth of Persecution. New York: HarperOne, 2013. Moss, Candida.The Other Christs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Musurillo, Herbert. The Acts of the Christian Martyrs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972. Naiden, Frede, S. Ancient Supplication. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

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Seeliger, Heinz R. and Wolfgang Wischmeyer. Märtyrerliteratur, herausgegeben, iibersetzt, kommentiert und eingeleitet. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2015. Schenke, Gesa. “P.Köln 492: Das Martyrium des Phileas von Thmuis.” In Kölner Papyri (P.Köln), vol. 12, edited by Charikleia Armoni et al., 188 – 192. Paderborn: Papyrologica Coloniensia, 2010. Schenke, Gesa. “Ein koptischer Textzeuge der Acta Phileae.” In Honi soit qui mal y pense. Studien zum pharaonischen, griechisch-römischen und spätantiken Ägypten zu Ehren von Heinz-Josef Thissen, edited by Hermann Knuf et al, 609 – 616. Leuven: Peeters, 2010. Schmid, Konrad and Jens Schröter. Die Entstehung der Bibel: von den ersten Texten zu den heiligen Schriften. Munich: C.H. Beck, 2019. Schmidt, Peter L. “Passio beati Phileae episcope de civitate Thmui.” In Handbuch der lateinischen Literatur der Antike, vol. 5, edited by Reinhart Herzog. Munich: C.H. Beck, 1989. Schott, Jeremy M. Eusebius of Caesarea, The History of the Church: A New Translation. Oakland: University of California, 2019. Sijpesteijn, Pieter J. “Apphus and Pascentius: servi dei tempore.” Archiv für Papyrusforschung 40 (1994) 69 – 70. Sijpesteijn, Pieter J. “P. Mich. inv. 33: A Fragment of a Martyrology?” Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 31 (1994): 121 – 124. Stelzenberger, Johannes. Syneidesis, Conscientia, Gewissen. Paderborn: Schöningh, 1963. Stevens, Luke J. “The Origin of the de Boor Fragments Ascribed to Philip of Side.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 26 (2018): 631 – 657. Taveirne, Maarten. “Das Martyrium als imitatio Christi: Die literarische Gestaltung der spätantiken Märtyrerakten und -passionen nach der Passion Christi.” Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 18 (2014):167 – 203. Telfer, William. “St. Peter of Alexandria and Arius.” Analecta Bollandiana 67 (1949): 117 – 130. Thompson, John B. “Social Theory and the Media.” In Communication Theory Today, edited by David J. Crowley and David Mitchell, 27 – 49. Stanford Polity Press, 1994. Thompson, John B. The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media. Stanford, 1995. Tilley, Maureen A. Donatist Martyr Stories. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996. Tommasi, Chiara O. Arnobio, Contro i pagani. Rome: Città Nuova, 2017. Tudorie, Ionut-Alexandru, .”The Great Persecution of Diocletian and its Consequences.” In Costantino il Grande alle radici dell’Europa, edited by Enrico Dal Covolo and G. Sfameni Gasparro, Giulia 105 – 120. Vatican City: Libreria editrice, 2014 Twomey, D. Vincent and Mark Humphries, eds. The Great Persecution. Dublin: four Courts Press, 2009. Vachkova, Veselina and Dimitur Dimitrov, eds. Serdica Edict (311 AD): Concepts and Realizations of the Idea of Religious Toleration. Sofia: TanNakRa Publishing House, 2014. Waldstein, Wolfgang. Untersuchungen zum römischen Begnadigungsrecht: Abolitio – indulgentia – venia. Innsbruck: Universitätsverlag Wagner, 1964. Wipszycka, Ewa “Les élections épiscopales en Égypte aux VIe–VIIe siècles.” In Episcopal Elections in Late Antiquity, edited by Johan Leemans et al., 259 – 291. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2011.

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Wipszycka, Ewa “On the Governor’s Jurisdiction during the Persecution of Christians.” In Au-delà des frontières. Mélanges de droit romain offerts à Witold Wolodkiewicz, 2 vols, edited by Maria Zablocka et al., 2.1077 – 1083. Warsaw: Liber, 2000.

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Pure Bread of Christ: Imperial Necropolitics and the Eucharistic Martyrdom of Ignatius Abstract: This essay considers the narrative of martyrdom contained in Ignatius’ letters from the perspective of necropolitics, as described by Achille Mbembe. Using Mbembe’s account of how life and death function in colonial contexts, the essay reads Ignatius’ progress towards the imperial center and his intention to die a martyr’s death as an expression of agency and power over and against the power of empire. Ignatius’ anticipated death refutes empire’s claims to his body and his life, offering an alternative structure of meaning for his life and identifying and aligning himself with the martyr’s death of Jesus. The eucharistic language used by Ignatius is both the language of annihilation and an expression of ultimacy against imperial claims to his life and the right to make meaning out of his death.

Introduction Ignatius is a paradigmatic Christian martyr. Because his letters were an early and forceful articulation of martyrdom as an expression of devotion to Jesus, and because they come from a time when Christianity was beginning to take a form familiar to later devotees, Ignatius has held an inflated importance in Christian imaginations of the early church.¹ His writings have been wielded in debates about episcopacy, worship, theology, and soteriology, but perhaps his most enduring identity is as a martyr. Ignatius’ willingness to be martyred, which almost comes across as a giddiness at the prospect of death, is an early example of a

 I accept the chronology described by Schoedel, that the middle recension of Ignatius’ letters can be dated to approximately 100 – 118 CE, and that while there are real questions about the letters’ integrity and even about their authenticity, that they accurately reflect plausible conditions of Jesus-following communities in Asia Minor at about that time. The historicity of Ignatius himself is a fascinating question that I do not intend to entertain here. I do not think that my argument in this essay depends on any particular outcome of that debate. Ignatius is certainly a literary figure, whether he was also historical or not, and it is as a literary figure that I intend to consider him. William R. Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch: A Commentary on the Seven Letters of Ignatius (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1985), 4– 7. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110682632-006

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pattern that would become common in second- and third-century Christianity. Ignatius’ enthusiasm for martyrdom takes the form of literary theological ecstasy, and it has been clear to interpreters in every age that for Ignatius there was something very important about him dying, in a particular way, in the direction of Christ. In this essay, I reconsider Ignatius’ martyrial intent in light of Achille Mbembe’s description of life, death, and power in colonial contexts, which he characterizes as necropolitics. Read in light of Mbembe’s articulation of necropolitics, Ignatius’ rhetoric of martyrdom and his performance of subjection and captivity (whether historical or solely literary) emerge as expressions of agency by a colonized and subjugated person, leveraged against a colonizing and dominating imperial power. His journey from the periphery of the Roman Empire to its center—from frontier to capital—has him cross spatial boundaries and divisions that mirror and enforce imperial power structures and mark Ignatius’ body as expendable for imperial purposes. As he crosses these spaces, Ignatius’ discussion of his own impending death becomes intelligible as a claim to selfhood and personhood, and his citation of eucharistic language (especially in his epistle to the Romans) is an assertion of agency over life and death in the face of others’ claims on his body. Understood this way, the theatricality of Ignatius’ anticipated death in Rome is an expression of resistance and self-understanding, and it displays the “logic of martyrdom” that is characteristic of colonized persons as Mbembe describes them. Ignatius’ eucharistic language about his death expresses solidarity with and participation with another paradigmatic martyr from the periphery of the Empire: Jesus.

Necropolitics and Biopower Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics is a corrective to the Eurocentric character of discourse about politics, sovereignty, and power. This is most significantly a critique of Michel Foucault and his notion of biopower, although it is also a criticism of the way figures like Giorgio Agamben have privileged language and models of sovereignty and power that are predicated on European and democratic norms.² By understanding sovereignty as “the production of general norms by  Agamben is frequently cited for his phrase “state of exception,” indicating the circumstances under which actions that would normally be illicit, like killing, become licit, like in war. Part of Mbembe’s argument is that this dichotomy between legitimate and illegitimate killing only makes sense under a certain understanding of sovereignty, and that it does not match the experiences or circumstances of most people and political systems. Achille Mbembe, “Necropolitics,”

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a body (the demos) made up of free and equal men and women,” who are understood as “full subjects capable of self-understanding, self-consciousness, and self-representation,” the western political tradition has centered its discourse about power on ideals of “what the good life is all about, how to achieve it, and, in the process, how to become a fully moral agent.”³ This is a view of power from the perspective of the powerful, and a view of sovereignty from the perspective of sovereigns, born out of philosophical traditions that were themselves born out of European imperial and colonial contexts.⁴ The European tradition produced a discourse of sovereignty and subjectivity that is centered on ideals of self-actualization and becoming fully human. By contrast, Mbembe seeks to have a different conversation about sovereignty and subjectivity, centering it on different, more embodied questions. For Mbembe, the salient categories are not personal fulfillment or “self-creation,” but something much more important to the world most people live in: “the generalized instrumentalization of human existence and the material destruction of human bodies and populations.”⁵ Mbembe summarizes this as “the power and the capacity to dictate who may live and who must die.”⁶ The fulfillment of the self is impossible and irrelevant when most people live in danger of the violation or destruction of their bodies, and any theories of power (or biopower) that fail to account for this general condition are inadequate.⁷ The problem identified by Mbembe is not simply one of representation, as if the post-Enlightenment political tradition were deficient because of the optics of its narrowness. Instead, that narrowness produces errors in understanding. Foucault and others in the western political tradition make fundamental mistakes trans. Meintjes, Libby, Popular Culture 15, no. 1 (Winter 2003): 12– 13. For a critique of Agamben centered on language choices, see Jill Jarvis, “Remnants of Muslims: Reading Agamben’s Silence,” New Literary History 45, no. 4 (2014): 707– 729, https://doi.org/10.1353/nlh.2014.0035.  Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” 13.  Mbembe’s citation of literature on the Enlightenment is telling on this point. We might add subsequent publications on the modern constructions of race, subjectivity, and identity, like those of J. Kameron Carter, Theodore Vial, and Willie James Jennings, among others. Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” n. 8. J. Kameron Carter, Race: A Theological Account (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 79 – 121. Theodore Vial, Modern Religion, Modern Race (Oxford: Oxford, 2016). Willie James Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010), chaps. 1, 3.  Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” 13 – 14.  Mbembe, “Necropolitics,”11.  Ta-Nehisi Coates’ 2015 book Between the World and Me is underappreciated as a theorization of embodiment and personhood, and as a critique of just the kind of Eurocentric (or “white” in Coates’ language) models that Mbembe is critiquing. Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015).

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about the nature of sovereignty and biopower when they understand it as processes of “self-institution and self-limitation” undertaken by free and equal persons.⁸ Mbembe pushes aside biopower and other Eurocentric notions of sovereignty and personhood not because they are exclusive, but because they are incomplete and do not account for or even attempt to account for the way human existence works. By taking account of the experiences of persons who have been dominated, exploited, and colonized, Mbembe produces a fuller account of the workings of power and the origins and functions of sovereignty as they relate to questions of life and death.

Ancient and Modern Necropolitics Although most applications of Mbembe’s necropolitics relate to the contemporary world, I argue that this broader focus is what makes Mbembe’s theory of necropolitics especially useful for thinking about the ancient world, including the world of someone like Ignatius. To be sure, there is something uniquely pernicious and structural about the modern imperialisms, colonialisms, and horrors that undergird Mbembe’s theory. In his formulation of it, Mbembe cites the Atlantic slave trade, European colonialism, Apartheid South Africa, the Holocaust, Palestine, the American military-industrial complex, and the perversions of global capitalism.⁹ These are all features of the modern world, and they are strongly determined by the same geopolitics that produced the European intellectual trends Mbembe argues against. But while its foundation is found in the postmodern rubble of European imperialism, necropolitics has something to say to us about antiquity, and about the world Ignatius and his readers lived in. The study of antiquity, and the study of early Christianity and its literatures in particular, has been thoroughly affected by the imperial turn. Scholars widely accept that the Roman Empire looms in the background of many early Christian texts, including those of the New Testament, and of course texts about martyrs are no exception. As we will see below, the story of Ignatius is often understood using tools provided by the study of imperialism generally and the Roman Empire especially. But there has been less certainty about what kind of empire we should have in mind when we think about the Roman context. Clifford Ando warns against assuming too much commonality between ancient empires and

 Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” 13.  Most of his piece is concerned with these examples, but see especially Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” 16 – 37.

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modern (or early modern) ones. In doing so, he suggests that we have to work to abandon our own ideas about power, sovereignty, and subjectivity, and instead discover the ways ancient persons thought about their own world.¹⁰ This is a helpful warning. The features of Roman rule that he cites, though, traffic in the same Euro-derived categories that Mbembe works to undermine: consent of the governed, the ideal of citizenship, the material comforts of an urban environment, and theologies of divine right to rule. “We must remember,” he writes, “that public power, concretized in recognized forms of domination and social action, is not inherently noxious,” but that Roman power “depended on its consensual validity.”¹¹ A short time later, he argues that ancient “individuals seeking security for their persons and their property might well look to Rome, for Rome claimed to provide precisely that thing that other societies had not been able to provide for themselves. As the gods had overseen and tacitly approved Roman conquest, so search for social order created a convergence between the desires of provincials and the publicized aims of Rome.”¹² This dual argument—that the “public power” of empire can function neutrally or for the public good, and that ancient persons understood that material prosperity signaled divine approval—is an argument from “the good life.” It suggests that human flourishing, which the Roman Empire was proficient at producing among its elite, undergirded the Empire’s authority and gave it legitimacy, even in the eyes of the provincial subjects it had dominated and subjugated.¹³ This might well have been true in certain times and places, and for persons who came out on top in the disruption of social order that accompanied Roman imperial intervention. Provincial elites were, after all, still elites, and they benefitted from Roman rule almost as richly as Romans themselves. In terms of Foucauldian biopower, Roman conquest had established a new order, under which the power over life and death had been reconfigured and redistributed, but the power itself remained essentially intact. Ando is arguing that the right over life and death was instrumental to the idea of Roman rule, and the Roman Empire wielded it to effect good, efficient government. In other words,

 Clifford Ando, Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire (Classics in Contemporary Thought; Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 66 – 70.  Ando, Imperial Ideology , 66.  Ando, Imperial Ideology, 68.  Just prior to these passages, Ando had been discussing Josephus, and the theological rationale by which he had attempted to convince his compatriots of the rightness and inevitability of Roman rule. The difference between Josephus’ position and that of his opponents on this matter was, of course, considerable, and it troubles any easy notion of “consent of the governed” in Roman antiquity. Ando, Imperial Ideology, 64– 65.

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Roman imperial violence was a tool the state used to maintain order and bring about a utilitarian good for the great masses of its subjects. But the limits of this view are precisely the ones Mbembe seeks to address with the idea of necropolitics, and attention to these limits is what makes necropolitics a more useful framework than biopower, even accounting for the difference between ancient and modern empires. Chief among these limits is the one I cited earlier, which is that biopower and allied theories of sovereignty assume that power is a kind of aggregated will-to-flourishing, and not a technology for “generalized instrumentalization of human existence and the material destruction of human bodies and populations,” as Mbembe puts it.¹⁴ Mbembe perceives modern imperialism (and, I suspect, other organizing systems like capitalism) as the latter—a way to earn profit and power from control of human bodies. I see very little daylight between this basic view of modern imperialism and the workings of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire was in the business of conquest and imperial control not because of some altruistic impulse to bring good government to the periphery of the Empire, but because empires function by drawing resources from the periphery to the center.¹⁵ Empire is a technology for the instrumentalization of resources, including persons. This was true for the empires at the root of Mbembe’s articulation of necropolitics—Dutch, British, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and other imperialisms—but it was no less true for the ancient world and for the Roman Empire. Roman power was deployed in the interest of Roman power, and not because it wanted to create the kind of framework for prosperity that Ando suggests. It did create that framework of course, but only as a cog in the machinery of imperial power, not as an intended product of it. The economic and social flourishing of elites was an important part of the material and rhetor-

 Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” 14.  This claim will be controversial to some. Many (as we have already seen) insist that ancient empires functioned on some basis that was different from modern ones, and that we are wrong to ascribe motivations like resource gains, territorial acquisition, control of human labor, and taxation to ancient empires. As Peter Edwell explains, a powerful strain of scholarship casts Roman imperialism in terms of defense of territory or a benign or benevolent one-world mentality. I cast my lot with a competing group of scholars, who see Roman motivations as roughly aligned with the motivations of modern empires: what Mbembe describes as the “generalized instrumentalization of human bodies and populations,” and the procurement of resources from seized lands. The behavior of the Roman Empire is much more explainable, in my opinion, if we presume that it was wielding power for profit and power’s own sake, rather than for some nobler purpose. A good summary of this debate, and of the dangers of using words like “imperial” to describe antiquity, can be found at Peter Edwell, “Definitions of Roman Imperialism,” in A Companion to Roman Imperialism, ed. Dexter Hoyos, (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 39 – 52.

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ical power of the Roman Empire, as a way to legitimate and perpetuate the system, but the production of generalized human flourishing was never the purpose. The purpose was power and the resource extraction that flowed from that power.¹⁶ The rhetoric of Pax Romana was only meaningful to the center; on the periphery of the Roman Empire, Pax Romana meant violence, domination, and subjection.¹⁷ In this way, the Roman Empire mirrored the conditions described by Mbembe. The politics of the Roman Empire were necropolitics; the organization of the Roman state was concerned with who had the power over life and death. At times this was obvious and public, as in the administration of the games and imperial triumphs.¹⁸ In the wake of conquest, mass enslavement of vanquished peoples was business-as-usual.¹⁹ But these large-scale and public displays of necropolitics (or biopower) were not exceptional. Mundane daily interactions between the Roman state and subjugated peoples constantly re-inscribed and reinforced the Roman imperial right to determine who lived and who died, and by extension, the imperial control of persons and their bodies. A good example

 Mbembe speaks of colonies and frontiers as spaces and places where the normal rules of society—the rules formulated for the imperial center—are habitually disregarded. These are “the zone where the violence of the state of exception is deemed to operate in the service of ‘civilization;’ that is, frontiers and colonies are where violence that would otherwise be considered illicit can be visited upon the empire’s subjects in order to establish control. Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” 24.  Candida Moss has observed that modern scholars’ attitudes toward Roman power, and especially the persecution (or not) of Christians, maps neatly onto their ideological commitments. Modern authors wishing to construct an especially dangerous world for early Christianity, in which persecution was widespread and severe, see Roman power as overbearing and capricious in its violence. Meanwhile, others (notably Edward Gibbon) minimize this aspect of Roman power, seeing the Roman Empire as a golden age of tolerance and religious diversity; see, Candida Moss, “Roman Imperialism: The Political Context of Christian Apocryhpa,” in The Oxford Handbook of Christian Apocrypha, ed. Andrew Gregory, Tobias Nicklas, Christopher M. Tuckett, and Joseph Verheyden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 378 – 388. I think Mbembe’s clear-eyed assessment of necropolitics as the power over life and death helps to clarify and avoid this problem. Rather than focusing on theological narratives and extrapolating politics backward, and rather than imagining an idealized Roman past and retrofitting history to accommodate it, Mbembe’s theory focuses on the material existences and realities of persons, and how their relationships to power shaped their subjectivities and their own dispositions toward life and death.  For a comprehensive overview of how Roman power was deployed in these settings, see Donald G. Kyle, Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome (London and New York: Routledge, 1998).  Although his numbers cannot be trusted, Josephus’ accounts of enslavements during and after the first Jewish War speak to the instrumentalization of human beings in the wake of defeat. J.W. 6.8.2, 7.6.4, 1.8.9, inter alia.

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of this is the famous correspondence between Pliny and Trajan regarding a company of Christians that had been denounced to Pliny. In the course of describing his own actions to Trajan, Pliny reported that he would “order them away to prison,” and “placed two women, called ‘deaconesses,’ under torture.” Trajan’s response was to affirm Pliny’s choices, with the provision that Christians should not be sought out, but that if they came to Pliny’s attention, he should punish them accordingly.²⁰ The casualness with which Pliny reports his actions, especially the torture of the women, shocks modern sensibilities (although it is somewhat less shocking to persons who have lived under colonial or imperial domination). But it also reflects precisely the kinds of power over life and death that Mbembe describes. In the workings of imperial power, the Roman Empire was not as different from modern European empires as many would like to claim. Its power was still predicated on control of bodies, life, and death; the Roman Empire operated via necropolitics.

Space, Time, and Necropolitics The question of space, place, time, and their relationships to power and sovereignty is perhaps where the distance between ancient and modern imperial contexts seems widest. In his description of necropolitics, Mbembe relies heavily on 20th-century colonialism and its spatial products, like South African townships and Palestinian territories. He draws heavily from the work of Frantz Fanon, who himself writes out of a French colonial perspective.²¹ All of this gives the impression that on the subject of space and place, Mbembe’s necropolitics presuppose spatial colonial relationships that simply did not adhere in the ancient world. However, I think that upon closer examination we find a great deal of commonality between Mbembe’s descriptions of modern imperial colonialisms and circumstances in the ancient world. A passage summarizing his view of spatial relationships produced in and by modern colonial occupations might just as well have been written to describe Roman imperialism’s function on the peripheries (or frontiers) of the Empire, and in conquered spaces inside of it:

 William Stearns Davis, ed., Readings in Ancient History: Illustrative Extracts from the Sources, 2 Vols. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1912– 13), Vol. II: Rome and the West, 196 – 210, 215 – 222, 250 – 251, 289 – 290, 295 – 296, 298 – 300. Accessed at https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/an cient/pliny-trajan1.asp.  Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” 26.

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The writing of new spatial relations (territorialization) was, ultimately, tantamount to the production of boundaries and hierarchies, zones and enclaves; the subversion of existing property arrangements; the classification of people according to different categories; resource extraction; and, finally, the manufacturing of a large reservoir of cultural imaginaries. These imaginaries gave meaning to the enactment of differential rights to differing categories of people for differing purposes within the same space; in brief, the exercise of sovereignty. Space was therefore the raw material of sovereignty and the violence it carried with it. Sovereignty meant occupation, and occupation meant relegating the colonized into a third zone between subjecthood and objecthood.²²

This description, derived from modern colonialism, is a remarkably good fit for conditions on the frontiers of the Roman Empire in the first several centuries of the Common Era, and for colonized and subjected territories within it. Roman occupation did produce new boundaries and hierarchies, and it did result in the reclassification of people according to new, power-inflected rules. This can be seen in the patterns of resettlement after the first Jewish War, for example, where rebellious Jewish towns were emptied out and given over to military veterans, the former inhabitants slaughtered or sold into slavery.²³ Likewise in the wake of the Bar Kokhba revolt, the city of Jerusalem itself was renamed Aelia Capitolina, and the name change was accompanied by a radical shift in social organization, including the banning of circumcision and the exclusion of Jews from the city.²⁴ Similar reconfigurations happened wherever Rome conquered new territory, subdued old enemies, or put down a rebellion.²⁵ This is an important context for the letters of Ignatius, because they were written by someone who was a subject of the Roman Empire in a time and place where the exercise of Roman sovereignty was felt keenly. As a resident of Syria in the first and early second centuries CE, Ignatius would have lived in the dynamics of the Roman frontier, at the periphery of Roman power— through tensions and conflicts with the Parthian Empire, and the first Jewish War. But more urgently, Ignatius would have lived and would have been formed

 Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” 25 – 26.  Boaz Zissu, “Interbellum Judea 70 – 132 CE: An Archaeological Perspective,” in Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries: The Interbellum 70 – 132 CE, ed. Joshua Schwartz and Peter J. Tomson (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 22– 25.  Shaye D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (Philadelphia: Westminster/John Knox, 1987), 24– 26.  An edited volume on Roman Imperialism collects some examples, including ones in Britain, North Africa, Syria, Spain, Parthia, and Macedonia. Dexter Hoyos, ed., A Companion to Roman Imperialism (Leiden: Brill, 2012). In Asia Minor, the great city of Ephesus was subjected to numerous humiliations following the Mithridatic War.

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in a social and political environment dictated by Roman rule and domination. Citizenship was rare among residents of that part of the Empire, and even citizens felt the heavy hand of imperial control.²⁶ Non-citizens lived perpetually in the knowledge of their absolute subjectivity to Empire. Even before considering his cultic affiliations and identity, Ignatius as an individual was subjected to Rome in powerful ways—ways that reminded him of his place in the order of things, as a colonial subject, and as a peripheral figure on the periphery of the empire. His close identification with another subject of the eastern Roman Empire, Jesus of Nazareth, would have underscored this perspective. Jesus met his violent end at the hands of Roman power in the nearby province of Judea, and it is clear from Ignatius’ letters that Jesus’ death figured prominently in Ignatius’ imagination of his own. Read through the lens of necropolitics, Ignatius’ anticipated martyrdom begins to appear as a story of solidarity among colonial subjects at the eastern periphery of the Empire. The spatial shape of Roman necropolitics can be traced in the lines of Ignatius’ journey. From his home in Antioch, Ignatius was taken into custody by provincial officials.²⁷ From there, for reasons that are not clear, Ignatius was sent off to Rome to face punishment, rather than being dealt with locally. What followed was a journey in captivity that functions like a core sample of the expanse of Roman power—a journey across the radius of the Empire from its periphery in Syria to its center in Rome. Spatially, Ignatius was traveling like Paul before him from the edge to the center, to face judgement by secular authorities under whose authority he fell, but whose perspective he challenged. Ignatius’ literary act of composing letters from along his journey then became a commentary on his own subjectivity, both to Rome and to the God he was expecting to meet there in the physical annihilation of his martyrdom. As he journeyed from the outward to the inward parts of the Roman Empire, Ignatius’ letters reflected on his impending death, and the ways he was subject to civil authorities and to God. In doing this, Ignatius produced a proleptic account of the limits of Rome’s sovereignty, even as he was held captive by the “ten leopards” who were the soldiers conveying him on his journey, and even as the signs of Rome’s sovereignty became clearer and stronger the closer he came to its cen-

 Kevin Butcher, Roman Syria and the Near East (London: The British Museum Press, 2003), 225 – 227.  The exact circumstances of his arrest are murky. Schoedel accepts the possibility that Ignatius was arrested as a warning to the nascent Christian community in Antioch, and that tensions within that community meant that his arrest went relatively unchallenged. Shoedel, Ignatius, 10 – 11.

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ter.²⁸ His letters became an argument for the limits of necropolitics—the boundaries of the Empire’s control over life and death—in the spectacle of his own journey toward death. Ignatius’ captive journey, and the epistles he produced along the way, demonstrate the way space is “the raw material of sovereignty and the violence it carried with it.”²⁹ As his “wild beasts” conveyed him from periphery to center, his letters were filled with ruminations on the exercise of imperial power that awaited him in the capitol. We now turn to one particular among those letters and the “cultural imaginaries” it produced and engaged.³⁰

“Then I shall truly be a disciple…” Once he had traveled from the periphery to the center of the Roman Empire, Ignatius’ ultimate fate is probably lost to history. He was likely executed in the city of Rome as he anticipated, although the account of Eusebius, the most reliable source on the matter, comes from some time later.³¹ Despite the vacuum of information about what kind of death Ignatius met, though, what is more important here is Ignatius’ expectation and imagination of his death, as expressed in his letters. Particularly in his letter to the Romans, Ignatius devoted a lot of time to thinking about his death and the way it related to Roman power. For Ignatius, Roman sovereignty over his life was an absolutely essential reality, but he also imagined, in his anticipated death, a demonstration of a different sovereignty —the revelation of an alternative model of power. In his voluntary martyrdom, Ignatius described a refutation and refusal of Rome’s claim on him. Most strikingly, Ignatius’ imagination of the moment of martyrdom is cast in eucharistic

 Harry O. Maier has outlined the spatial characteristics of martyrdom accounts, and especially ones in which the narrative plays out within imperial spectacles of violence. These accounts often play with space and time in ways that both mimic and subvert imperial prerogatives and themes, and this dynamic is certainly at work in Ignatius’ anticipatory account of his own martyrdom. Harry O. Maier, “Early Christian Martyrology, Imperial Thirdspace, and Mimicry: Taking the Spatial Turn to the Arena,” in Space Time of the Imperial (SpatioTemporality/ RaumZeitlichkeit 1; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017), 254– 284.  Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” 26.  Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” 26.  Schoedel, Ignatius, 11. Christine Trevett suggests a date of 107 for Ignatius’ death, although that is based on ancient texts and somewhat speculative. Christine Trevett, A Study of Ignatius of Antioch in Syria (Studies in the Bible and Early Christianity; Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992), 9.

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terms, and Ignatius refers to his own body as “the wheat of God” and his self as “poured out as a libation for God.”³² In Romans, Ignatius exhibits an especially strong will toward death in martyrdom.³³ In fact, the occasion for the letter appears to have been Ignatius’ fear that the Christian community in Rome would attempt to intervene on Ignatius’ behalf and therefore prevent him from being martyred. In a remarkable passage, Ignatius exhorts them to stand aside and let his death unfold: I write to all the churches and certify to all that I die willingly for God provided you do not hinder me. I exhort you: do not become an inopportune kindness for me; let me be the food of wild beasts through whom it is possible to attain God; I am the wheat of God, and I am ground by the teeth of the wild beasts that I may be found pure bread. Instead, entice the wild beasts that they may become my tomb and leave behind no part of my body that when I fall asleep, I may burden no one. Then I shall truly be a disciple of Jesus Christ when the world will not even see my body. Pray Christ for me that by these means I may be found a sacrifice of God.³⁴

In just a few sentences, Ignatius expressed his eagerness to die, anticipates the total annihilation of his body, casts that annihilation in eucharistic terms, and suggests a new mode of subjectivity for himself: “then I shall truly be a disciple of Jesus Christ….” He imagines a death scene which would appear to be the absolute triumph of Roman sovereignty over his body, in a violent end met in an arena, beset by wild beasts.³⁵ But Ignatius also imagines that that triumph of imperial control, the utilization of his life and body for entertainment and symbolic purposes, would be the moment at which Roman sovereignty failed, thwarted by Ignatius’ own self-sacrificial act. In martyrdom, Ignatius anticipates not only his own salvation, but also liberation from the sovereignty that has claimed him as its subject.

 Rom. 4.1 and 2.2. All translations of Ignatius are taken from Schoedel, Ignatius.  This will towards death has given rise to diverse attempts to understand why Ignatius is so eager to die. Most convincing is Judith Perkins’ claim that Ignatius identifies his goal of “attaining Christ” with suffering and dying. I will develop this connection below. Judith Perkins, The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era (New York & London: Routledge, 1995), 189 – 192.  Rom. 4.1– 2  It is especially poignant that Ignatius uses the same appellation, “wild beasts,” to refer the agents of Roman power that imprison him: “I am fighting wild beasts from Syria to Rome, through land and sea, by night and day, bound to ten leopards—which is a company of soldiers—who when well treated become worse. By their mistreatment I become more a disciple, but ‘not for that reason am I justified” (Rom. 5.1).

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As Mbembe describes “the logic of martyrdom,” Ignatius imagines his death as participating in “a new semiosis of killing.”³⁶ That is, he understands his death to signify something other than the thing imperial power had intended it to signify. As Mbembe puts it, The body in itself has neither power nor value. The power and value of the body result from a process of abstraction based on a desire for eternity. In that sense, the martyr, having established a moment of supremacy in which the subject overcomes his own mortality, can be seen as laboring under the sign of the future. In other words, in death the future is collapsed into the present. In its desire for eternity, the besieged body passes through two stages. First, it is transformed into a mere thing, malleable matter. Second, the manner in which it is put to death—suicide—affords it its ultimate signification.³⁷

Here, Mbembe is imagining a modern suicide bomber who annihilates the self while also exerting violence and death against others. This is not the same kind of death that Ignatius is imagining. Nevertheless, we can see how the “logic of martyrdom” produced by both ancient and modern imperial and colonial claims over bodies and subjects can produce similar impulses. Ignatius, like a modern martyr, is wielding his own death against a dominating power, and like a modern martyr, he anticipates that in his reclamation of self-determination, he will break the bonds of sovereignty that his persecutors claim over him. Ignatius is anticipating “a new semiosis of killing” in which the annihilation of his body will signify something altogether different from what the Roman Empire had intended it to signify.³⁸ Already in his letters sent from along the journey from periphery to center, and especially in his letter to the Romans, Ignatius is imagining the spectacle of his death and the ways it intersects with Roman claims to power over his body. Ignatius recites the torments he imagines are awaiting his body in Rome: “Fire and cross, and packs of wild beasts, the wrenching of bones, the mangling of limbs, the grinding of my whole body, evil punishments of the devil—let these come upon me, only that I may attain Jesus Christ.”³⁹ Bodily torment and death, which the Roman state had intended as punishment and spectacle, are

 Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” 37.  Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” 37.  Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” 37. The claim I am making here about Ignatius’ expectations of his death is similar to the one Maier makes about martyrs’ deaths and the ways they subvert the intentions behind imperial violence: “From an imperial point of view, these executions fail to reach their intended outcome and imperial ideology is overturned. The arena does not strip the executed of identity, it rather is the place where it is won.” Maier, “Christian Martyrology,” 276.  Rom. 5.3.

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here redirected toward the idea that through them Ignatius would “attain Jesus Christ.” This attainment is, as Schoedel argues, “a future possibility,” imagined to come in “communion with God at death.”⁴⁰ But it is also intimately connected with the actions Ignatius is undertaking as he journeys toward his death, and in the manner by which he dies. By imitating Christ and Christ’s death, Ignatius hopes to participate in Christ’s death and “attain Jesus Christ” in his death.⁴¹ In this “attainment,” in his anticipation of his martyrdom, Ignatius brings together his experience of Roman imperial power and his rejection of it, his identification with Jesus, and a key ritual of his religious life: eucharist. Mbembe writes of suicide bombers that “the sacrifice consists of the spectacular putting to death of the self, of becoming his or her own victim (self-sacrifice). The selfsacrificed proceeds to take power over his or her own death and to approach it head-on.”⁴² Ignatius imagines his death as spectacular, and while he does not intend to die in any way that is parallel to a suicide bomber, he does anticipate that by dying intentionally, he will control his own death and therefore its meaning. This meaning is eucharistic. Ignatius imagines that in his death, his body will take on a eucharistic significance and character. He longs for his future self “to be poured out as a libation for God while an altar is still ready.”⁴³ In a section of Rom. 4 already cited, Ignatius exhorts the Romans to “let me be the food of wild beasts through whom it is possible to attain God; I am the wheat of God, and I am ground by the teeth of wild beasts that I may be found pure bread.”⁴⁴ Ignatius, in his letter to the Romans, is willing his death toward “a new semiosis of killing,” in which his death at the hands of Roman imperial power signifies not only self-sacrifice, but the kind of connective and redemptive sacrifice embodied in eucharistic elements. This, he imagines, will be redemptive for himself; he will “attain Jesus Christ.” But he also thinks that his death, as a spectacle and as a eucharistic sacrifice, will be redemptive for others, as a refutation of temporal power and a reiteration of and participation with Jesus’ death. Near the end of his letter to the Romans, Ignatius draws many of these threads together in a way that demonstrates the usefulness of Mbembe’s necropolitics for understanding Ignatius’ motivations, worldview, and ideations of his own death. Ignatius directly juxtaposes earthly power with the power of the death of Jesus: “Of no profit to me will be the ends of the world and the king-

  his   

Schoedel, Ignatius, 28. Together, Ignatius writes of “attaining God,” and “attaining Christ” in over a dozen places in letters. Schoedel, Ignatius, 28 – 29. Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” 38. Rom. 2.2 Rom. 4.1.

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doms of this age,” he writes; “it is ‘better for me to die’ to Jesus Christ than to rule the ends of the earth.”⁴⁵ Here, the “ends” speak to the common spatial articulation of Roman power, stretching from periphery to periphery and encircling a center. Ignatius, traveling to Rome and writing to the same city in anticipation of his arrival there, cites Rome’s spatial hegemony as a signal of its power, even as he denies that power and rhetorically chooses death “to Jesus Christ” over the sovereignty of empire. In the next sentence, Ignatius implores his Roman Christian audience to “allow me to be an imitator of the suffering of my God.”⁴⁶ What follows is a series of contrasts in which Ignatius compares the things of this world to the reward he anticipates upon his death. He joins “the ruler of this age” who “wishes to carry me off and to corrupt my godly intent;” Ignatius asks that his audience take God’s side instead. He advises them that they should not “profess Jesus Christ and desire the world.”⁴⁷ He raises the specters of fire and water, as contrasting elements that might live within a person: “My longing has been crucified, and there is no matter-loving fire in me. There is water living and speaking in me, saying from within me, ‘Come to the Father.’”⁴⁸ From there, Ignatius reiterates his eucharistic language, this time with Christ’s body, and not his own, as the object, contrasting it to what the world has to offer: “I take no pleasure in the food of corruption nor yet in the pleasures of this life. I want the bread of God, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, of the seed of David; and for drink I want his blood, which is incorruptible love. I no longer want to live in human fashion….”⁴⁹ At the end of this letter to the Christians in the city where he expects to be murdered by the Roman Empire, Ignatius recapitulates his argument: while his death will appear to be a triumph of Roman sovereignty, in reality Ignatius dies with intention, in contempt of his oppressors, and in visceral participation with Jesus, who died before him in the same way. Ignatius was journeying from the periphery of the empire to the center, intending by the death of his body to uncenter altogether the Empire and its claims on dominated bodies.  Rom. 6.1. The quotation in the second clause is from 1 Cor 9:15.  Rom. 7.3. Schoedel notes some hedging by Ignatius in 7.2– 3, in which he anticipates that he might “change his mind” or risk “losing his nerve” upon arrival at Rome and facing the real presence of death. Ignatius cites this fear as all the more reason for the Roman Christians to rely on the words in his letter, written in a clear-headed moment, and not in any pleadings he might make to them in a moment of weakness and fear. Schoedel, Ignatius, 184.  Rom. 7.1.  Rom. 7.2. Schoedel considers whether these elements might be connected to philosophical traditions or have sacramental undertones, but draws no strong conclusion. Schoedel, Ignatius, 185 – 186.  Rom. 7.3b–8.1a.

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Conclusion Achille Mbembe set out to describe the shape of sovereignty in the modern world, with an eye to the experiences of colonized and dominated peoples and the limits of Eurocentric models of selfhood that are centered on the ideal of a life well lived. Privileging power over life and death, embodiment, and the determination of the semiotics of killing, Mbembe reimagines sovereignty and selfhood from the perspective of the periphery and underside of empire. Although his necropolitics is derived from and meant for the modern world, it carries great explanatory power for the ancient world and the journey of the early Christian martyr Ignatius. When read through the lens of necropolitics, Ignatius’ strong will toward death and his curious eucharistic language becomes sensible, even inevitable. As a subject of the Roman Empire who lived on its eastern periphery, Ignatius lived his life under the weight of imperial power and in full awareness of its domination of his body. His daily life, and the daily lives of most everyone he knew, was a reminder of his subordinate and subjugated status: that he did not control his life or his death, and that his existence was instrumentalized for the purposes of the system that dominated him. In his devotion to Jesus, however, Ignatius found an alternative source of sovereignty and a different channel for the power of his own life and death. Seeking and welcoming death in the imperial capital, Ignatius the provincial subject intended to turn his death into a spectacle that revealed the limits of imperial power and control. By dying toward God—by the “attainment of Jesus Christ” he expected in his death and the annihilation of his body—Ignatius intended to reclaim agency over his own life and death and reveal the limits of Roman power. What Rome intended as a punishment and an entertainment, Ignatius understood as a recapitulation of Jesus’ death, and a participation in its saving power. The language Ignatius chose to describe the moment of death, the language of becoming wheat and bread and being poured out like a libation, puts Ignatius in the place of Jesus as a eucharistic sacrifice made willingly, as a sign of Ignatius’ sovereignty over his own life and death and his God’s sovereignty over and against that of the “ruler of this world.” The logic of this martyrdom, and the logic of Ignatius’ journey from periphery to center to accomplish it, is the logic of transforming his own body into an eternal sign of agency and supremacy. Ignatius’ death and his letters are a necropolitical protest and a denial to Empire of the thing it prized most: control over life and death.

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Bibliography Ando, Clifford. Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Butcher, Kevin. Roman Syria and the Near East. London. London: The British Museum Press, 2003. Carter, J. Kameron. Race: A Theological Account. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015. Cohen, Shaye D. From the Maccabees to the Mishnah. Philadelphia: Westminster/John Knox, 1987. Edwell, Peter. “Definitions of Roman Imperialism.” In A Companion to Roman Imperialism, edited by Dexter Hoyos, 39 – 52. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Hoyos, Dexter, ed. A Companion to Roman Imperialism. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Jarvis, Jill. “Remnants of Muslims: Reading Agamben’s Silence.” New Literary History 45, no. 4 (2014): 707 – 729. https://doi.org/10.1353/nlh.2014.0035. Jennings, Willie James. The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010. Kyle, Donald G. Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. Maier, Harry O. “Early Christian Martyrology, Imperial Thirdspace, and Mimicry: Taking the Spatial Turn to the Arena.” In Space Time of the Imperial, 254 – 284. Spatio Temporality/RaumZeitlichkeit 1. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016. Mbembe, Achille. “Necropolitics.” Translated by Libby Meintjes. Popular Culture 15, no. 1 (Winter 2003): 11 – 40. Moss, Candida R. Roman Imperialism: The Political Context of Early Christian Apocrypha. Edited by Andrew Gregory, Tobias Nicklas, Christopher M. Tuckett, and Joseph Verheyden. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199644117.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199644117-e-41. Perkins, Judith. The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era. New York & London: Routledge, 1995. Schoedel, William R. Ignatius of Antioch: A Commentary on the Seven Letters of Ignatius. Hermeneia – A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1985. Trevett, Christine. A Study of Ignatius of Antioch in Syria and Asia. Studies in the Bible and Early Christianity. Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992. Vial, Theodore. Modern Religion, Modern Race. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Zissu, Boaz. “Interbellum Judea 70 – 132 CE: An Archaeological Perspective.” In Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries: The Interbellum 70 – 132 CE, edited by Joshua Schwartz and Peter J. Tomson, 19 – 49. Leiden: Brill, 2018.

L. Stephanie Cobb

From Prison to Palace: The Carcer as Heterotopia in North African Martyr Accounts The application of critical spatial theory to early Christian martyr texts has tended, for good reasons, to focus on the Roman amphitheater. As liminal sites in the geography of the Empire, amphitheaters simultaneously represented stability and chaos, peace and distress, civilization and barbarism. In the amphitheater, the state displayed its power and prowess by publicly executing its enemies and dissenters. Whether through prisoners of war trained as gladiators or criminals thrown to the beasts, Rome’s strength was regularly on display in the more than 230 amphitheaters across the empire.¹ Early Christian martyr texts, though, challenged the power dynamics of the amphitheater. Through this literature, Christians reclaimed their agency and autonomy by narrating a counter script wherein Christians chose to be perfected in the arena in witness to their faith. Christians were not victims of the Roman state but, rather, soldiers in God’s army and athletes of Christ, who sought out the rewards offered to the faithful. It may have looked as if Rome was in control—these narratives claimed—but, in reality, these were God’s spectacles (not the emperor’s), and those worthy of the martyrs’ crown readily exchanged death in this world for eternal life with God. Scholars of Christian martyrdom—myself included—have noted the literary ends the amphitheater served in these texts, and this spatial inversion has helped us take account of the communal work performed by martyr literature.² Attention to the literary claims of the martyr texts has moved scholars away from reading these accounts as disinterested chronicles and toward appreciating them as tools used by Christian authors to create this thing we call “Christianity.” The colossal architecture of the amphitheater in the Roman city, however, may have led

 See, for instance, L. Stephanie Cobb, Dying to Be Men: Gender and Language in Early Christian Martyr Texts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).  Harry Maier applies spatial theory to martyr texts’ use of the Roman amphitheater in “Early Christian Martyrology, Imperial Thirdspace and Mimicry: Taking the Spatial Turn to the Arena,” in Spacetime of the Imperial, ed. Susanne Rau and Katharina Waldner (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 354– 384. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110682632-007

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us to overlook or devalue another location central to martyr texts: the prison.³ It is not, that is, only by looking up—to the amphitheater looming high above us— that we find place-turned-space in Christian martyr literature; we must also look down—far below street level—to appreciate the existential terrors and narrative possibilities that existed, equally, in the Roman prison.⁴ It may well be that compared to the relatively quick work of the amphitheater, the Roman prison was a more formidable foe to early Christians who feared—rightly or not—Roman prosecution.⁵ In this essay, I explore the subterranean world of darkness, stench, chains, and torture in martyr texts. Since our knowledge of Roman prisons does not differ geographically, I draw from a wide variety of sources to develop our understanding of the experience of incarceration in antiquity. In applying this data to martyr narratives, however, the wealth of material from North Africa is my focus. Since we do not know on what charges Christians were detained, tried, and executed, my interests in this essay are not on the legal system and sentenc-

 An important exception to this observation is Judith Perkins’s essay “Space, Place, Voice in the Acts of the Martyrs” in Mimesis and Intertextuality in Antiquity and Christianity, ed. Dennis R. MacDonald (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2001), 117– 137. Perkins uses spatial theories to investigate the ways martyr narratives use the prison as a means of producing community identity. She writes, for instance, “Many Martyr Acts locate the authorial space specifically. For example, an author may locate his position—a prison—and claim his right to speak on the basis of this location. . . . The Acts define the Christian subject not only as a sufferer but explicitly as a prisoner of the surrounding social structures” (128). Thus, for Perkins, the prison of martyr narratives serves as another way that Christians utilized the suffering self to develop a communal identity. In this essay, my interests in the prison are somewhat different. Rather than focusing on the development of Christian identity, I am more interested in the ways the prison is imagined and transformed by the narrative discourse of martyr texts.  Indeed, much of our knowledge of prisons comes “from below,” as O. F. Robinson observes. O. F. Robinson, Penal Practice and Penal Policy in Ancient Rome (London: Routledge, 2007), 113. The prison has been a space of scholarly interest in the Apocryphal Acts. Judith Perkins analyzes the permeability of the prison as a means of resistance to traditional “domestic and political boundaries” (119), the Apocryphal Acts can be read as “resisting and transgressing prevailing spatial configurations” (123) (“Social Geography in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles,” in Space in the Ancient Novel, ed. Michael Paschalis, Stavros Frangoulidis (Groningen: Barkhuis Publishing & The University Library Groningen, 2002), 118 – 131).  Contra Peters, who comments, “In spite of formidable gates, walls, security measures, overcrowding and filth, prisons were certainly not the harshest punishments known to imperial whim, as the summa supplicia testify.” Edward Peters, “Prison Before the Prison: The Ancient and Medieval Worlds,” in The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society, ed. Norval Morris and David J. Rothman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 20. For an analysis of the ancient Greek prison, see Virginia Hunter, “The Prison of Athens: A Comparative Perspective,” Phoenix 51 (1997): 296 – 326.

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ing per se.⁶ Rather, I focus on the experience of the prison: What may we reasonably expect an early Christian to know about daily life in prison and how might that have affected the stories they told of their religious heroes? Above all, I am interested in applying Foucault’s concept of heterotopia to the prison as a means of explaining how a prison could come to be experienced as a palace.⁷

The Roman Prison Before turning to ways authors of Christian martyr texts employ the prison to new ends—prison as “space”—we must examine common expectations of the experience of those imprisoned—prison as “place.”⁸ Following Justinian, scholars widely agree that prisons were used as short-term holding cells for those accused of crimes. In his Digest, Justinian writes: “Prison indeed ought to be used for detaining [continendos] men not for punishing [puniendos] them” (48.19.8).⁹ Immediately preceding this assertion, though, Justinian denounces governors who are “accustomed to condemning men to be detained in prison or confined by chains.” His point is that the common practice of long-term incarceration is a misuse of the prison. Incarceration should not, itself, be a means of judicial punishment. But our evidence demonstrates that such was often the case: there are numerous reports of individuals dying of hunger, thirst, and disease in prison— all means of death that do not tend to occur in a matter of mere days. The narrator of the Passion of Lucius and Montanus, for example, reports that the Christians spent “very many months” (plurimos menses) in prison (12.2), and the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas reports that two of the martyrs from Carthage died in prison (11.9; 14.3). The possibility of long-term incarceration matters, as Craig Wansink has noted, because when we imagine Roman prisons as temporary places of confinement, we all too easily assume that imprisonment in the ancient

 For a useful analysis of the psychological impact of Roman trials on Christians, see Brent Shaw, “Judicial Nightmares and Christian Memory,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 11 (2003): 533 – 563.  On Foucault and heterotopia, see discussion below.  Space and place are variously defined, of course. In this essay, I use “place” to refer to a specific geographical or architectural location. As opposed to “place,” “space” is rhetorically and socially constructed. It is in spaces that meaning is made.  All translations are my own. In the case of the martyr texts, however, it is fair to note that imprisonment was—at least from a literary point of view, if not a historical one—utilized as a means of coercing a Christian’s denial of Christ. See discussion of coercive strategies in prison in Brian Rapske, The Book of Acts In Its First Century Setting: The Book of Acts and Paul in Roman Custody, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 14– 16.

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world, while certainly not enjoyable, was not wholly intolerable.¹⁰ Importantly, though, our sources do not indicate that the experience of prison during a short stay was thought to be qualitatively better than that of a long stay. By all accounts, the Roman prison was, simply put, horrendous.¹¹ O. F. Robinson argues that Roman prisons were “deliberately” constructed as places of terror, “designed to strip the prisoner of all dignity.”¹² Ancient authors, in fact, indicate that suicide was often preferable to incarceration.¹³ Sallust describes prison as a “dark place with sadness and distress,” which extends “a life more severe than death” (Iug. 14.15). The Theodosian Code refers to the prison as “savage” (9.38.6) and explains that it was reserved for those individuals worthy of “squalid” custody (9.3.2; cf. Cyprian, Ep. 25.8). Tertullian calls the prison the “house of the devil” (Ad martyras, 1).¹⁴ In the Christian imagination, as reflected in and fueled by its literary production, the prison was a frightening place where Christian faith could be severely challenged. Sources that address the experience of incarceration enumerate specific aspects of prison that made it such a harrowing place. Perhaps the first thing that would come to an ancient Christian’s mind when contemplating prison were the chains with which those incarcerated were secured. Varro reveals the most basic function of the prison when he explains that the word carcer (“prison”) comes from the word coercere (“to restrain”) because those who are imprisoned are “restrained from going out” (Ling. 5.151). Prisoners were likely kept in their chains day and night. On occasion, they might be subject to even harsher forms of restraint, such as the stocks or the rack. Livy reports that, in one case, those kept in a public prison in Rome were restrained by ten (or more) pounds of chains (32.26.18). Chains did not merely limit one’s movement, however; they were also a form of physical torture. Plutarch describes the “inflammations around wounds,” “the brutal spreading of ulcers in the flesh,” and the “excessive pains” caused by a prisoner’s chains (Mor. 165E). Indeed, the physical damage inflicted by the use of chains was apparently so well known—perhaps even widely practiced—that

 Craig Wansink, Chained in Christ: The Experience and Rhetoric of Paul’s Imprisonments, JSNTSupplement Series (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 30.  Wansink offers useful parallels between descriptions of Roman prisons and descriptions of Hades, as given by Lucian in his treatise de luctu. See Chained in Christ, 34– 35.  Robinson, Penal Practice, 113.  Rapske, Custody, 196 – 223; Wansink, Chained in Christ, 33 – 38, 47– 48, 58 – 61. See especially Lucian, Toxaris 29 – 30; Diodorus Siculus 31.9.2– 5; Thucydides 7.87.1– 3; and Libanius, Or 33.41.  Interestingly, in the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas, Perpetua’s father himself plays the role of the devil in his interactions with her (3.3).

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an edict from the time of Constantine, preserved in the Theodosian Code, addresses it: “The man who has been handed over shall not be put in manacles made of iron that cleave to the bones, but in larger shackles, so that torture is absent and yet trustworthy custody persists” (9.3). North African authors also correlate imprisonment with being chained. Tertullian uses the term nervus to describe the painful restraints used on prisoners’ legs (Ad Mart. 2). Perpetua reports that she received her second vision of Dinocrates on the “day on which we were kept in fetters” (nervo; Pass. Perp. 8.1). Giving thanks for the challenges he experienced in prison, Flavianus offered this reminder to his mother: “I always longed, if I came to confess, to delight in my martyrdom, to be seen chained [catenatus] frequently, and to be deferred often” (Pass. Mont. 16.6). Cyprian, too, praises those whose deaths were delayed by imprisonment in “disgraceful chains” (infamibus; Ep. 77.2).¹⁵ Such individuals exhibit, he asserts, “by the delay of their punishments, powerful examples for the strengthening and arming of the brothers” (Ep. 77.1).¹⁶ Similarly, he praised the faithfulness of the confessor Celerinus by noting that for nineteen days he had been “held up in prison,” “was hindered by fetters and iron,” (in nervo ac ferro) and “his body was fixed in chains” (Ep. 34.2).¹⁷ In a letter to the bishop, a group of confessors is described as being “confined by the prison’s chains” (vinculis; Ep. 26.1).¹⁸ Being chained was so customary that Cyprian includes it as part and parcel of martyrdom: when “desire and the confession of the name in prison and in chains” (vinculis) is added to death, the “glory of the martyr is perfected” (Ep. 37.1).¹⁹ In addition to their function as restraints, chains brought humiliation and shame to those incarcerated because those imprisoned were assumed to be guilty.²⁰ The physical limitations imposed in prison, moreover, compromised the exercise of a person’s autonomy, a critical value of Roman self-identity.²¹ On the one hand, as I discuss further below, those in prison were at the mercy of others for their basic physical needs.²² On the other hand, imprisonment and, especial-

 PL 4.0416 A.  PL 4.0415 A.  PL 4.0322 A.  PL 4.0290B.  PL 4.0328B.  See discussion in Rapske, Custody, 288  See discussion in Matthew L. Skinner, “Remember My Chains: New Testament Perspectives on Incarceration,” Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 72 (2018): 273.  Libanius reports that the prison rations are “below their needs” and must be supplemented by the women in the family. This situation is, he continues, “more bitter the chains” (Or. 45.9).

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ly, being chained recalled the plight of slaves. It was not only the person imprisoned, however, who might experience shame. The families and friends of those incarcerated might also be shamed or ostracized by society. In the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas, Perpetua’s father voices his concerns about the impact of Perpetua’s actions on her family. When he comes to her hearing, he begs her not to “destroy us all.” For, he continues, if she is punished, none of her family “will be able to speak openly” (5.5). Subsequent retellings of the Passio further underscore the shame Perpetua’s imprisonment brings to her family. In Acta A, Perpetua’s father asserts that Perpetua has “dishonored” (dehonestasti) her family, “for never has anyone from our family been sent off to prison” (2.1; cf. Acta B 2.1). The architecture of Roman prisons also contributed to their terrible reputation. Men and women were not necessarily separated from one another, which raised the risks of sexual assault against women in prison. The Theodosian Code preserves an edict from Constantine that men and women must be imprisoned in separate areas (9.3.3). That the separation of the sexes was mandated by Constantine indicates that it was not uncommon for men and women to be incarcerated together.²³ By far, the worst area of the prison was the subterranean cell—often called the “dungeon” or, following the terminology of the Mamertime prison in Rome, the Tullianum. Augustine attests that only in the most serious of cases, were individuals “crowded together in the deepest parts of the prison” (Tractates on John 49.9). This area had little or no light, and the darkness was oppressive. In fact, darkness is one of the most commonly mentioned characteristics of ancient prisons. Perpetua writes, “I was very much afraid because I had never known darkness of this kind” (3.5). The Passion of Marian and James suggests that Romans intentionally sought out the worst possible places for these dungeons. The author writes: “you seek for your tortures a remote, secret place—the burdensome terror of a gloomy cave, the home of darkness” (6.3). The Passion of Lucius and Montanus, likewise, comments on the “horrible darkness of the place,” which had “dark stairs” and a “disgusting darkness” (4.2). Indeed, life in prison was indescribably awful as the author of the Passion of Lucius and Montanus reports: “What sort of days we passed there, what kind of nights passed, no ordinary speech can explain” (4.3). An edict in the Theodosian Code dating to 367 CE reveals an effort at alleviating the punishment of darkness—at least for one day a

 contra Thomas J. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 163.

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year. It required that on Easter the “savage prison” be opened up to “the unaccustomed light” (pateat insuetis horridus carcer aliquando luminibus; 9.38.6). Roman prisons were dangerously over-crowded.²⁴ Libanius complains that while the law provides for execution by beheading, it does not allow for individuals to die in prison from suffocation (Or. 33.42; cf. Or. 45.11). The consequences of such close confinement, he observes, are that those imprisoned are twice punished: once by the incarceration itself, and second by the conditions of the prison. Sleep was a rare luxury because there was no room to lie down (Or. 45.8). Any movement within the prison could result in prisoners trampling one another to death (Or. 45.31). The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas also records the terrible conditions of prison due to the crowds. Perpetua writes, “O cruel day! It was exceedingly hot because of the crowd” (3.6). Similarly, Tertullian describes prisons as stifling because of the numbers of Roman criminals in them: “It is with your own people that the prisons are always burning hot” (Apol. 44.3). The crowded conditions, naturally, led to unsanitary conditions. Ross Poldark, of the eponymous BBC TV series, described the conditions of a late eighteenth-century prison in this way: “Have you ever been in a jail, sir? It’s surprising the stench thirty or forty of God’s creatures can give off when confined to a squalid pit without drains, water, physicians’ care.” Poldark could just as easily have been referring to the conditions of Roman prisons; their filth and stench— along with ill health that followed as a result—were well-known to Romans. Prisons were “foul” places that caused those incarcerated to be “mournful” (Pass. Marian 6.3). According to Sallust, “neglect, darkness, and foul odors” made the Tullianum “a frightful” place (Cat. 55.4). Diodorus Siculus, describing the close confines of the subterranean cell—which was no bigger than a ninecouch dining room—reports that the bodies of those imprisoned were like “wild animals” because “their food and all things connected to their other needs was mutually befouled”; it produced “a foul smell” that “no one present was able to endure” (31.9.2). Similarly, the Passion of Lucius and Montanus insists that Flavianus was “undeserving of the filth [sordibus] of the prison” (17.1). By comparison, some areas of the prison were comfortable. Individuals typically enjoyed these areas by bribing the prison guards. According to the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas, the deacons Tertius and Pomponius “arranged for a price that we be released for a few hours to a better part of the prison in order to revive” (3.7– 8). Through certain “contributions” to the guards’ wages, prisoners could have temporary access to rooms above ground or in the outer areas of the prison that allowed in light and fresh air. Prisoners might even be

 Libanius reports that the “prison is full of bodies” (Or. 45.8).

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released from their chains for a time. Visitors could also bribe guards to allow them to see friends and family members and to provide them with food, drink, and clothing. The Apostolic Constitutions mandates that such bribes be paid to guards on behalf of fellow-Christians.²⁵ Friends and family who visited offered critical sustenance—both physical and emotional—to those imprisoned. The author of the Passion of Lucius and Montanus reports that the bishop Lucianus, along with a subdeacon and a catechumen, “shattered the severity” of the guards and, thus, they were able to serve the imprisoned Christians “that food that does not fail” (9.2). In this way, the bishop supported the confessors in both their “sickness and distress,” calling “back from infirmity those who were already falling ill from that same distress, that is, the injury from the rations and the cold” (Lucius 9.3). The same account asserts that the visits by fellowChristians were “the solace and joy [solatio et laetitia] of the day,” which “mitigated all the hardship [labor] of the night” (4.7).²⁶ Unsurprisingly, the conditions of prisons meant that many people suffered from hunger, thirst, and the effects of inadequate access to the baths. We saw above that the meagre rations given to the confessors in the Passion of Lucius and Montanus had to be supplemented by the bishop; prison rations alone could not sustain life. This text is particularly focused on the deprivations of prison. The author notes that the daily ration was “not of nutriment but of scarcity and need” (9.1). Indeed, such deprivation was the work of the devil who “endeavored to attack” the Christians “with hunger and thirst” (6.5). Because of this, many of the Christians were “ill and in distress because of the rations and cold water” (6.5). Those Christians who were imprisoned for many months “had borne the punishments of prison and the distress of hunger and thirst” before they were finally allowed to perfect their confession in the arena (12.2). The narrator tells us that “while the others were receiving the little bits of food that was procured from the filth [sordibus] of the prison allowance,” Flavianus fasted in order to share his rations with others (21.12).²⁷ In the Passion of Perpetua and  Rapske, Custody, 261. See discussion of Apostolic Constitutions 5.1– 2 and Didascalia 19 in Rhee, Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich: Wealth, Poverty, and Early Christian Formation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2012).  Not all visitors, though, came to support those in prison: Perpetua writes, I “gave thanks to the Lord because I did not see my father for a few days, and I was refreshed (refrigeraui) by in his absence” (3.4). The second time her father visits her in prison also caused Perpetua pain (5). See L. Stephanie Cobb, Divine Deliverance: Pain and Painlessness in Early Christian Martyr Texts (Oakland: University of California Press, 2017).  Since the narrator calls Flavianus’s act “unparalleled,” we are clearly to admire his discipline. That he refrained from eating filth in order to offer more to others may, indeed, be unparalleled—though one wonders how generous such an act really is.

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Felicitas, Perpetua confronted the tribune who had “punished them cruelly,” denouncing him for withholding food from the Christians. She reminded him that, as ones who “belong to Caesar,” it was better that Christians be led into the arena “fattened” (pinguiores; 16.2– 3). Physical deprivations of various sorts were commonplace, though an entry in the Theodosian Code indicates that it was illegal: Prisoners were to be questioned once a week about the conditions of incarceration “lest the humanity of the ones confined be refused by corrupt prison guards.” Prisoners were entitled to—even if they rarely received—food and safe passage to the baths (9.3.7). The prison was not only a place of suffering due to deprivation—of light, of food, of water, of clothing and hygiene—but also a place where prison guards tortured those incarcerated. Indeed, Libanius calls the prison guards “murderers” (φονέας; Or. 45.12). Apparently, guards could be bribed to torture one’s enemy. Thus, the Theodosian Code reads: “neither those who execute the duties of prison guards nor their subordinates are allowed to sell their cruelty to the accusers” (9.3.1). The confessors whose story is told in the Passion of Lucius and Montanus report that “the prison’s tortures [tormenta] cannot be grasped by any declaration” (4.3). Flavianus had endured “the punishments [poenis] of the prison” without being deterred from his faith. Thus, when he was returned to prison, the Lord “did not allow the body of the already proven martyr to be struck by even the mildest blow of torture at all” (Pass. Lucius 20.6). Perpetua writes about the soldiers “terrifying us with threats” (3.6). In the Acta Brevia Perpetuae et Felicitatis, the martyrs are whipped and slapped in prison (A7.1; B.7.1). Ancient attestations concerning the terrible conditions of the Roman prison could easily be multiplied. Authors from across the empire and throughout the Imperial period repeat the same descriptions of the experience of those incarcerated. The squalid conditions, deprivations of physical and psychological needs, restraints, and torture are universally attested and, surely, universally known. Just as we can expect any inhabitant of the empire to have had some familiarity with the amphitheatrical shows, so also, we can be sure that the terror of the prison loomed large in the communal psyche. The North African martyr texts describe the conditions of the prison; as the martyrs whose story is told in the Passion of Lucius and Montanus insist, “we are not afraid to speak the truth about the horribleness of the place as it really is” (4.3). The authors of these texts do not hesitate to detail the ways prison might terrorize a person. I propose this is the case because, in doing so, they are not introducing new information to their audiences. The texts, that is, are merely confirming the facts of prison life as inhabitants of North Africa already knew them. But, at the same time, these North African authors offer a variety of ways of reassigning the meaning of this place, making the prison into a heterotopic space.

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The Roman Prison as Heterotopia In a 1967 lecture “Des Espace Autres,” Michel Foucault sketched in broad strokes the concept of the “heterotopia” as a place that is real—a part of the landscape around us—but also wholly unreal.²⁸ Heterotopias are “counter-sites” that can shift a mundane place into a utopian space. As Patrick Schreiner explains, heterotopias “are spaces of otherness, imaginary places outside all places, in which new modes of sociality are imagined and practiced.”²⁹ In such spaces, people make new meaning of existing places, even if—on the surface—the claims of the space and place are incompatible. Heterotopias are, in other words, equally physical and mental spaces, and they are steeped in contestations of power. In the remainder of this essay, I wish to explore early Christian martyr texts’ construction of prison as a heterotopia. The authors of these texts place the prison at the center of their larger rhetorical strategies concerning autonomy and power. Like the amphitheater, the prison is constructed as a sacred site for Christians even as it retains its horror. The prison, in other words, remains a place of power in martyr accounts, but the provenance and performance of that power is radically reimagined. Christian authors took the ancient prison and—without glossing over its terrors—created out of it a new space, one that offered their audiences a space “in which to think things differently.” While the prison appears to be a place of terror, darkness, stench, and torture;³⁰ in the hands of Christian authors, a very different space is revealed. The Christian heterotopic prison is uncharacteristically filled with light and joy, it is a site of nourishment and revelation. In this Christian space, confessors are comforted and prepared for martyrdom. The narrative potential of the prison for Christian authors was vast, and they capitalized on it in myriad ways. Two approaches—one particular to Tertullian and the other utilized primarily, though not exclusively, by the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas—

 Michel Foucault, “Des Espace Autres,” trans. Jay Miskowiec, “‘Des Espaces Autres’ (Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias),” Diacritics 16 (1986): 22– 27.  Patrick Schreiner, “Space, Place and Biblical Studies: A Survey of Recent Research in Light of Developing Trends,” Currents in Biblical Research 14 (2016): 345.  Mariangela Palladino and John Miller, “Introduction,” in The Globalization of Space: Foucault and Heterotopia, ed. Mariangela Palladino and John Miller (London: Routledge, 2016), 3. Palladino and Miller acknowledge the allusiveness of Foucault’s work on heterotopias—it raises more questions than it answers and seems almost teasingly unsystematic—while insisting that we can, nonetheless, “use the idea of heterotopia to explore specific spatial configurations, tracing flows of power, patterns of resistance, suspensions of normative order, and, indeed, the reemergence of normative order” (5).

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stand out as exemplary of the ways Foucault’s notion of the heterotopia can help us appreciate better the narrative possibilities of the Roman prison for the Christian imagination. In the Christian martyr texts, the prison as heterotopia is not mere delusion; it is a concrete place/space in the Roman world in which power is contested.³¹ Placing the confessors within the prison allows the authors to challenge the meanings that the place brought to mind for inhabitants of the empire. In his analysis of imprisonment in the Acts of the Apostles, Skinner observes that “in any setting incarceration is an element of discourse about power.”³² As the amphitheater demonstrated Rome’s power over life and death, so prisons demonstrated Rome’s ability to control and restrain individuals and activities. But this power is contested in the late second-century address that Tertullian offers imprisoned Christians in ad Martyras. Early on in his encouragement, Tertullian explains to his audience that having defeated Satan in the world, they now have the opportunity to defeat him in his own house (1). Far from seeing the prison as a place where apostasy is coerced, those imprisoned should see it as a place to participate in God’s victory over the powers of evil. Quickly, though, Tertullian shifts gears and begins to describe the prison not as the house of the devil but a place of calm respite from the difficulties of the world. Wholly inverting the expected relationship of the prison to the world, Tertullian exclaims that we should no longer use the word “prison” but, rather, call it a “retirement” (2). In reality, he explains, it is the world that is the prison. Thus, the confessors exited from a prison rather than entered into one (2). In his address, Tertullian describes common expectations of prison life, but he assigns them to the world at large, instead. The outside world is darker than any prison, and its shackles bind human souls not just their legs. Human lusts are fouler than any prison air, and the world—more than any prison—is packed tightly with criminals who will be judged not by the proconsul but by God. In light of this, he urges the confessors to see that they have been “transferred from a prison to, perchance, a watchtower.” Tertullian’s rhetoric is startling and audacious: he takes the most terrorizing aspects of imprisonment and makes them pale in comparison to everyday life. He goes so far as to claim that prison is not only spiritually but physically preferable to life in the world. The church, for example, brings physical nourishment to those imprisoned, so they do not lack food. But they also gain reprieve from being accosted daily with the idolatry of the Romans  The relationship of space and power is also an important aspect of Foucault’s work. See, for example, “The Eye of Power,” in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 146 – 165.  Skinner, “Remember My Chains,” 276.

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—either in image or holy days (2). The prison, Tertullian concludes, is akin to the wilderness enjoyed by the Prophets of old. It is a place of respite, of spiritual renewal, and of communion with God. In yet another subtle shift, Tertullian again acknowledges the characteristics of prison, but insists that it is the imprisoned Christians themselves who ameliorate those conditions. The prison, he insists, “has darkness, but you yourselves are light. It has fetters, but you have been unfettered by God. It emits a foul smell, but you are a perfumed scent” (2). People of faith, it seems, may be incarcerated, but their faith itself holds the antidote to the horrors with which they are confronted. As the author of the Passion of Marian and James put it, “for those who trust in God, no place is perceived as foul, no time sorrowful” (6.3). As if offering a buffet of interpretations from which the imprisoned Christians may choose, Tertullian introduces yet another extended metaphor: prison is like the wrestling school. The best athletes are trained through adversity: they confront the physical and mental challenges presented to them and conquer them. This is also the way virtue is built, Tertullian explains. In prison, Christians exercise their virtues, strengthening their resolve so as to be prepared for the judgment. They are trained by the Holy Spirit for the fight that is to be overseen by God. Christ has chosen them for “a harsher treatment” to hone their strength for the contest (3). This short exhortation is rich in imagery and interpretative interchanges. But what is constant in Tertullian’s address is his rejection of common understandings of prison as a place of despair. In this address, the prison is the devil’s home (which Christians entered to plunder), a refreshing wilderness, and a wrestling school. Though incompatible with one another on the surface, these juxtaposed spaces nevertheless work together to contest the power Rome’s prisons have over Christians and to offer those imprisoned—and other Christians who may hear Tertullian’s letter—new ways of interpreting their circumstances and experiences. Another tool used by Christians to create a heterotopia of the prison is the repeated insistence that the prison is a place of refrigerium. At its root, the Latin verb refrigerare simply means “to make cool”—or, more broadly, “to refresh”—by means of water or shade.³³ By extension, the term came to refer to the practice of funerary banquets during which celebrants called to mind—“refreshed” or “revived”—the memories of deceased loved ones. Christians also held such banquets, not only for family members, but also at martyria. In Chris The standard studies of refrigerare/refrigerium remain those of Christine Mohrmann, “Locus Refrigerii, Lucis et Pacis,” Questions liturgiques et paroissiales 39 (1958): 196 – 214 and Christine Mohrmann, “Locus Refrigerii,” in L’ordinaire de la Messe: Texte critique, traduction et études, ed. B. Botte and C. Mohrmann (Paris: Louvain, 1899), 123 – 132.

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tian use, the term also came to denote the eternal happiness promised by God to the faithful.³⁴ It referred to a state of being rather than a place—it is not heaven itself but the feelings experienced in heaven. Tertullian argues that martyrs (alone) proceed to heaven while the souls of other righteous individuals reside in an “interim refreshment” (refrigerium interim) until the judgment (ad Marcionem 4.34). Such is the meaning of the term in several episodes of the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas. This may be the intended meaning of Perpetua’s second vision of her deceased brother Dinocrates.³⁵ Whereas she had previously seen him in a dark place where he was hot and thirsty, with water just beyond his reach (7.4– 8), she found him now “with a clean body, well-clothed, and refreshed [refrigerantem]” (8.1). His disfiguring cancer was now only a scar, and he drank freely from the fountain. Perpetua’s prayers, we are to understand, have changed Dinocrates’s circumstances: he had toiled but now he plays. Because of Perpetua’s intercession, Dinocrates enjoys heavenly happiness. The enjoyment of paradise is clearly invoked in Saturus’s vision. Having come upon two quarreling clerics, Saturus and Perpetua attempt to resolve the disagreement. The angels who were escorting the martyrs intervened and spoke directly to the men: “Let them rest [refrigerent]” (13.5). Since the martyrs were in heaven—having already visited the throne room—the angels’ command must be understood as their insistence that the martyrs be allowed to experience the joy of heaven they have earned. In other places in the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas, however, refrigerium has earthly, physical connotations. Refreshment is perhaps the last thing one would expect to find in a Roman prison, but it is precisely this that characterizes Perpetua’s experience. Bremmer argues that “refreshment” in the Passio is a state reached in and through community. The presence of visiting Christians at the prison, for example offers refreshment to the confessors (9.1).³⁶ In addition,

 Mohrmann notes that the substantive refrigerium is very rare in Classical Latin but was popularized by Christian authors who employed it to describe heavenly joy. These funerary meals held at martyria were especially popular, it seems, in North Africa.  LeGoff suggests that we should understand Dinocrates’s “refreshment” as referring to his entrance into paradise; Bremmer argues—against Le Goff—that the term means only “healing.” See Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 50 – 51; Jan N. Bremmer, The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife: The 1995 Read-Tuckwell Lectures at the University of Bristol (London: Routledge, 2002), 63.  In this way, we might see overlap in the narrative use of the prison in the Passio and the Apocryphal Acts. Perkins notes that the prison in the Acts is “redefined as a space of instruction and community building” (“Social Geography,” 125). Though the precise meaning of “community” differs in these texts. That is, as Perkins demonstrates, the Acts focus on the presence of elites in the prison and thus the interest in making the prison a space of community subverts

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Passio 16.3 – 4 records an interesting exchange between Perpetua and the tribune. He had been treating the Christians particularly severely, and Perpetua challenged his actions: “Why do you not permit us to refresh [refrigerare] ourselves, as we are the most renowned of the condemned belonging to Caesar and will fight on his birthday?” In response, the tribune recognized the truth of Perpetua’s argument—that they should be presented as appropriate sacrifices to Caesar—and, thus, allowed visitors to the prison so that they could be refreshed (refrigerandi) with the confessors. Similarly, in the Passion of Lucius and Montanus, the imprisoned Christians find refreshment (refrigerauimus) from their brothers’ visits (4.7), and the bishop Lucianus is described as being a “refreshment” (refrigerium) to the confessors’ labors (9.2). Several imprisoned Christians also describe Cyprian’s letter to them as having “refreshed their suffering breasts” (77.3). Not all moments of refreshment are communal, however. After a heated exchange with her father, in which she rejected his pleas to denounce her faith, Perpetua was “refreshed” (refrigeraui) by her father’s absence. Perpetua does not indicate that she is refreshed by being with others; rather, she is clear that it is absence that brings her peace. Shortly thereafter, the deacons Tertius and Pomponius were able to arrange, through bribes, for the confessors to have a few hours in a better part of the prison so that they might find “refreshment” (3.7). Immediately before this, Perpetua describes the crowds and stifling heat of the prison. Thus, we might interpret refrigeraremus here quite literally: the deacons arranged for the confessors to “cool off.” Similarly, the Greek translation reads ἀναπνοῆς: the imprisoned Christians were allowed some time for the “recovery of breath.” That Christian martyr narratives should mention finding refreshment in prison is startling. Prisons were—as we have seen—dark, hot, crowded, miserable places. The subterranean cells were without fresh air, sunlight, and silence. The Roman prison was about as far from a place of joy, rest, and peace that one could find in the ancient world. And yet, it is this, refrigerium, that the martyr texts claim for imprisoned Christians. It is especially striking that the relatively brief Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas employs this term seven times. Repeatedly, this text insists that the eternal joy promised to the faithful is found in the most unlikely of places. In turning the prison into a place of respite, Christians claimed the space as something other than what it was. For these texts, the prisconvention. In the Acts the prison serves as a means of demonstrating Christian “intent to ‘break out’ of the order of things” (“Social Geography,” 125). The resistance in the Acts, according to Perkins, centers on honestiores and humiliores; the resistance in the Passio perhaps more cosmic by subverting claims to authority and resisting Roman claims over physical bodies.

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on allowed heavenly joy to break into the earthly world; confessors could participate in their heavenly rewards proleptically in the Christianized space of the Roman prison. The ways Christian authors made the prison into a heterotopia could be multiplied many times over. Contrary to Roman expectation, for instance, the heterotopic prison is a place for the just and victorious.³⁷ In that space, chains signaled not humiliation and shame but glory.³⁸ Prison is like heaven, and Christians experience it not as suffering but as resurrection.³⁹ Prison is not a place of spiritual desolation, but a space where confessors are especially close to God and receive divine revelations.⁴⁰ These visions often recall the terrible conditions of the prison, but they also promise the imminent alleviation of those hardships.

Conclusion In 2001 Tom Waits released his album Orphans, which included the single “World Keeps Turning.” In this song, Waits pushes and pulls us between past and present, between beginnings and endings, and between endings and new beginnings. Through all of this, the world keeps turning. But the world is not the only thing that is always turning. Given all of the “turns” we make in scholarship, it’s a wonder we aren’t all dizzy, as Mel Brooks once quipped.⁴¹ As scholars, we have participated in the “linguistic turn,” the “ritual turn,” and the “cultural turn,” the “narrative turn,” the “postcolonial turn,” and the “ethical turn.” We are now in the midst of the “spatial turn.” On the one hand, the dizzying number of approaches can begin to feel like the theory du jour. On the other hand, however, each has broadened our perspectives and opened new space for inquiry. Theories of critical spatiality bring to our awareness that space is not an objective reality but—like the amphitheater and the prison in Christian martyr narratives—spaces are always constructed through social practices and

 See, for example, Marian and James 5.10; 9.5; Lucius and Montanus, 6.4  Lucius and Montanus 6.2– 3  See, for example, Lucius and Montanus 4.2; 17.4  For example, see Lucius and Montanus 5.1; 7; 8; 21; Passion of Perpetua 3.5; 4; 7; 8; 10; 11– 13.  In “The Two Thousand Year Old Man,” Brooks observes: “As long as the world is turning and spinning, we’re gonna be dizzy and we’re gonna make mistakes.”

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discourses.⁴² In Christian martyr stories, the prison is narratively created as an unexpected space for the contestation of power. What had stood as a witness to Rome’s authority is now firmly under God’s control. What the authorities expected to accomplish by imprisoning Christians is repeatedly subverted by God’s active role in the drama. By centering their narratives in the prison, and by recalling the existential terror of that place, the martyr narratives simultaneously engage and subvert Rome’s goals for prison. Brent Shaw asserts that Romans “consciously intended” judicial punishments to be public and terrifying in order to serve as deterrents.⁴³ But, contrary to this intention, in the martyr texts, imprisoned Christians were exemplars of faith, not deterrents to it.⁴⁴ Marian and James wanted their account told “so that the multitude of common folk and the people of God might be equipped for the example (exemplum) of faith by the experiences of those who preceded them” (1.3). Marian’s prediction of plagues in revenge for the execution of Christians “prophesied like a trumpet call to the brothers to emulate his virtue” (12.8). In Christian tradition, prison is not only a place where those incarcerated can help strengthen the faith of other Christians; it is also a place where non-Christians are converted.⁴⁵ Christian martyr texts face head on the terror of the Roman prison but promise Christians that, should they find themselves in that place, their faith will make it into something very different. For Christians, the prison can become, as it did for Perpetua, a palace, a space preferred over any other.⁴⁶

Bibliography Bremmer, Jan N. The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife: The 1995 Read-Tuckwell Lectures at the University of Bristol. London: Routledge, 2002. Camp, Claudia. “Storied Space, Or, Ben Sira ‘Tells’ a Temple.” In ‘Imagining’ Biblical Worlds: Studies in Spatial, Social and Historical Constructs in Honour of James W. Flanagan. David M. Gunn and Paula McNutt (eds.), 64 – 80. London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002.

 Claudia Camp, “Storied Space, Or, Ben Sira ‘Tells’ a Temple,” in Imagining’ Biblical Worlds: Studies in Spatial, Social and Historical Constructs in Honour of James W. Flanagan, ed. David M. Gunn and Paula McNutt (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 64.  Shaw, “Judicial Nightmares,” 535.  Here again, the narrative deployment of the prison as a place of instruction suggests overlap with the Apocryphal Acts.  Passion of Perpetua 9.1; 16.2.  Passion of Perpetua 3.9.

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Cobb, L. Stephanie. Divine Deliverance: Pain and Painlessness in Early Christian Martyr Texts. Oakland: University of California Press, 2017. Cobb, L. Stephanie. Dying to Be Men: Gender and Language in Early Christian Martyr Texts. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Foucault, Michel. “Des Espace Autres,” trans. Jay Miskowiec, “‘Des Espaces Autres’ (Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias).” Diacritics 16 (1986): 22 – 27. Gordon, Colin ed. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980. Heffernan, Thomas J. The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Hunter, Virginia. “The Prison of Athens: A Comparative Perspective.” Phoenix 51 (1997): 296 – 326. Le Goff, Jacques. The Birth of Purgatory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Maier, Harry O. “Early Christian Martyrology, Imperial Thirdspace and Mimicry: Taking the Spatial Turn to the Arena.” In Spacetime of the Imperial, edited by Susanne Rau, 354 – 384. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016. Mohrmann, Christine. “Locus Refrigerii, Lucis et Pacis.” Questions liturgiques et paroissiales 39 (1958): 196 – 214. Mohrmann, Christine. “Locus Refrigerii.” In L’ordinaire de la Messe: Texte critique, traduction et études, edited by B. Botte and C. Mohrmann, 123 – 132. Paris: Louvain, 1953. Palladino, Mariangela and John Miller. The Globalization of Space: Foucault and Heterotopia, ed. Mariangela Palladino and John Miller. London: Routledge, 2016. Perkins, Judith. “Social Geography in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles.” In Space in the Ancient Novel, edited by Michael Paschalis and Stavros Frangoulidis, 118 – 131. Groningen: Barkhuis Publishing & The University Library Groningen, 2002. Perkins, Judith. “Space, Place, Voice in the Acts of the Martyrs.” In Mimesis and Intertextuality in Antiquity and Christianity, edited by Dennis R. MacDonald, 117 – 137. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2001. Peters, Edward. “Prison Before the Prison: The Ancient and Medieval Worlds.” In The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society, edited by Norval Morris and David J. Rothman, 3 – 43. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Rapske, Brian. The Book of Acts In Its First Century Setting. Vol. 3. The Book of Acts and Paul in Roman Custody. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994. Rhee, Helen. Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich: Wealth, Poverty, and Early Christian Formation. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2012. Robinson, O. F. Penal Practice and Penal Policy in Ancient Rome. London: Routledge, 2007. Schreiner, Patrick. “Space, Place and Biblical Studies: A Survey of Recent Research in Light of Developing Trends.” Currents in Biblical Research 14 (2016): 340 – 371. Shaw, Brent. “Judicial Nightmares and Christian Memory.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 11 (2003): 533 – 563. Skinner, Matthew L. “Remember My Chains: New Testament Perspectives on Incarceration.” Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 72 (2018): 269 – 281. Wansink, Craig. Chained in Christ: The Experience and Rhetoric of Paul’s Imprisonments. JSNTSupplement Series. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996.

Nicole Hartmann

Bones Ground by Wild Beast’s Teeth. Late Ancient Imaginations of the Death of Ignatius of Antioch Abstract: This paper investigates imaginaries of the martyrdom of Ignatius of Antioch in various texts from late antiquity. It focuses especially on his figuration as martyr in the two traditions of martyr acts that were produced independently between the end of the fourth and the end of the sixth centuries in different places, the so called Roman and Antiochene Acts. It asks about the martyrological characterisation of the figure Ignatius in these texts and how earlier traditions are appropriated and transformed – or ignored. Remarkably, both traditions accumulate dates and time markers and wrap the story with a web of facts in order to sustain their claim to be eye-witness accounts from a remote past. It seems that the author/s and/or later editors wanted to present a thick description from a perspective close to the events and at the same time contextualized for later generations. ’Twas quickly o’er. Two hungry lions Kept for him were let loose with a loud shout, […] He always wish’d there might, if possible Be no remains of his, which we survivors Might stoop to gather, or regard as martyrs. […] he has his grave Compleatly in the beasts […]/ The last I saw of him: for while he stood As one that would have strok’d the grisly brutes, They seiz’d upon him, and devour’d him up.¹

These verses from a 18th century imagination of the last moments of Ignatius of Antioch are the culmination point of a tragedy in five acts. It was written by John Gambold, a bishop of the Moravian Church in London. He exploited various notices on this prominent figure from the early Christian past and combined and retold them with quite an artistic pretension. In his piece emperor Trajan discuss-

 John Gambold, The martyrdom of Ignatius: A tragedy. Written in the year 1740, by the late John Gambold, M. A. At that time Minister of Stanton-Harcourt, Oxfordshire. To which are annexed, the life of Ignatius, drawn from authentic accounts, and from the epistles written by him from Smyrna and Troas, in his way to Rome. Also that of Polycarp (Dublin, 1782), 105. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110682632-008

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es with Ignatius in Antioch² and finally orders him for execution; two of his friends that are known from the Ignatian letters, Agathopus and Philo, accompany him to Smyrna, where they meet Polycarp, and eventually to Rome; they narrate the events and outbid each other in praising Ignatius; two philosophers even reflect about his defiance of death; and a diaconess is introduced, Dirce, whose execution in Antioch is reported too and praised by Ignatius shortly before his own martyrdom. This dramatic adaptation is but one example in a long list of rewritings and imaginations of the martyrdom of Ignatius, remembered in a number of different genres: letters, martyr acts, homilies, translated in various ancient languages, recombined and summarized in menologia and church calendars, scholastic editions and scholarly commentaries with a multitude of motivations and purposes. As one of the most studied figures of early Christian history beside Paul it is a still underrepresented question who remembers this letter writer, when, in what way, and what role is attached to his name. There are a number of different ways the church has remembered Ignatius: a bishop that is trying to unite all Christ believers as one community; a propagator of church hierarchy, represented by bishops, presbyters and deacons; a protagonist of the proto-orthodox church who argued against ioudaismos and diverse heresies; a contemporary of the last apostles, namely John, or Peter; or: a martyr.³ In this paper I want to follow the traces of the imagined martyrdom of Ignatius of Antioch in late antiquity. I will especially investigate his figuration as martyr in the two martyr acts that were produced independently between the end of the fourth and the end of the sixth centuries in different places and with different foci. What picture of the figure Ignatius is drawn in these texts and how are earlier traditions appropriated and transformed? In the figure Ignatius we find a striking ambiguity of the title of this volume: he, the confessor, desired to be martyred and later Christ-believers desired his martyrdom and his bones to represent their status of importance in what had become the religion of the martyrs.

Ignatius – Lost in the Mirror The screen on which profiles of Ignatius were projected was anticipated by the already contradictory notices about the fate of Ignatius in a letter of Polycarp of Smyrna to the Philippians (Pol. Phil). In chapter 13, Polycarp asks for further

 Their exchange owes much to the so-called Antiochene Acts of martyrdom, see below.  This list is not exhaustive and most of the features also appear combined.

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details about Ignatius’ parting from Philippi, while chapter 9 seems to imply knowledge of his death.⁴ The dating of Ignatius and of Polycarp as supposedly the earliest witness as addressee of one letter are closely connected, and – whether one denies or supports the authenticity of Ignatian letters – ends with a circular argument. An unchallenged witness to the Ignatian Letter to the Romans (Ign. Rom), though not to its author as named, is Irenaeus around 180, who quotes the famous “wheat of God” passage and speaks of “one of us” (Adv. haer. 5.28,4).⁵ The next Christian writer who clearly displays knowledge of Ignatian letters is Origen, providing quotations in three of his works: apparently he knew the letters To the Romans and To the Ephesians. ⁶ By the time of Eusebius of Caesarea, Ignatius was fully pressed into the service of Eusebius account of the historical church. In his Church History (3.36.2– 11,) he testifies to the number of seven letters and gives a short summary about the transfer of the prisoner to Rome as well as a depiction of the supposed martyrdom. But this is only an account of Ignatius’ death based on the bishop’s imagined death in the Letter to the Romans. In his Chronicle Eusebius dates the martyrdom in the ninth year of emperor Trajan, that is 106. It has abundantly been proven that these dates of voyage and execution of Ignatius given by Eusebius are not reliable,⁷ but in his long-term historiographic project about the episcopally organized ‘church of the martyrs’ he promotes Ignatius as one of the first Christ-followers who chose ‘rather dying than denying’. Since then the career of ‘Ignatius of Antioch’ has grown numerous branches, among which are the various letter collections, varying not only in  For discussion of this supposed inconsistency see Andreas Lindemann, “Antwort auf die Thesen zur Echtheit und Datierung der sieben Briefe des Ignatius von Antiochia,” Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 1 (1997): 185 – 194; also Candida Moss, “On the Dating of Polycarp. Rethinking the Place of the Martyrdom of Polycarp in the History of Christianity,” Early Christianity 2 (2010), 539 – 574; for the dating of the Ignatian letters see Timothy D. Barnes, “The Date of Ignatius,” The Expository Times 120, no. 3 (2008): 119 – 130.  Markus Vinzent, Writing the History of Early Christianity. From Reception to Retrospection (Cambridge: Cambridge Unviversity Press, 2019), 281 states that he refers also to Ign. Tral 10 and Ign. Smyrn 2 from the middle recension.  See Origen, In Lucam Homiliae 6; De oratione 20; Prol. Cant. Markus Vinzent, Writing the History of Early Christianity. From Reception to Retrospection (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 282, excludes that Origen knew the middle recension.  See Thomas Lechner, Ignatius adversus Valentinianos? Chronologische und theologiegeschichtliche Studien zu den Briefen des Ignatius von Antiochien (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 94– 96; Paul R. Gilliam, Ignatius of Antioch and the Arian Controversy. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae: Texts and Studies of Early Christian Life and Language 140 (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 170 – 175 summarizes the differences in the Ignatian letters that Eusebius presumably knew and the middle recension manuscripts.

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numbers, but also in abbreviated or interpolated forms and altered translations. He rapidly developed into multiple figures that were connected with multiple socio-political, theological, martyrological and organizational functions. As Candida Moss emphasizes, in most modern “Apostolic fathers” editions of the seven Ignatian letters the illusion has carried on since antiquity that these seven have formed a unified corpus.⁸ However an alternative tradition represented by the manuscripts of the so-called Antiochene Acts of Ignatius where Ign. Rom. appears separately from the letters to the Asian churches. These manuscripts were first edited together in the 17th century by James Ussher.⁹ Paul R. Gilliam provides the most recent and comprehensive study to Ignatian issues, especially the fourth century Arian controversies connected with the figure Ignatius as “a battle ground” in the various letter recensions. He analyses them according to their different theological, namely Christological, agendas and provides valuable new insights into the socio-political settings of the middle and long recensions.¹⁰ He demonstrates how Ignatius was promoted by both, early Nicene and non-Nicene Christian leaders and how John Chrysostom felt the need to defend and reclaim the full orthodoxy of this bishop-martyr for his faction. Stephanie Cobb takes the same direction and points to the socio-political setting of the Pseudo-Ignatius texts that form most of the long recension in circles that promote asceticism.¹¹ More recently, Markus Vinzent has provided an in depth, although yet preliminary, evaluation of all the manuscript traditions for Ignatius.¹² With his retrospective method he uncovers the many layers that were wrapped around this figure and demonstrates how for example the 19th century focus on authenticity of the Ignatian letters has obscured an unbiased critical assessment of the different manuscript traditions.¹³ All the various strategies and

 Candida Moss, “Riddle Wrapped in an Enigma. Pauline Reception in the Antiochene Acts of Ignatius,” in Intertextuality in the Second Century, ed. D. Jeffrey Bingham and Clayton N. Jefford (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 87– 97, 87– 88.  Moss, “Riddle Wrapped in an Enigma, 88; also Barnes, “The Date of Ignatius.”  Gilliam, Ignatius of Antioch and the Arian Controversy.  Stephanie L. Cobb, “Neither ‘Pure Evangelic Manna’ nor ‘Tainted Scraps:’ Reflections on the Study of Pseudo-Ignatius,” in The Apostolic Fathers and Paul, ed. Todd D. Still and David E. Wilhite (London: T&T Clark, 2017), 181– 100.  Vincent offers sufficient arguments for the necessity of an editio critica maior. I am grateful to him for allowing me to see his manuscript before it was published.  Vinzent, Writing the History of Early Christianity, 362. He especially shows how Joseph Barber Lightfoot’s still unmatched scholarly enterprise to sift and evaluate all ancient material about Ignatius was driven by his own contemporary theological agenda. Cf. also Gilliam’s critical assessment of Lightfoot throughout his study.

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traditions that were attributed to Ignatius throughout the centuries have added to his ungraspability. Nevertheless, here I want to follow the traces of the creation of this powerful martyr figure. One of the earliest imaginaries of Ignatius’ journey from Syria across western Asia in the letters of the middle recension was recapitulated already by Eusebius and appears as follows: coming from Antioch on route to Rome Ignatius and his company stopped at least at Philadelphia, Sardis, Smyrna, Troas, Neapolis and, supplemented by Pol. Phil, Philippi. During this time messengers went back and forth between Ignatius and these communities from Ephesus, Tralles and Magnesia, and to Christians in Rome and Antioch. Katharina Waldner analyses the narration of this journey that operates with vocabulary from the network enabling Roman imperial infrastructure and ruling instruments and evokes images from a victorious military campaign.¹⁴ The Roman routes determined the pace of the traveling party, which consisted of the condemned Christ-follower, other prisoners and the soldiers that guarded them. Cavan Concannon presents in one of the most original approaches to Ignatius in recent years an impressive recapitulation of the networks that must have been activated to ensure such an ongoing exchange of messengers between the communities with which Ignatius had contact.¹⁵ He draws a rhizomatic picture of early Christian connectivity that depends a great deal on the physical landscapes of the Mediterranean “with their currents and wind patterns, valleys and peaks, islands and peninsulas, as agents that enable and constrain the social networks” by the possibilities of movement.¹⁶ Especially important is his portrayal of connectivity regarding its “privileging of movement, flux and motion” over the fixity

 Katharina Waldner, “Ignatius’ Reise von Antiochia nach Rom. Zentralität und lokale Vernetzung im christlichen Diskurs des 2. Jahrhunderts,” in Zentralität und Religion. Zur Formierung urbaner Zentren im Imperium Romanum, ed. Hubert Cancik et al. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006); already William R. Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch. A Commentary on the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch (Philadelphia 1985) pointed to the linguistic choreography of the traveler’s advent from the east to the west; Allen Brent, Ignatius of Antioch and the Second Sophistic: A Study of an Early Christian Transformation of Pagan Culture (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006) sees it embedded in the discourse of processions of mystery cults; see also Yonatan Moss, “From Syria all the Way to Rome. Ignatius of Antioch’s Pauline Journey to Christianity,” in Journeys in the Roman East. Imagined and Real, ed. Maren R. Niehoff (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019), 409 – 421 for how Ignatius fashions his journey according to the Pauline model of the “travelling letter-writer.”  Cavan Concannon, “Early Christian Connectivity and Ecclesial Assemblages in Ignatius of Antioch,” in Across the Corrupting Sea. Post-Braudelian Approaches to the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean, ed. Cavan Concannon and Lindsey A. Mazurek (London: Routledge, 2016), 65 – 89.  Concannon, “Early Christian Connectivity,” 68.

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of ‘historical moments’, since “early Christian networks are constantly in flux as new objects, people, capacities, and capabilities are brought into or fall out of the network.”¹⁷ Relating to the Ignatian networks he foregrounds the fact that Ignatius’ interventions “took place within and are directed towards a population of collectives whose interconnections precede him.”¹⁸ Whoever wrote the Ignatian epistles had a strong sense of the possibilities of Christian networks in Asia Minor. We should keep in mind the itinerary of Ignatius’ journey that is extractable from the letters sketched above, since later imaginaries of Ignatius’ fate take some other courses. We will now concentrate especially on the martyr figure Ignatius whose basic features were shaped by the Letter to the Romans. ¹⁹ Traditions since Eusebius – across all genres and theological factions – had it that he was episkopos in Antioch, that he was condemned to and eventually was killed by beasts in Rome, and that he was an older contemporary of Polycarp of Smyrna and emperor Trajan. The powerful image of Ign. Rom. 4, in which Ignatius envisions the beasts devouring him and pulverizing his bones to let him be the “wheat of God,” sets the impressive foundation for his martyrological remembrance. His demonstrated eagerness to die has been echoed repeatedly and in the following paragraphs some manifestations of these echoes shall be addressed.

Ignatian relics As we have seen, the figure of Ignatius and the writings attested to him were known by Irenaeus of Lyons, who supposedly came from Asia Minor, Origen, who lived in Alexandria and Caesarea, and Eusebius of Caesarea. But from Antioch we can date no earlier reference to this local hero than before the 380s. Though it supposedly was the city of Ignatius’ origin or at least the place of his activity as Christian leader and became an epithet of his name, the letters reflect a serious conflict in the city during his presence there and it cannot simply be assumed that the letters that were preserved and exchanged among communities in Asia Minor were also read, distributed, and valued in Antioch from early on. Wendy Mayer and Pauline Allen have provided an invaluable source book for

 Concannon, “Early Christian Connectivity,” 69.  Concannon, “Early Christian Connectivity,” 74. Cf. Harry O. Maier, “Space, Body, and Church in Ignatius of Antioch: Toward a Spatial Treatment,” in Studies on the Text of the New Testament and Early Christianity. Studies in Honour of Michael W. Holmes, ed. Daniel Gurtner, Juan Hernández, and Paul Foster (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 517– 536.  Speaking of Ignatius here always means the persona of the respective text.

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the ancient Christian landscape of Antioch until the age of the Arab conquest. Among all the martyria and churches that are testified there, the notices about the place of veneration for Ignatius are very scarce and are to date not supported by archaeological findings. But the picture we get is that in the later fourth century the cult of martyrs flourished in the city. Somewhen before the 380s, a translation of bones that were claimed to be the remains of Ignatius took place.²⁰ Our first reliable testimony to the presence of Ignatian relics and their monumental and liturgical commemoration/celebration is John Chrysostom. Wendy Mayer dates his presbytery in Antioch between 386 and 397.²¹ Sometime during these years, he delivered a homily on the feast of Ignatius which was celebrated in October.²² He furnishes detailed descriptions about Ignatius’ fate with paraphrases and interpretations borrowed from the Ignatian letters and Eusebius. He praises him as one of the first who testified with their own blood for the resurrection of Christ (Hom. Ign. 15) and he explains that since Ignatius was destined by God to teach as many people as possible, he was given the chance to be known by the people in Asia Minor and a huge crowd in the theater in Rome (16). He takes Ignatius’ killing by the beasts in Rome for granted and states: “Truly this was God’s management: to bring him back to us and distribute the martyr between the cities. For while she (sc. Rome) received his dripping blood, you were honoured with his relics.”²³

 Gilliam, Ignatius of Antioch and the Arian Controversy, 194, contends that the “whereabouts of Ignatius were not obscure before 364– 373” and Ignatius was on the church liturgical calendar before the middle of the 4th century.  Wendy Mayer, St. John Chrysostom. The Cult of the Saints, Select Homilies and Letters, introduced, translated, and annotated by Wendy Mayer and Bronwen Neil (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir‘s Press, 2006), 101. In her introduction she summarizes her conclusions about how the cult of martyrs in Antioch had already been widely accepted and shaped its religious landscape. All in all we know of homilies from Chrysostom on local martyrs that were celebrated on their specific festival dates, mostly at their burial places that had been turned into martyria or churches. Cf. Wendy Mayer and Pauline Allen, The Churches of Syrian Antioch (300 – 638 CE) (Leuven 2012) and Pauline Allen et al., Let Us Die That We May Live, Greek Homilies on Christian Martyrs from Asia Minor, Palestine and Syria (c. A. D. 350 – A. D. 450) (London 2003).  Gilliam, Ignatius of Antioch and the Arian Controversy, 191– 193, follows Eduard Schwartz’s dating in the first year of Chrysostoms service as priest. In his chapter 5 he analyses Chrysostom’s homily on Ignatius and resumes that it was an apology with a much felt need to defend Ignatius as a predecessor of the non-heretics: 220 – 221.  Hom. Ign. 17, translation Mayer, 114– 115.

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Chrysostom indicates that the place of Ignatius’ relics is within walking distance of the city.²⁴ He does not include information about how and when the relics found their way back to Antioch, he is only imagining that they crossed the same places as the living Ignatius has seen, much to the joy of the Asian communities (17).²⁵ But here as in his other martyr homilies he offers valuable insights into the modes and practices of the contemporary martyr cult. In Hom. Ign. 18 he encourages frequent visits at the martyr’s grave, for by touching the saint’s coffin “full of spiritual grace” one can “harvest great blessings.” Not only at the festivals, but also in times of personal distress as well as in happy ones, people should come to visit the saint, addressing their prayers to him in private devotion so that he may become their advocate. Evagrius (Hist. eccl. 1.16) reports that emperor Theodosius II., probably in the 430s, ordered a second translation of Ignatius’ relics. They were now brought from his burial outside the city to the newly built sanctuary of the saint in the former Tychaeum within the walls of Antioch.²⁶ Ignatius thereby displaced Fortune who had been the patroness of the city for centuries and became Antioch’s new patron.²⁷ Mayer and Allen assert that this was “the first documented case of the dispossession and conversion of a religious building formerly in the possession of another religion” and that “now we see the power of Christianity demonstrated not from a distance through differentiation but in an immediate way via appropriation and conversion.”²⁸ They also make clear that with the decision for translation of the relics from this first century martyr, Theodosius wanted to boost the apostolic status of Antioch.²⁹ Several homilies of Severus of Antioch at the beginning of the sixth century were given in this martyrium of Ignatius  Hom. Ign. 18; Jerome locates them at the cemetery outside the gate on the road to Daphne, the Luftkurort of Antioch (Vir. ill. 16); cf. Mayer, St. John Chrysostom, 101, and Mayer and Allen, The Churches of Syrian Antioch, 85 – 89, on the koimeterion of Antioch.  For other translation stories Chrysostom provides exact dates and descriptions: the translation of the relics of Babylas for example was stylized like an imperial adventus, cf. Mayer, St. John Chrysostom, 28, and Mayer and Allen, The Churches of Syrian Antioch, 32– 49; also Allen et al., Let Us Die That We May Live, 147.  Mayer, St. John Chrysostom, 15 – 16, points to the purifying effects that were connected with martyr relics; see also Mayer and Allen, The Churches of Syrian Antioch, 146 – 148, who demonstrate how “the balance between the perception of relics as purifying rather than contaminating force” weighed towards the former and that this deposition was the first reported case within city walls.  Mayer and Allen, The Churches of Syrian Antioch, 147, and Étienne Decrept, “L’arrière-plan liturgique et ecclésial des Actes d’Ignace,” Revue des Études Augustiniennes 49 (2003): 131– 166, 146, with one of few observations of his that one can unambiguously confirm.  Mayer and Allen, The Churches of Syrian Antioch, 146.  Mayer and Allen, The Churches of Syrian Antioch, 148.

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and refer to his festival, which was still celebrated at the end of that century during the lifetime of Evagrius.³⁰ So for about more than two centuries a strong attachment to the presence of Ignatian relics can be confirmed in Antioch.³¹ To all those who testified to them it seemed fully reliable that the bones which they honored in their martyr cult were the bones of the very same Ignatius of whom letters were known, namely, the letters in which he anticipates his violent death in Rome, where his bones were gathered and preserved and eventually returned to Antioch. The city had by this time not been short of local martyr saints who were similarly venerated in their martyria and churches. Gilliam has analyzed the strategies connected with this authoritative figure that had been promoted from early on as an advocate of church hierarchies and the corporeal reality of Christ.³² Johannes Hahn too has pointed to the religious conflicts that were going on in 4th century Antioch, when the city had an “extraordinary economic boom, […] a significant increase in population” and flourishing religious groups.³³ The inner-Christian conflicts between “Arians” and “Nicaeans” and even factionalism among the latter demanded the construction of ever more new churches and places of community building even as the veneration of certain martyrs as approved or disapproved shifted within the various contending parties.³⁴ Evagrius’ contemporary John Malalas, whose Chronographia is centered on the history of his hometown Antioch (and according to Hahn “as imaginative as historically questionable”³⁵), does not testify to a church or relics of Ignatius. He only reports that Ignatius was martyred under Trajan, while the latter stayed

 Mayer and Allen, The Churches of Syrian Antioch, 81.  A menologion in the Codex Glascuensis BE 8 x 5 from the 10th century copies and paraphrases mainly the Roman Acts, but curiously switches to the Antiochian Acts in reporting the translation of Ignatius’ relics from Rome to Antioch. Wolfgang Lackner, “Zu einem bislang unbekannten Bericht über die Translation der Ignatios-Reliquien nach Antiochien,” Vigiliae Christianae 21, no. 1 (1967): 287– 294, has demonstrated that this source does not provide new information about the translations.  Gilliam, Ignatius of Antioch and the Arian Controversy.  Johannes Hahn, “The Veneration of the Maccabaean Brothers in Fourth Century Antioch. Religious Competition, Martyrdom and Innovation,” in Dying for the Faith, Killing for the Faith. OldTestament Faith Warriors (1 and 2 Maccebees) in Historical Perspective, ed. Gabriela Signori (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 79 – 104, 88; see also Gilliam, Ignatius of Antioch and the Arian Controversy, 204– 206.  Mayer and Allen have tried to reconstruct the histories of the single churches and martyria and analyzed the various motifs for their places, use and function.  Hahn, “The Veneration of the Maccabaean Brothers,” 83.

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in Antioch to prepare his Parthian campaign, datable during the years 113/114.³⁶ His notice on this bishop martyr is quite short compared to the following lengthy description of the martyrdom and desecration of the corpses of Drosis and her virgin companions which were also condemned by Trajan.³⁷ In his narration Malalas attributes to the story of these latter martyrs more relevance than to the account of Ignatius’ death and his martyr cult.

The local martyr: the Antiochene Acts of Ignatius Whosever bones were brought to Antioch as Ignatius’, the almost excessive desire for martyrs there led to their being honored as the saint’s relics. They inspired not only the monumentalization of his martyr cult and the introduction of certain practices and rituals at his grave, but also the production of a proper martyr act that reports the trial, the full journey to execution, and the immediate events following it – filling a lacuna in the martyr story of Ignatius, for whom no earlier martyrdom text was known. Lightfoot named it the Antiochene Acts (Act. Ant.), because the center of the story is Antioch where the trial and the eventual deposition of the relics take place. It is known from Greek manuscripts and Latin, Syriac and Armenian translations.³⁸ The date of the text must be post-

 This information is otherwise reported only in the Antiochene Acts, so Malalas must have known this text.  Malalas, Chron. 11.10. Here Malalas reflects the Acts of Drosis; John Chrysostom also dedicated a homily to this martyr. Drawing on the vicinity of these two martyr notices in Malalas, Étienne Decrept “Circonstances et interprétations du voyage d’Ignace d’Antioch,” Revue des Sciences Religieuses 82 (2008): 389 – 399, produces a complete new narrative, not to say legend, of the Ignatian journey – back and forth. He schedules Ignatius’ trial and sentence to death by Trajan in Antioch after the great earthquake that struck the city in the year 115. He presents the execution of the Christian leader as an expiatory ritual of human sacrifice that should calm the minds of people and the gods. Decrept’s prejudices about the pagan cults meet with polemics in the Roman Acts and are completely untenable.  Joseph Barber Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers 2: S. Ignatius, S. Polycarp. Revised texts (London: MacMillan, 1889), 2.363; cf. Gary A. Bisbee, Pre-Decian Acts of Martyrs and Commmentarii (Harvard Dissertations in Religion 22; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), 135 and Decrept, “L’arrière-plan liturgique et ecclésial des Actes d’Ignace,” 132– 133. Theodor Zahn, Ignatius von Antiochien (Gotha: F.A. Perthes, 1873), 1– 10, explored all extant martyrdom manuscripts and how they relate to each other and first identified five different martyrdom versions, whereas the younger three are different reelaborations and interminglings of the first two, the “Antiochene” and the “Roman” Acts; so too Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers 2, 368.

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Chrysostom and pre-Evagrius.³⁹ In this version, Ignatius is introduced as a respected leader of the church of Antioch⁴⁰ since the time of Domitian, whose persecution he warded off from his community – also to his distress, given his own desire to attain “true love of Christ” as a martyr (compare Ign. Rom. 1.1; Ign. Pol. 7.1). He had to wait a couple more years to become a “true disciple” when emperor Trajan was in Antioch to prepare his campaign against the Parthians (Act. Ant. 2.2). Now he was brought “on his own volition” to Trajan who then oversaw the trial of Ignatius and condemned him to the beasts. The argument for the voyage of the condemned to Rome for execution, although the judgement had been spoken in Antioch, is that it is “for the gratification of the Roman people” with ludi (Act. Ant 2.7).⁴¹ The depiction of the trial is oriented in style to commentarii of early martyr acts but only brief allusions are to be detected.⁴² In these Acts no lengthy discussions or attempts to persuade Ignatius to perform sacrifice are presented. Candida Moss has pictured how in this text Ignatius was fashioned in relation to traditions about Paul and Polycarp and other martyr figures.⁴³ A clear intertextual allusion is the image of a chosen ram as a reminiscence of Polycarp’s binding,⁴⁴ but reflects also the rhetoric of sacrifice in the Ignatian Letter to the Romans. ⁴⁵ In the manuscript tradition of the Antiochene Acts, the Letter to the Romans is not only preserved but repeatedly paraphrased and retold throughout the first half of the account (chapters 1– 4): the notion of worthiness for martyrdom (e. g. Ign. Rom. 1.1; 3.2); Ignatius’ eagerness to be martyred (e. g. Ign. Rom. 2; 4; 5.2); and the expected possibility of an intervention by Roman Christians to prevent his execution (Ign. Rom. 3.2; 6.2; 7.2) are but a few

 The Acts’ report of the translation of Ignatius’ more solid bones as relics is congruent with Evagrius’ account in his Hist. eccl. 1.16. See Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers 2, 2.387– 389.  The term for him is kybernētēs – pilot, Decrept, “L’arrière-plan liturgique et ecclésial des Actes d’Ignace,” 135, points to the fact that this nautical metaphor was frequently used in the fourth and fifth centuries for orthodox bishops; Moss, “Riddle Wrapped in an Enigma,” 92, stresses its use also in traditions about Polycarp and Eleazar in 4 Macc.  According to the chapter division in Franz Xaver Funk and Franz Diekamp, Patres Apostolici (Tübingen: H. Laupp, 1913).  Bisbee, Pre-Decian Acts, 151– 161, takes this brevity as argument for the authenticity of the commentarius of the actual trial: his attempt has been and must be dismissed.  Moss, “Riddle Wrapped in an Enigma.”  MartPol 14.1; cf. Moss, “Riddle Wrapped in an Enigma,” 95.  See Nicole Hartmann, Martyrium. Variationen und Potenziale eines Diskurses im Zweiten Jahrhundert (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2013); Justin Buol, Martyred for the Church. Memorialization of the Effective Deaths of Bishop Martyrs in the Second Century (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017) did not take notice of my research on this topic and draws completely different conclusions that have to be discussed elsewhere.

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examples for the elaboration of the imaginary in the letter.⁴⁶ In the Acts Ignatius is praised overwhelmingly not only for his willingness and fearlessness to give his life, but also for his spiritual gifts during his lifetime. He and Polycarp are described as having both been disciples of the apostle John and having taught the other bishops and communities.⁴⁷ The narration has him meeting Polycarp again in Smyrna so that he might assist him in his longing for death with joined prayers (chapters 3 – 4). To this point the Antiochene Acts are on track with notices and information that we know also from other, earlier sources and the Ignatian letters, at least the letters To Polycarp and To the Romans. The subsequent story, however, is not reconcilable with any other source on Ignatius and fictionalizes the Ignatian journey in a peculiar way that shall be addressed in the following. Interestingly, this text ignores completely the implications about Ignatius’ route to Rome in the letters to the Asian communities that we have seen above. Chapter 5, following the insertion of To the Romans, draws a detailed imaginary of the voyage from east to west, across sea and land: from Smyrna Ignatius sails to Troas and continues via ship to Neapolis. Passing through Philippi he then walks across Macedonia to set sail again at some port around Epidamnus. The narrator is uncertain about the exact place and he describes the journey until now as if Ignatius was travelling by himself: “he walks,” “he sailed,” “he landed.” The journey proceeds via ship across the Adriatic and the Tyrhennian sea. When Puteoli comes in view, he wishes to disembark, because he “was eager to walk in the footsteps of Paul” (compare Ign. Eph. 12) but is prevented from doing so by strong winds. Again, he is presented as the master of the how and when of the trip – as if he would travel like a pilgrim, on his own account, visiting places where the apostle had been. As he sails by Puteoli, suddenly a peculiar change of subject in the narration takes place (Act. Ant. 5.4). In reminiscence of New Testament Acts where there is a similar shift in point of view on a sea voyage, the perspective of eyewitnesses is

 This might be true also for the retelling of Ignatius’ meeting with bishops, presbyters and deacons from Asia Minor communities to whom he then sent letters of thanks (Act. Ant. 4.1). The account describes them as having hurried to Smyrna to meet him there. In Ign. Rom 4.1 it is said that Ignatius wants to write to all the churches, and in Ign. Rom. 9.3 he speaks of the churches that hosted him, the traveler. Actually, no clear indication for knowledge of other letters than Ign. Rom. and Ign. Pol. can be detected. Did the author/s of this martyrdom accept only the letters of the so-called short recension?  This connection to John was introduced in Jerome’s translation of Eusebius’ Chronicon. See Lechner, Ignatius adversus Valentinianos, 77; compare also his discussion of the problems of layout, edition and Forschungsgeschichte of the text reconstructed as Eusebius’ original: 81– 109.

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introduced in the middle of the Tyrrhenian sea. Now the story is told from an unspecified ‘we’ who accompanies Ignatius throughout the rest of the events, as well as his relics back to his hometown. They disembark at Portus, the harbor of Rome, right at the time when the games are about to end and are immediately welcomed by the Roman Christians who are “full of fear and joy” (Act. Ant. 6.1). Following the script of To the Romans Ignatius now has to stop them from stopping his “hastening to the Lord”; he rather has them sit down with him in prayer for the end of persecution and for the ongoing “mutual love among the brethren” (Act. Ant. 6.3). He then is immediately brought into the amphitheater and cast to the beasts. That his desire from Ign. Rom. 4.2 to leave no trace of his body as burden to the brethren was fulfilled is underlined with Prov 10:24 that the desire of the righteous is acceptable to god (Act. Ant. 6.4). However, “the harder portions of his holy remains” were left, wrapped in linen and brought to Antioch to be laid in a sarcophagus, because they were deemed an “inestimable treasure” (Act. Ant. 6.5). The impossibility that the author bridges is summed up by Moss: he wants “to have his cake and eat it too,”⁴⁸ namely, he presents Ignatius’ wish fulfilled – to be devoured completely – but a few solid bones could still be brought back as relics. The subsequent night, after they had witnessed the gruesome destruction of their leader, his friends and disciples saw Ignatius in three different visions, and they rejoiced comparing them, being sure that he had reached his goal (Act. Ant. 7.2). The account ends with an address to the readers or hearers of the martyrdom that “now we have made known to you both the date and time of his martyrdom, we may have fellowship with the champion and noble martyr” (Act. Ant. 7.3). Thus, it indicates the establishment of a martyr cult and the veneration of his relics at the reported day of his death – that is at the thirteenth day before the Kalends of January, the twentieth of December. The chronological markers that are tagged at the beginning and end of the account shall now be considered. The celebration of Ignatius’ memoria on 20th December contradicts the information from Chrysostom about the celebration of Ignatius’ festival in October. So sometime between John Chrysostom’s activity in Antioch and the production of the Antiochene martyr narrative not only the relics were relocated but also the day of remembrance for Ignatius was shifted in the martyr calendar.⁴⁹ In Act. Ant. 2.1– 2 a number of determining time markers

 Moss, “Riddle Wrapped in an Enigma,” 96.  The December date testified in these martyr acts is confirmed by the menologion of Symeon Metaphrast; cf. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers 2, 422– 423. Decrept, “L’arrière-plan liturgique et ecclésial des Actes d’Ignace,” 138, rightly points to the fact that normally shipping was interrupted during this period of the year, so Ignatius’ arrival via ship in Rome in December betrays little nautical knowledge by the author/s.

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are clustered that are historically irreconcilable with each other: (1.) the ninth year of the reign of Trajan is presented as the year of the reported events (the year 106); (2.) after he had been honored for his success over the Scythians and Dacians (the second campaign ended 106, the triumph was celebrated probably in 107); and (3.) while he was in Antioch preparing his campaign against the Parthians (which was in 113).⁵⁰ In Act. Ant. 7.1 it is added that the martyrdom took place; (4.) in the year when Sura and Senecio were consuls, the latter for the second time (probably the year 107).⁵¹ Lightfoot provides detailed analyses of the various markers in relation to each other and sees them as not holding any value for reconstructing Ignatius’ second century biography.⁵² However, with this accumulation of dating components it seems that the author/s and/or later editors want to underline their ‘true’ knowledge about the actual events. They wrap the story with a web of facts in order to sustain its claim to be an eye-witness account. It is like a thick description from a perspective close to the events but already contextualized for later generations. It might be seen as a reaction to doubts about the authenticity of the venerated relics of someone from a remote past who had been executed far away, whereas in Antioch itself during the Diocletion and Galerian persecutions of the fourth century many martyrdoms had been witnessed.

The apologetic martyr: The Roman Acts of Ignatius⁵³ At some time between the fifth and the end of the sixth century⁵⁴ a completely different text was produced as an account of how the bishop Ignatius of Antioch suffered martyrdom – obviously entirely disconnected from the martyr tradition testified in the Antiochene Acts. Both texts share the motifs of a trial of Ignatius by Trajan himself and both draw on Ignatius’ eagerness to be killed by the beasts

 This is also reported by Malalas as the year of the martyrdom of Ignatius and Drosis (Chron. 11.10).  Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers 2, 492– 93.  Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers 2, 2.385; 391– 409; cf. also Bisbee, Pre-Decian Acts, 146 – 148. Decrept, “L’arrière-plan liturgique et ecclésial des Actes d’Ignace,” 135 – 136, presents a problematic attempt to reconcile the various dates with the Chronicle of Eusebius, which must be dismissed. See instead the overview in Lechner, Ignatius adversus Valentinianos, 94– 96.  Because here the story of Ignatius’ trial as well as the burial of his relics is centered in the city of Rome, Lightfoot suggested to call it Roman Acts: Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers 2, 2.473.  Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers 2, 2.382– 83.

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– in accordance with the letter To the Romans. But these are the only common features, all other circumstances are imagined differently. According to the fiction of the Roman Acts (Act. Rom.), Ignatius is brought to Rome not after condemnation and for execution, but to be put on trial there by emperor Trajan and the senate. The narration starts with a couple of time markers (that shall be addressed later) and asserts that Ignatius, the second bishop in Antioch after the apostles, had been escorted from Syria to Rome under strictest custody because he had confessed to follow Christ. The importance of the bishop is underlined with the claim that he was accompanied by ten bodyguards (protictores) of Trajan “with tempers of wild beasts,” developed as a paraphrase from Ign. Rom. 5.1, which is also quoted in Act. Rom. 1.3. The letter has Ignatius fighting with the beast-guards throughout his journey at land and sea and this is imagined in the Acts as a voyage across Asia through Thrace and then, somewhat surprisingly, from Rhegium sailing to Rome.⁵⁵ There are many missing links in between and no further specifications of places, people or networks of Christian groups connected with Ignatius are given. Not much attention is directed to the description of the journey, for the author/s did not care too much about Ignatius’ significance in Asia Minor or Antioch. They present him as an important Christian saint whose relics protect the city of Rome, just like those of Peter and Paul did (Act. Rom. 10.8). Chapter 2 starts immediately with the confrontation of Ignatius and Trajan and the following text is dedicated to a lengthy and lively exchange extended over a number of days in which Ignatius is offered release if he offers sacrifice, is threatened and tortured, but he repeatedly refuses. The vivid and voyeuristic description of Ignatius’s torture and conversation with the emperor displays an emphasized interest in the crudest and cruelest details. It is expanded across eight chapters and seems to be a blown-up version of Ignatius’ expectation about his death in To the Romans. Several passages of the letter are integrated as direct speech of Ignatius.⁵⁶ The famous “I am the wheat of god and am ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found to be pure bread” (Ign. Rom. 4.1) is cited as his last words in Act. Rom. 10.6.⁵⁷

 Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers 2, 2.380, observes that Rhegium as a place where he stopped is otherwise mentioned only in the Ignatian letter to the Philippians from the long recension and that the martyrologist of Act. Rom. cites some passages from the interpolated Ign. Rom. (380 – 81), so it must be contended that he was familiar with this corpus.  For example: Ign. Rom. 5.3 in Act. Rom. 2.6;  In the middle recension it has “pure bread of Christ” which is not to be found in Eusebius, see Gilliam, Ignatius of Antioch and the Arian Controversy, 173. This is remarkable, because this

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Apart from the extensive interpretation of To the Romans, the Roman Acts do not reflect the theology of other Ignatian letters in Ignatius’ responses to Trajan. Instead they display an emphasized rejection of the cult of the pagan gods that they demonize.⁵⁸ Lightfoot has noted that the martyrologist/s draw here especially on notions that are prominent in the apologetic literature from Justin, Tatian, Minucius Felix and others.⁵⁹ Bolhuis pursues this and cites some more passages of the Roman Acts deriving from various early apologists. He also furnishes several parallels with passages in Clement of Alexandria’s Protepticus, which the author/s seem to have exploited for his/their own purpose.⁶⁰ However, Bolhuis does not confirm a direct dependency of Clement’s text, he rather identifies a similar reworking and combination of early martyrological and apologetic discourses in the Acta Apollonii and points to some more motifs that the Roman Acts share with other martyr acts.⁶¹ After the long elaboration of Ignatius and the emperor talking past each other, eventually the martyr is crushed to death by the lions – expressed in just one sentence (Act. Rom. 10.9). But they do not consume him, the flesh remains untouched and his body complete as a perfect preserved relic for the Roman church. So the authors of this text decided against Ignatius’ wish from Ign. Rom. 4.2. Trajan, who already had admired Ignatius’ endurance facing the tortures, now rises in awe of this holy men and orders that the remains should be gathered unhindered by those who wish to bury them, and the Roman Christians do so in a place where they are allowed to assemble and commemorate this martyr (Act. Rom. 11.4).⁶² The event of confrontation between the bishop of Antioch and emperor Trajan is enhanced with the effect that the suffering of Ignatius ended the empire-wide persecution of Christians. Curiously, here the authors ex-

sentence appears slightly different again in Act. Rom. 12.1 as a quotation from Irenaeus, most probably deriving from Eusebius’ summary.  Pagan gods as evil connoted demons had entered as a topos since the fifth century also in martyr literature: see Nicole Hartmann, “On Demons in Early Martyrology,” in Demons in Late Antiquity. Their Perception and Transformation in Different Literary Genres (Transformationen der Antike 54), ed. Eva Elm and Nicole Hartmann (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019).  Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers 2, 502– 527.  A. Bolhuis, “Die Acta Romana des Martyriums bei Ignatius von Antiochien,” Vigiliae Christianae 7 (1953): 143 – 153, 146.  Bolhuis, “Die Acta Romana,” 148 – 152.  This tradition of a presence and veneration of Ignatian relics in Rome is not confirmed by any other source.

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press knowledge of the correspondence between Pliny and Trajan (Act. Rom. 11) and directly link it to the fictionalized event of Ignatius’ death.⁶³ The narrative mode of this martyr text can be easily imagined as having been performed as a dramatic play, wherein Trajan and the Senate are only the prompters, who give Ignatius the keywords from where the heroic would-be martyr begins to unroll his speeches about the one true God and the vanity of Zeus, Apollon, Poseidon and their company.⁶⁴ It is the late ancient imaginary of a clash of different power discourses between a tyrant and an accused Christ-follower. At the end it concludes in a lapidary way “such was the martyrdom of Ignatius” (Act. Rom. 12.4). The liturgical effect of the depiction of Ignatius’ unbroken will is the main focus of this text, thus it provides only a brief introduction of the dramatis personae and the place and time in the beginning. At the end it adds the name of Hero as bishop successor in Antioch and the date of commemoration of Ignatius on the first day of the month Panemus, that is 1st July.⁶⁵ As we have seen with the Antiochene Acts, the author/s and editors of the Roman Acts are also eager to give a number of dating details, and the same conclusion must be drawn also for this text: the time markers of the chronological imagination do not fit together. The text starts with the accumulation of placing the events (1.) in the ninth year of Trajan’s reign (106);⁶⁶ (2.) the second year of the 223rd Olympiad (which corresponds to the year 114); and (3.) during the consulship of Atticus Surbanus and Marcellus (104). When we take into account the period when Pliny was governor in Pontus-Bithynia and wrote his letters to Trajan we have (4.) the year 112. This cluster of time markers, set immediately at the beginning of the account, was meant to indicate the ‘true’ knowledge of the  Pliny ep. 96. 97; Act. Rom. 12 integrates also the few external testimonials for the Ignatian letters, as Polycarps letter to the Philippians and Irenaeus’ quotation of the ‘wheat of god’phrase, which most probably derived from Eusebius, His. eccl.. 3.36.  The length of the interrogation scene was not seen as liturgical adequate by other martyrologists who wished to report the martyrdom of Ignatius according to the ‘Roman’ narrative. Therefore, the author of the report of Ignatius’ martyrdom in Codex Glascuensis BE 8 x 5 f. 318r–319v abbreviated the Roman Acts massively and paraphrased the eight chapters of the interrogation only briefly, see Lackner, “Zu einem bislang unbekannten Bericht,” 289.  See Lightfoot for the altered dates in the various manuscripts and translations that were adapted to the local traditions of celebrating Ignatius, all in all we have four different dates, of which the 17th October is still celebrated in the Catholic church and 20th December in the Eastern Orthodox church.  Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers 2, 2.448 – 472, suggests an earlier source from which this date derives and discusses at length the possible dependency on Eusebius and the reworkings of his chronological data. Compare Zahn, Ignatius von Antiochien, 16, who points to the fact that this ninth year of Trajan is to be found only in a later manuscript and sees it as being introduced according to the Antiochene tradition, but the correction was not extended to the consuls.

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events reported. To point to the reign of Trajan did not seem to be plausible enough, so some names of consuls were dropped and a counting of the Olympiad added.⁶⁷ The authors and editors of both traditions tell a story set in a couple of centuries remote past. It seems that with their accumulation of simulated coordinates combined with uncontested testimonials they want to enforce the validity of their historical account. Lightfoot discusses certain indicators for Egypt, namely Alexandria, as place of origin of the Roman Acts: one is the date of Ignatius’ commemoration according to the Egyptian calendar, another the translation into Coptic.⁶⁸ Apart from this Coptic testimony, this martyrdom version is known from an Armenian and a Metaphrast version and was also integrated in abbreviated form in synaxaria. The translations testify to its acceptance, affirmation, and circulation as a convincing account of the second century bishop Ignatius’ martyrdom.

Conclusion What we have seen in this short survey is a striking disconnectedness of the several martyr traditions about Ignatius of Antioch. Not only are the martyr acts disconnected from each other but both also seem to be independent forms of commemoration from the Ignatian letter traditions. In the Antiochene Acts it is at least mentioned that Ignatius wrote to “all the churches” but in the Roman Acts there is no mention of him as a networking Christian letter writer. These texts are not competing narratives, they seem to have circulated in completely different spheres and attest to Ignatius’ synchronic multidimensionality. Gilliam has demonstrated how the Ignatian letter recensions and their use by clerics reproduce the battle ground of fourth century Christologies. A comprehensive study that analyses the Ignatian martyr acts, written and transformed by unknown authors and first readers with only suggestable local settings and interests is still a desideratum. But what can be observed is that the Ignatian martyr acts are products of the late antique cultural battle ground of the cult of saints, which was about the highest awareness and importance attributed to cities and places by the number and importance of their executed Christians. Who has the better stories, the more relevant martyrs, and the most fitting apparatus for their commemoration and promotion? It would be interesting to follow up further  This marker was introduced in the Coptic version. The year of reign of Trajan is given differently in the various manuscripts, so this accumulation of dates was diachronic and different editors felt different needs to provide plausible dates for relating their account to the past.  Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers 2, 2.381.

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traces of the Ignatian acts of martyrdom produced in subsequent years. There is a relatively large number of them and they testify to the different ways hagiographers solved the problem of harmonizing two different accounts and intermingled the Antiochene and Roman tradition in a couple of variants.⁶⁹ They developed different strategies to deal with the contrasting narratives and made varying decisions about which part of which texts seemed plausible to be retold, reshaped and combined. Through all the manifold re-narrations, alterations and translations, the martyr figure Ignatius of Antioch moves through space and time again and again. Its rewriting and retelling continues.

Bibliography Allen, Pauline, Boudewijn Dehandschutter, Johan Leemans, and Wendy Mayer, eds. Let Us Die That We May Live, Greek Homilies on Christian Martyrs from Asia Minor, Palestine and Syria (c.A. D. 350 –A. D. 450). London: Routledge, 2003. Barnes, Timothy D. “The Date of Ignatius.” The Expository Times 120, no. 3 (2008): 119 – 130. Bisbee, Gary A. Pre-Decian Acts of Martyrs and Commmenatarii. Harvard Dissertations in Religion 22. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988. Bolhuis, A. “Die Acta Romana des Martyriums bei Ignatius von Antiochien.” Vigiliae Christianae 7 (1953): 143 – 153. Brands, Gunnar. Antiochia in der Spätantike. Prolegomena zu einer archäologischen Stadtgeschichte. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016. Brent, Allen. Ignatius of Antioch and the Second Sophistic: A Study of an Early Christian Transformation of Pagan Culture. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006. Buol, Justin. Martyred for the Church. Memorialization of the Effective Deaths of Bishop Martyrs in the Second Century. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017. Cobb, L. Stephanie. “Neither ‘Pure Evangelic Manna’ nor ‘Tainted Scraps’: Reflections on the Study of Pseudo-Ignatius.” In The Apostolic Fathers and Paul, edited by Todd D. Still and David E. Wilhite, 181 – 202. London,: T&T Clark, 2017. Concannon, Cavan. “Early Christian Connectivity and Ecclesial Assemblages in Ignatius of Antioch.” In Across the Corrupting Sea. Post-Braudelian Approaches to the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean, edited by Cavan Concannon and Lindsey A. Mazurek, 65 – 89. London: Routledge, 2016. Decrept, Étienne. “L’arrière-plan liturgique et ecclésial des Actes d’Ignace.” Revue des Études Augustiniennes 49 (2003): 131 – 166. Decrept, Étienne. “Circonstances et interprétations du voyage d’Ignace d’Antioch.” Revue des Sciences Religieuses 82 (2008): 389 – 399.

 See Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers 2, 2.371– 377, for preliminary observations and Markus Vinzent, Writing the History of Early Christianity. From Reception to Retrospection (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019) for the prolegomena of such an enterprise for the Ignatian letters.

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Downey, Glanville. History of Antioch. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. Gambold, John. The martyrdom of Ignatius: A tragedy. Written in the year 1740, by the late John Gambold, M. A. At that time Minister of Stanton-Harcourt, Oxfordshire. To which are annexed, the life of Ignatius, drawn from authentic accounts, and from the epistles written by him from Smyrna and Troas, in his way to Rome. Also that of Polycarp. Dublin, 1782. (Gale Eighteenth Century Collections Online, last access: 15 May 2019). Gilliam, Paul R. Ignatius of Antioch and the Arian controversy. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae: Texts and Studies of Early Christian Life and Language 140. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Funk, Franz Xaver, and Franz Diekamp. Patres Apostolici. Tübingen: H. Laupp, 1913. Hahn, Johannes. “The Veneration of the Maccabaean Brothers in Fourth Century Antioch. Religious Competition, Martyrdom and Innovation.” In Dying for the Faith, Killing for the Faith. Old-Testament Faith Warriors (1 and 2 Maccebees) in Historical Perspective, edited by Gabriela Signori, 79 – 194. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Hartmann, Nicole. Martyrium. Variationen und Potenziale eines Diskurses im Zweiten Jahrhundert. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2013. Hartmann, Nicole. “On Demons in Early Martyrology.” In Demons in Late Antiquity. Their Perception and Transformation in Different Literary Genres, edited by Eva Elm and Nicole Hartmann. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2020. Lackner, Wolfgang. “Zu einem bislang unbekannten Bericht über die Translation der Ignatios-Reliquien nach Antiochien.” Vigiliae Christianae 21, no. 1 (1967): 287 – 294. Lechner, Thomas. Ignatius adversus Valentinianos? Chronologische und theologiegeschichtliche Studien zu den Briefen des Ignatius von Antiochien. Leiden: Brill, 1999. Lightfoot, Joseph Barber. The Apostolic Fathers 2: S. Ignatius, S. Polycarp. Revised texts. London: MacMillan, 1889. Lindemann, Andreas. “Antwort auf die Thesen zur Echtheit und Datierung der sieben Briefe des Ignatius von Antiochia.” Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 1 (1997): 185 – 194. Maier, Harry O. “Space, Body, and Church in Ignatius of Antioch: Toward a Spatial Treatment.” In Studies on the Text of the New Testament and Early Christianity. Studies in Honour of Michael W. Holmes, edited by Daniel Gurtner, Juan Hernández, and Paul Foster, 517 – 536. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Mayer, Wendy. John Chrysostom. The Early Church Fathers 1. London, 2000. Mayer, Wendy. St. John Chrysostom. The Cult of the Saints, Select Homilies and Letters, introduced, translated, and annotated by Wendy Mayer and Bronwen Neil. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2006. Mayer, Wendy, and Pauline Allen. The Churches of Syrian Antioch (300 – 638 CE). Leuven: Brill, 2012. Mayer, Wendy, and Chris de Wet, eds. Religious Conflict from Early Christianity to the Rise of Islam. Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013. Moss, Candida. “On the Dating of Polycarp. Rethinking the Place of the Martyrdom of Polycarp in the History of Christianity.” Early Christianity 2 (2010)” 539 – 574. Moss, Candida. “Riddle Wrapped in an Enigma. Pauline Reception in the Antiochene Acts of Ignatius.” In Intertextuality in the Second Century, edited by D. Jeffrey Bingham and Clayton N. Jefford, 87 – 97. Leiden: Brill, 2016.

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Moss, Yonatan. “From Syria all the Way to Rome. Ignatius of Antioch’s Pauline Journey to Christianity.” In Journeys in the Roman East. Imagined and Real, edited by Maren R. Niehoff, 409 – 421. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019. Schoedel, William R. Ignatius of Antioch. A Commentary on the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch. Philadelphia: Fotress Press, 1985. Vinzent, Markus. Writing the History of Early Christianity. From Reception to Retrospection. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Waldner, Katharina. “Ignatius’ Reise von Antiochia nach Rom. Zentralität und lokale Vernetzung im christlichen Diskurs des 2. Jahrhunderts.” In Zentralität und Religion. Zur Formierung urbaner Zentren im Imperium Romanum, edited by Hubert Cancik et al. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006. Zahn, Theodor. Ignatius von Antiochien. Gotha: F.A. Perthes, 1873.

Katharina Waldner

When the City Cries: The Spacetime of Persecution in Eusebius’ Martyrs of Palestine Abstract: This essay takes first steps towards the question of the role of spacetime in Eusebius of Caesarea’s Martyrs of Palestine. It examines how Eusebius, through his creative use of time and space, transforms the contingent and traumatic events of the so-called “Great Persecution” (303 – 311) in the province of Palestine into a narrative in which a new Christian identity is constructed. This identity is based on a strong identification with the province of Palestine (which now had to become the “holy land” of Christianity), a political authority especially attributed to the Christian leaders in Caesarea Maritima, and the cultural trauma of persecution whose remembrance is at the same time also represented as bound to “natural” and material places: the city and the sea. Finally, Eusebius introduces a kind of “thirdspace”, the heavenly Jerusalem, that functions as a device to hide and at the same time to appropriate the Jewish contribution to the creation of the idea of martyrdom as well as the vulnerability to imperial violence shared by all groups of people living at Caesarea and in the Province of Palestine.

Martyrdom as Christian History: (Re)constructing Space and Time At the beginning of November 309, a new edict issued by emperor Maximinus Daia reached Caesarea Maritima, the capital of the province Syria Palaestina, which was ruled at that time by the Roman governor Firmilianus. It formed part of the so-called ‘Great Persecution’ of Christians in the Roman Empire under Diocletian and his co-emperors that lasted a whole decade (303 – 313) with the eastern parts of Asia Minor, the Syrian region and Egypt being particularly affected.¹ According to our main source for these events, church historian

 For a reconstruction of the events of the so-called ‘Great Persecution’ cf. Timothy D. Barnes, Christian Hagiography and Roman History, 2nd revised edition (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 138 – 148. Persecutions in general: James Corke-Webster, “The Roman Persecutions,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Christian Martyrdom, ed. Paul Middleton (Oxford: Wiley-Blackhttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783110682632-009

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Eusebius’ Martyrs of Palestine,² the edict not only ordered to rebuild “those idol temples which had fallen” as quickly as possible but also “that care should be taken that all people in a mass, men with their wives and households, even babes at the breast, should offer sacrifice and libations (thýein kai spéndein) and taste with scrupulous care the accursed sacrifices (akribôs tôn enagôn apogeústhei thysiôn epimelès) themselves (…)”. Moreover, the daily life of confessing Christians should be seriously restricted by controlling their willingness to sacrifice at the entrances of baths and by defiling the articles for sale in the marketplace by sacrificial libations (Mart. Pal., SR 9.2). In this situation, Eusebius tells us, a group of three Christians “rushed forward at the magistrate as he was sacrificing to idols, and cried out to him to cease from his error” (Mart. Pal., SR 9.4). The three are described by their names Antonius, Zebinas and Germanus and we are told that Zebinas came from Eleutheropolis, which means that he was a Palestinian too. Firmilian “broke out into a passion” and immediately – even without the common gruesome torture scene – condemned them to death and they were executed on November 13 (Mart. Pal., SR 9.5). What follows was even worse. A Christian virgin called Ennathas from the also Palestinian town Skythopolis was, without having committed any provocative act, stripped by a military tribune notorious for his violent behavior and led naked through the city while being beaten; after her steadfast confession, Firmilian condemned Ennathas to death by flames (9.6 – 8). And as if all this were not cruel enough, the raging of the governor did not stop. He prevented the bodies from being buried to become “food for wild beasts” (9.9) by leaving them somewhere outside in the city streets, so that in the end “the whole city on all sides was strewn with the entrails and bones of men, so that nothing had ever appeared more dreadful and horrible, even to those who formerly hated us” (9.10). This intolerable situation lasted for several days. Having arrived at this painful but also rhetorical climax, Eusebius draws the attention of his readers away from the fundamental conflict between Firmilian and the martyrs to the fact that what is going on well, 2020), 33 – 50. For a short discussion of the problem of “fiction” and “fact” of the persecution of Christians in the research on martyrdom cf. the introduction to this volume, xx and e. g. the contribution by Jan Bremmer, xx, but also the well-considered remarks by Andreas Merkt, “Verfolgung und Martyrium im frühen Christentum. Mythos, Historie, Theologie,” Internationale Katholische Zeitschrift Communio 43, no.4 (2014): 233 – 243.  In what follows SR and LR refer to the short and long recensions of Eusebius’ Martyrs of Palestine. All translations are taken from Eusebius of Caesarea: The Ecclesiastical History and the Martyrs of Palestine, ed. Hugh J. Lawlor and John E. L. Oulton (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1928. The most recent edition of the Greek text of the SR is still the one by Eduard Schwartz and Theodor Mommsen from 1909, repr. in Eusebius Caesariensis, Werke: ed. Eduard Schwartz et al., Band 2, Teil 1– 3: Die Kirchengeschichte (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 1999).

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has to be called an “insult to nature” shared by all inhabitants of the city (tês koinês hapántôn hýbrei phýseôs) (9.10). In contrast to earlier martyrdom literature from the second and third century, where miracles are only seen by the ones “to whom it is given to see it”(Mart. Pol 15.1) Eusebius’ now narrates a miracle that could be seen and experienced by all people living in the town of Caesarea Maritima: Although it was “fine weather,” the many pillars that support the public porches started to “let fall drop by drop as it were tears” (dakryôn tinà trópon hoi pleíous stalagmoùs apéstazon) (9.12). At the end of the episode Eusebius gestures again towards a “natural” and universal dimension of the events, and now he encompasses not only the city but the whole earth: “(…) immediately the story was on everyone’s lips that the earth, unable to endure the wickedness of these deeds, had mysteriously shed tears; and that, as a rebuke to the relentless and unfeeling nature of man (phýseôs ategktou kaì asympathoûs anthrôpon), stones and lifeless matter bewailed what had taken place. I know well that my word will seem, perchance, idle talk (Luke 24:11), and a fable (mythos) to those who come after us, but not to those who have had its truth accredited on the spot” (9.12– 13). With this very last sentence of the episode referring to the unbelievable message about the empty tomb of Jesus, the reader is brought back to the Christian layer of this horrible story about an excess of Roman imperial violence in a peripheral, militarily defeated area of the Roman Empire.³ And there is more: We have evidence from Rabbinic sources that the legend of the crying pillars at Caesarea Maritima was probably first used by the Jewish community to describe the morning after the death of R. Abbahu,⁴ an elder contemporary of Eusebius who had established at Caesarea his own famous school of Torah in the “synagogue of rebellion”.⁵

 For an interpretation of Christian martyrdom discourse (esp. of the 2nd and 3rd century) in the context of Roman imperial politics cf. e. g. Judith Perkins, Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era (London: Routledge, 2001); cf. also Paul Holloway, Coping with Prejudice: 1 Peter in Social-Psychological Perspective (WUNT 244) (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 40 – 75.  BT Moed Katan 25; PT, Abodah Zarah III.1.42c, cf. Joseph Patrich, “The Martyrs of Caesarea: The Urban Context,” Liber Annuus 52 (2002): 321– 346 at 333, n. 47 with reference to Saul Liebermann, “The Martyrs of Caesarea, Annuaire de l’Institute de philologie et d’histoire orientales et slaves 7 (1939 – 44): 395 – 446 at 400 – 402.  For the history of the Jewish community at Caesarea Maritima cf. Irving M. Levine, “Caesarea and the Jews”, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Supplementary Studies 19 (1975). The Joint Expedition to Caesarea Maritima. Vol. I. Studies in the History of Caesarea Maritima, 43 – 78, who states at 59: “Caesarea as the Metropolis of Torah par excellence of the Palestinian Amoraic epoch is the handiwork of Abbahau” and mentions the “synagogue of the Torah” with reference to Mid. Sam. 7.Y.Nazir, 56a (ibid. note 197).

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This moving and at the same time rhetorically highly overdetermined story of the three martyrs and Ennathas draws us immediately in the very fabric of Eusebius’ still too seldom studied rhetorical masterpiece Martyrs of Palestine. ⁶ It is extant in a long recension which was composed by Eusebius soon after the persecution was stopped when Galerius issued the Edict of Toleration in April 311. Unfortunately, we do not have, with the exception of some fragments, the original Greek text of this version but a Syriac translation with some lacunae. When the persecution after restarting again for a short time in November 311 finally ceased in summer 313, Eusebius composed a short version of the Martyrs of Palestine which he inserted as book eight in the 313/14 edition of his Ecclesiastical History and which is extant in some manuscripts of it.⁷ However, in his second edition of the Ecclesiastical History from 315/16 Eusebius replaced the short recension of Martyrs of Palestine by what is now book eight in our modern editions, that is, as Barnes critically states, another rewritten version of the short recension, “which Eusebius has, without complete success, tried to turn into a general account of the ‘Great Persecution’ down to the death of Galerius.”⁸ Before we move to detailed consideration of the way Eusebius uses space (and also time) to produce his memoire of the ‘Great Persecution’ in Palestine, and especially at its capital, Caesarea Maritima, let us consider some basic traits of his account, which are well illustrated by the above summarized story of the martyrdoms of Antonius, Zebinas, Germanus and Ennathas. First of all, the juxtaposition of the totally dysfunctional, uncontrolled and inappropriate behavior of the Roman authorities toward the virtuous and steadfast characters of the Christian martyrs has to be highlighted.⁹ It is typical to the style of this very special historiographical text written in a kind of liminal situation during the last phase of the historical shift of Christianity from a marginalized position to the

 With the exception of Corke-Webster, “Author and Authority: Literary Representations of Moral Authority in Eusebius of Caesarea’s The Martyrs of Palestine,” in Christian Martyrdom in Late Antiquity (300 – 450 AD): History, Discourse, and Religious Identity, ed. Peter Gemeinhardt and Johan Leemans (Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012), 51– 78 and James Corke-Webster, “A Literary Historian: Eusebius of Caesarea and the Martyrs of Lyons and Palestine,” Studia Patristica 66 (2013): 191– 202 and Barnes, Christian Hagiographie, 119 – 124 and 387– 392 Eusebius’ Martyrs of Palestine was to my knowledge not analyzed for its’ own sake in the scholarship of the last years.  This essay thus follows the consensus concerning dating and adopts the theory developed from a seminal essay by Timothy D. Barnes, “Some Inconsistencies in Eusebius,” Journal of Theological Studies 35 (1984): 470 – 475. For further discussion, James Corke-Webster, “Author and Authority”, 54– 56.  Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography, 391.  Corke-Webster, “Author and Authority,” 55 – 65.

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center of imperial power, a situation which must have been, especially in the eastern part of the Roman Empire, a severe social and political crisis.¹⁰ Further, as Corke-Webster has convincingly shown, it represents, in addition to the above mentioned universalization of the experience of miracles, a second remarkable contrast to earlier martyrdom narratives.¹¹ Now the governors are no longer the unwilling and hesitant fulfillers of the will of pagan mobs as in the second and third century martyrdom acts, but in the worst case scenario they fully engage in enforcing the imperial edicts against the Christians.¹² The three governors of Palaestina during the time of the great persecution (Flavian, Urban and Firmilian) show, according to their representation by Eusebius, a considerable lack of the highly esteemed qualities of the Roman iudex and pater which would otherwise have given them legitimate political authority.¹³ Instead, this authority is now moving to the Christian leaders who recommend themselves by their supportive and caring behavior towards the members of their households and their fellow Christians and by their steadfastness under torture.¹⁴ The second most important concern of Martyrs of Palestine is to construct a new kind of Palestinian Christian identity. Again we find a Christian leader, in this case the highly reputed head of the school and library of Origen and Pamphilus and the future bishop of Caesarea himself, who takes on a decidedly political task, namely to unite the people of a province under a central rule. But of course, there was also a new Christian agenda in the background. The province of Palestine had to become gradually the “holy land” of Christian pilgrimage and, as it is well known, in the time of Constantine new churches but also martyria were built to express the victory of Christianity “architecturally”.¹⁵ Eusebius anticipated these tendencies in written and narrative form. This holds not only for the Martyrs of Palestine but also for his Onomastikon that collects among other entries, alphabetical lists of place-names referring to the bible. In this way he transformed the hellenized and Jewish landscape and topography of Palestine into a Christian one.¹⁶  Corke-Webster, “Author and Authority,” 56, speaks about “seismic cultural shifts.”  Corke-Webster, “Author and Authority,” 76.  Cf. Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography, 138 who points out that the severity of the persecution depended on how zealously the local governor implemented the imperial edicts.  Corke-Webster, “Author and Authority,” 70 – 71.  Corke-Webster, “Author and Authority,” 76 – 78.  Joseph Patrich, “The Early Christianization of the Holy Land – The Archaeological Evidence,” in Costantino e i Costantinidi: l’innovazione costantiniana, le sue radici e i suoi sviluppi, ed. Olof Brandt and Gabriele Castiglia (Città del Vaticano: Pontificio Istituto di Archaeologia Cristiana, 2016), 265 – 293 at 237.  Patrich, “Early Christianization,” 265.

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Overall, the production of the martyrdom accounts in Martyrs of Palestine is of extraordinary importance to Eusebius’ innovative oeuvre as the first historian of the church, and as such the Martyrs of Palestine goes far beyond an individual reworking of a traumatizing situation for Eusebius himself and the Palestinian Christian communities at the beginning of the fourth century, as especially Corke-Webster argues.¹⁷ At the very beginning of the Ecclesiastical History, when Eusebius thus tries to describe how he will master the challenge of being a pioneer in the composition of a history of the Church, he lists martyrdom at the start: Other composers of historical narratives would certainly have committed to writing victories in war, triumphs over enemies, the prowess of generals and the brave deeds of soldiers defiled with the blood of many thousands whom they slaughtered for the sake of their children, fatherland and also material possessions. But our exposition of God’s commonwealth (tò katà theôn polítheuma) will inscribe on everlasting monuments the record of most peaceful wars on behalf of the very peace of the soul and of those who in them showed bravery on behalf of truth rather than fatherland, of piety rather than their nearest and dearest, proclaiming for everlasting memory the constancy and the courage amid such suffering of the champions of piety, their triumphs over demons and victories over invisible adversaries, and their crowns of martyrdom when all was done. (Hist. eccl. 5.prol. 4; trans. Lawlor and Oulton)

Martyrdoms, always clearly located in space and time by a date and a concrete place, build one of the most basic structures of Eusebius’ church history. But he by no means glorifies the voluntariness of or the desire for martyrdom in his introduction. The same holds true for the Martyrs of Palestine where the martyrs are praised for their love for Jesus Christ and God and not so much for their eagerness or willingness to die (Mart. Pal., LR praef.).¹⁸ Much stronger seems the desire of Eusebius himself “that the Christian community appears homogenous through history”,¹⁹ which means that he tries to construct a Christina attitude towards persecution and martyrdom that should stay unchanged from the begin Corke-Webster, “Author and Authority”, 51– 56  This praefatio is only extant in the Syriac version of the long recension (LR). For Eusebius’ moderating attitude towards the longing for martyrdom or ‘voluntary martyrdom’ and his dependence on Origines of Alexandria in this see James Corke-Webster, Eusebius and Empire: Constructing Church and Rome in the Ecclesiastical History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 175 – 212. To the motive of “death as the necessary fulfillment of the love of God” in the Rabbinical tradition as a parallel to Origines’ writings see Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford: Stanford University Press 1999), 122 – 125, quote: 122.  James Corke-Webster, “A Literary Historian: Eusebius of Caesarea and the Martyrs of Lyon and Palestine”, Studia Patristica 66 (2013), 191– 202 at 191.

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nings until his own time, where he had to face the highly traumatic experience of the already institutionally quite developed Christian Church being persecuted in a systematic and violent way. So one might dare to hypothesize that by using martyrdom as one of the main structuring principles of his church history Eusebius not only invented a new kind of history, but also tried to understand and overcome the traumatic experience of the great persecution from which he emerged as a survivor. By this he transformed an individual trauma into a cultural one.²⁰ In a highly interesting volume on trauma and biblical studies edited by EveMarie Becker, Jan Dietrich and Else K. Holt, Jan Dietrich shows how ancient stories about violence quite often transform individual experiences into something he calls “cultural trauma,” that is, “a catastrophe that continues to be recalled in cultural memory in such a way that its wounds are (either directly or indirectly) revealed and not healed by time.”²¹ Eusebius‘ first step in this process was obviously to pen the long version of the Martyrs of Palestine, in a second step, he inserted the abbreviated form into his Ecclesiastical History. When we now start to analyse spacetime in the Martyrs of Palestine in detail, we will not only hopefully find the traces of just this transformation of an individual into a cultural trauma, but also observe, how Eusebius uses space and time to construct a Christian identity that in contrast to the universal identity of the “Christianus/ a sum” of earlier martyr acts refers to the province of Palestine.

 Of course, at the same time he constructed the history of a persecuted Church that can be understood as “myth of persecution” as shows especially Candida Moss, The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2013), 217– 240.  Jan Dietrich, “Cultural Traumata in the Near East”, in Trauma and Traumatization in Individual and Collective Dimensions: Insights from Biblical Studies and Beyond, ed. Eve-Marie Becker, Jan Dochhorn and Else K. Holt (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Rupprecht, 2014), 145 – 161, at 147; on the history of early Christianity and trauma studies cf. also Michael J. Thate, The Godman and the Sea: The Empty Tomb, the Trauma of the Jews, and the Gospel of Mark. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.

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Place, Space and Time in the Martyrs of Palestine A Province on the Sea Side When we ask about the use of place and space as well as time in the Martyrs of Palestine, one realizes first that although the events are presented as a series of short dramas the unity of place, time and action of the whole composition is sometimes oddly scattered. This is all the more striking because in principle Eusebius follows in both recensions the basic structure of acta martyrum in giving, together with names and numbers of protagonists, place and date of each event. In addition, in the short recension he adds as an important structuring principle the names of governors and emperors²² and the dates of their edicts, which were presented as triggering the painful events of martyrdom.²³ Although the majority of the martyrdoms take place at Caesarea Maritima, in both recensions Eusebius also tells us stories about Palestinian martyrs in other towns, at Antioch, Gaza, Tyre, Alexandria and Ashkelon.²⁴ Strikingly, he does not tell his readers, why and especially how he as a narrator moves to these other places. Did he get written accounts or oral narratives from there? Was he present as an eyewitness himself? As if he would feel uneasy about these inconsistencies by himself, he sometimes tries to knit the spatial break together through a unity of time. The following two examples might illustrate how Eusebius breaks or maybe crosses his own spatiotemporal structure. In the very first part of the short and the long recension, he gives an account of several martyrdoms obviously located at Caesarea between April and November 303, in the first year of the persecution under the governor Flavian (Mart. Pal., SR Pref.–1.5). He then moves suddenly to Antioch: “Worthy of mention also is the treatment of Romanus at Antioch on the same day (tês autês hêméras). Now this man, who was a Palestinian, and a deacon and an exorcist of the community at Caesarea, came to Antioch at the very time the churches were

 His principle of order is similar to that of his contemporary Lactantius who also reacted to the ‘Great Persecution’ by his De mortibus persecutorum that is structured through the succession of emperors. On Lactantius and the history of persecution cf. DePalma Digeser, Elizabeth, A Threat to Public Piety: Christians, Platonists and the Great Persecution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012).  Cf. above note 12.  Antioch: Mart. Pal., SR 2.1; Gaza: Mart. Pal., SR 3.1 and 8.4; Tyre: Mart. Pal., SR 5.1; Alexandria: Mart. Pal., SR 5.2; Ashkelon: Mart. Pal., SR 10.1.

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destroyed” (SR 2.1).²⁵ An almost identical phrasing can be found in the second example, located in the year 306 under Maximinus Daia when Eusebius switches from Caesarea to Tyre: “About the same time and on the same days, at the city of Tyre a young man named Ulpian, was shut up in a raw ox-hide along with a dog and that venomous reptile, an asp, and committed to the sea” (Mart Pal., SR 4.15). If we look nearer to the explanations that were given by Eusebius for these kinds of spatial transgressions we find two patterns that seem at first sight to be inconsistent with each other, the first refers to a Palestinian identity, the second to the common suffering of the same sort of a cruel death. In the first case Eusebius thus highlights that Romanus belongs to the group of Christian leaders at Caesarea and that he is a Palestinian, which is brought forth again as a kind of excuse for the digression at the very end of the account: “And though he was outside his own country, yet, being a Palestinian, he may rightly be reckoned among the Palestinian martyrs” (Mart. Pal., SR 3.5). Our second example (interestingly missing in the LR) is different, as Tyre is a Palestinian City; to our surprise, Eusebius brings forth a different explanation for his digression, which sounds also slightly apologetic: “He too had previously suffered terrible tortures and scourgings of the severest kind. Therefore, in my opinion it is right that he also should be mentioned in the account of the martyrdom of Apphianus.” (Mart. Pal., SR 5.1) We cannot know why exactly Eusebius authored this kind of spatial digression. But by studying how he phrases them, we get some insight into the fabric of his narratological art, as well as into the probable effects of such texts on the readers. By repeatedly referring at the same time to the Christian community (most often the one of Christian leaders at Caesarea) and the Palestinian affiliations of the martyrs, which transcends not only the Capital Caesarea but also the concrete border of the province of Palestine, he constructs the latter as an imagined space peopled (exclusively) by steadfast Christian martyrs belonging to the Christian community, with the school of Pamphilus at Caesarea as its center.²⁶ The reader cannot help but share this perspective and thus experience a kind of provincial identity that intermingles religion, the authority of Christian leaders and imperial politics in a new way. But this new identity transports with it the remembrance of extremely traumatic events, as may be inferred from our second example. There Eusebius uses the cruel way of the martyrs’ deaths, being thrown  The LR here is even shorter: “And on the same day also Romanus suffered martyrdom at the city of Antioch.”  On Pamphilus and Eusebius see Elizabeth Claire Penland, Martyrs as Philosophers: The School of Pamphilus and Ascetic Tradition in Eusebius‘ Martyrs of Palestine, Yale University 2010 and Corke-Webster, Eusebius and Empire, 20 – 37.

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into the sea, shut up with disgusting animals in an ox-hide, as the very motive that unites the different places Caesarea and Tyre: The Christian Palestinian identity is thus formed as a traumatic one and its remembrance is bound to a very concrete place again: the sea (and as we will see later on also the city of Caesarea itself). For it is not by accident that Eusebius feels compelled to mention the martyrdom of Ulpian just at this point of his narrative. Immediately before he had given the account of the martyrdom of the young Apphianus which gives, besides the martyrdom of Pamphilus himself a kind of portrait of the school of Eusebius.²⁷ Apphianus is described as erudite and of “perfect moral state” which the young Christian had acquired by the zealous study of scripture probably in the school of Pamphilus and Eusebius (Mart. Pal., SR 4.5 – 7). The young man tries to prevent the governor from sacrificing and even convinces others by his example and his words not to be intimidated by threats and punishments. Of course the governor reacts furiously at him and after having undergone all kind of tortures to force the martyr to sacrifice “on the third day he was brought once more before the judge, and when he had confessed to the same resolve, although now half-dead, was consigned to the sea”. (Mart. Pal., SR 4.13) Apphianus is not the only martyr thrown into the sea directly from the praetorium, which was prominently situated on a promontory to the south of the harbor, at the former, now enlarged palace of the founder and builder of the City, king Herodes. ²⁸ As in the case of the unburied corpses strewn all over the city, Eusebius recounts now a miracle by which nature reacts to the excessively cruel behavior of the governor. There is a sudden earthquake which provokes a kind of tsunami and “simultaneously with this marvellous and sudden shock, the sea cast up the corpse of the divine martyr before the gates of the city, as if it could not bear it.” (Mart. Pal., SR 4.15). The sea becomes in this way a kind of memory space of the cultural trauma of martyrdom which should, according to Eusebius, from now onwards form the identity of the Palestinian Christians. Finally, the way Eusebius breaks the unity of place produces the question about the position of Eusebius or the ‘internal observer’ himself. Did he want to be seen as an eyewitness of all these gruesome events?²⁹ But could he have been at Caesarea and Antioch at the same time? Of course the answer must

 For the school of Eusebius, cf. Corke-Webster, Eusebius and Empire, 89 – 120.  On the archaeological remains of the sites mentioned in the Mart. Pal. in general see Joseph Patrich, “The Martyrs of Caesarea: The Urban Context,” Liber Annuus 52 (2002): 321– 346 on the praetorium ibid., 329 – 332. Besides Apphianus the following martyrs are thrown into the sea: Ulpian at Tyre (Mart.Pal., SR 5.1); Aedesius at Alexandria (SR 5.3), Agapius of Gaza at Caesarea (SR 6.7); Theodosia (SR 7.2).  As he suggests in Hist.eccl. 8.13.7.

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be, no. The text produces a rather ambivalent position of Eusebius as a survivor of the persecution.³⁰ Ancient audiences might not have cared about it so much because they were used to the very fact that imperial violence was unpredictable and arbitrary. But of course, by reading and hearing the text they shared Eusebius’ universalizing position of the omniscient narrator, which also meant to share the hopeful position of the survivor whose duty and desire was fulfilled in the memory and praising of the martyrs. By this it became possible that the narrative production of the cultural trauma of martyrdom might not have led the readers to feel victimized by identification with the traumatized martyrs of Palestine.³¹

The City and its (In)Vulnerable People At the very beginning of this essay, we discussed the key scene by which Eusebius transforms the entire city of Caesarea Maritima into a sight or, better, a space of traumatic remembrance; and as in the case of the sea that regurgitates the corpse of a martyr, by the miracle of the crying pillars, the place itself reacts to the human violence inflicted unjustly upon the Christian inhabitants of Caesarea. If we ask how Eusebius represents the city with its different topographical places (the praetorium, the prison, the stadium, the gates and the harbor), the result is rather disappointing. Obviously, Eusebius is not interested in a concrete topography at all. Instead, he concentrates on the powerful men and their actions, their political and juridical functions, as well as on the positions and functions of the martyrs, many of them leaders in the local Christian churches of Palestine, and, of course, on their Palestinian affiliations. One might explain this by the assumption that Eusebius addressed his text primarily to the inhabitants of the province who perfectly knew the topography of its famous capital. But if at least the short recension was really directed to a broader audience, why did he not supplement the text with additional topographic information, for example, about the location of the praetorium, its “hall of justice” (dikastérion), the prison,

 From his own remarks in Hist. eccl. 6.33.4 we know that he assisted the imprisoned Pamphilus in the preparation of an apology for Origen’s teaching. After the death of Pamphilus he probably withdrew to Tyre and later to Egpyt. But there is no clear evidence; later Epiphanius of Salamis recounted that Eusebius was accused of apostasy (Pan. 68.8.4).  In fact, the perspective of the narrator as observer and producer of graphic descriptions of all the torture scenes brings the reader or hearer in a rather powerful ‚voyeuristic‘ position; cf. Lucy Grig, Lucy, “Torture and Truth in Late Antique Martyrology,” Early Medieval Europe 11 (2002), 321– 326.

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the altar of official sacrifices by the magistrates and so on?³² In principle, we cannot answer such questions with historical reliability. But what we can do is analyze the effects upon readers and audiences produced by Eusebius’ way of (not) representing the topography of Caesarea Maritima. The first effect is, of course, that the protagonists and their actions, but also their networks of affiliations, move to the center of attention. This serves on one side to highlight the more personal dimension of the text, which Barnes describes aptly: “The Martyrs of Palestine is rather a memoir of Eusebius’ Palestinian friends and acquaintances who suffered martyrdom in the years 303 – 311, a sort of record of his friends pictured therein”. ³³ At the same time as a second effect, the almost archetypical, placeless representation of the city of Caesarea helps to transform Eusebius’ individual traumatic loss into a universal space of cultural trauma; there is the city – and with dikastérion, gates, and stadium it might be every provincial capital in the Roman Empire – which is strewn by the entrails of Christian martyrs and whose pillars were crying in the face of this unbearable sight. This universalization of Christian cultural trauma as trauma of a provincial city makes it, on the one hand, possible to describe a kind of common reaction and shared vulnerability to imperial violence of all its inhabitants. But on the other hand, it makes the variety of traumatic and other experiences disappear. In Eusebius’ Caesarea there are altars and idols, baths and a market place, but no temples and no synagogues. At least, we get a more complete picture of the inhabitants of Caesarea by the record of the highly ambivalent prayers of the martyr Paul: “(…) then he desired that the Jews might be brought to God through Christ; after that he went on to request that the same boon for the Samaritans also; moreover, he entreated that the Gentiles who were in error and ignorance of God might come to the knowledge (1 Tim 2:4)” (Mart. Pal., SR 8.11). Since the time of Nero, Caesarea was a site of extreme conflicts and enormous and numerable outbreaks of violence between Jews, the Greek population, and the representatives of Roman imperial power.³⁴ Nevertheless, after the Jewish War and the Bar-Kokhba revolt, Jewish life and theological schools at Caesarea recovered and in Rabbinic literature, “Caesarea and her environs are designated as the ‘land of the living’ (Ps 116:9).”³⁵ As already said, the

 Patrich, “The Martyrs of Caesarea”, presents in detail the archaeological remains of the places that are mentioned but not described by Eusebius.  Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography, 119 – 120.  Flavius Josephus in his Jewish War (2.18.1) knows of about twenty thousand Jews who were killed at Caesarea in 66 BCE; cf. Levey, “Caesarea and the Jews”, 47– 50.  Levey, “Caesarea and the Jews,” 54.

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legend of the crying city also formed part of the Jewish cultural heritage at Caesarea Maritima.³⁶ The idea that martyrdom is an expression of the love of God and not so much a striving for the death and paradise that Eusebius puts at the very beginning of the long recension, can also be found in rabbinical sources.³⁷ Eusebius (mis‐)represents these “other” vulnerabilities and desires by making them part of the account of the martyrdom of his beloved teacher Pamphilus with companions in February 310, after his mentor had been imprisoned for two years. Among the group were also, as Eusebius tells it, five Christians from Egypt who were arrested at the gates of Caesarea on their way home from Cilicia. During their interrogation, they tell their names with obvious references to Jewish prophets: Elijah, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Samuel and Daniel. Eusebius explains that they had given these names themselves to replace their former pagan names received from their parents and “belonging to idols”. Asked by the governor about their names, one answers “that Jerusalem was his city”, and Eusebius confirms that of course the heavenly Jerusalem is meant.³⁸ But the governor cannot understand this and is anxious about a new city from which resistance to Rome might spring and thus tortures them to find out where the city lays. The martyr who describes the city “as the country of the godly alone” goes into a state of perfect calm and painlessness, as if he were already in the heavenly Jerusalem (Mart. Pal. 11.5 – 7). Judaism is represented as “names of prophets,” i. e. scripture that is appropriated by the Christians, and the now no longer existing city of Jerusalem, which in reality was renamed to Aelia Capitolina, is transformed into a new kind of space that lies beyond all real places but is also the traumatic space of the city.³⁹ But by this introduction of a kind of transcendent space (and place) which offered the Christians “calm and painlessness”, not only the vulnerability of the Christians, but also the suffering of the Jewish inhabitants of Caesarea are made to disappear and to become thoroughly excluded from memory. Only its traces may be found in the story of the crying city which was in fact shared by both ‘Jews’ and ‘Christians.’

 See above note 4.  See above note 18.  Eusebius inserts references to Gal. 4:26 and Hebr. 12:22.  A very similar story (missing in the SR) is told in the LR 8.1 about a group of martyrs at Diocaesarea which is described as a city whose inhabitants are all Jews. The Egyptian Christians again bear the name of Jewish prophets. That made the ‘Jews’ admire the Christian confessors, whereas “they themselves were despised for their wickedness and apostasy”. Erica Carotenuto, “Eusebius of Caesarea on Romanus of Antioch: A Note on Eusebius, De Martyribus Palaestinae (Syriac Translation) 7, 7– 9, 9,” The Classical Journal 98, no. 4 (2003): 389 – 396 suggests, that the Egyptian Christians with their Jewish names might be a fabrication by Eusebius.

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Conclusion Although this contribution is too short and too preliminary to achieve really sustainable results it has shown how fruitful an analysis of martyrdom accounts can be if it is guided by the question on space and time. Eusebius turned out to be an author who perhaps intuitively knew how to use the construction and narrative representation of space and time to transform individual loss into cultural trauma. At the same time, he could refer to an already established discourse of martyrdom, but he transformed it considerably by insisting on a new Christian position that was striving to political authority and universal acceptance as well as a clearly different stance from “Judaism”. In his important and still understudied historiographical masterpiece Martyrs of Palestine, he produces an account of the ‘Great Persecution’ that fulfills his desire for peace and unity of a new Christian Church by offering a new Christian identity that is based not only on religious and political affiliation, but also at the same time on shared cultural trauma. The local and personal experience of violence and trauma during the ‘Great Persecution’ in Palestine is made a cultural and universal one that nevertheless refers to concrete and local but at the same time universal spaces: the sea and the city. Finally, Eusebius introduces a kind of “thirdspace”, the heavenly Jerusalem, that functions as a device to hide and at the same time to appropriate the Jewish contribution to the creation of the idea of martyrdom as well as the vulnerability to imperial violence by all groups of people living at Caesarea and in the Province of Palestine.

Bibliography Barnes, Timothy D. “Some Inconsistencies in Eusebius.” Journal of Theological Studies 35 (1984): 470 – 475. Barnes, Timothy D. Early Christian Hagiography and Roman History. 2nd revised edition. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016. Becker, Eve-Marie, Jan Dochhorn, Else K. Holt eds. Trauma and Traumatization in Individual and Collective Dimensions: Insights from Biblical Studies and Beyond. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Rupprecht, 2014. Boayrin, Daniel. Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. Bowersock, Glen W. Martyrdom and Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Carotenuto, Erica. “Eusebius of Caesarea on Romanus of Antioch: A Note on Eusebius, De Martyribus Palaestinae (Syriac Translation) 7, 7 – 9, 9.” The Classical Journal 98, no. 4 (2003): 389 – 396.

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Corke-Webster, James. “Author and Authority: Literary Representations of Moral Authority in Eusebius of Caesarea’s The Martyrs of Palestine.” In Christian Martyrdom in Late Antiquity (300 – 450 AD): History, Discourse, and Religious Identity, edited by Peter Gemeinhardt and Johan Leemans, 51 – 78. Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012. Corke-Webster, James. “A Literary Historian: Eusebius of Caesarea and the Martyrs of Lyon and Palestine.” Studia Patristica 66 (2013): 191 – 202 Corke-Webster, James. Eusebius and Empire: Constructing Church and Rome in the Ecclesiastical History. Cambridge University Press, 2019. Corke-Webster, James. “The Roman Persecutions,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Christian Martyrdom, edited by Paul Middleton, 33 – 50. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020. DePalma Digeser, Elizabeth, A Threat to Public Piety: Christians, Platonists and the Great Persecution. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012. Dietrich, Jan. “Cultural Traumata in the Near East.” In Trauma and Traumatization in Individual and Collective Dimensions: Insights from Biblical Studies and Beyond, edited by Eve-Marie Becker, Jan Dochhorn, Else K. Holt. 145 – 161. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Rupprecht, 2014. Downey, Glanville. “Caesarea and the Christian Church.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Supplementary Studies, no. 19 (1975): 23 – 42. Eusebius. Ecclesiastical History, Volume I: Books 1 – 5. Translated by Kirsopp Lake. Loeb Classical Library 153. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926. Grig, Lucy. “Torture and Truth in Late Antique Martyrology.” Early Medieval Europe 11 (2002), 321 – 326. Holloway, Paul. Coping with Prejudice: 1 Peter in Social-Psychological Perspective (WUNT 244). Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009. Lawlor, Hugh Jackson and John E. L. Oulton, eds. Eusebius Bishop of Caesarea: The Ecclesiastical History and the Martyrs of Palestine. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1928. Lieberman, Saul. “The Martyrs of Caesarea.” Annuaire de l’Institut de philologie et d’ histoire orientales et slaves 7 (1939 – 1944): 395 – 446. Levey, Irving M. “Caesarea and the Jews.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Supplementary Studies, no. 19 (1975): 43 – 78. Merkt, Andreas. “Verfolgung und Martyrium im frühen Christentum. Mythos, Historie, Theologie.” Internationale Katholische Zeitschrift Communio 43, no.4 (2014): 233 – 243. Moss, Candida. The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom. San Francisco: HarperOne, 2013. Patrich, Joseph. “The Early Christianization of the Holy Land – The Archaeological Evidence.” In Costantino e i Costantinidi: l’innovazione costantiniana, le sue radici e i suoi sviluppi, edited by Olof Brandt and Gabriele Castiglia, 265 – 293. Città del Vaticano, 2016. Patrich, Joseph. “The Martyrs of Caesarea: The Urban Context.” Liber Annuus 52 (2002): 321 – 346. Patrich, Joseph. “Urban Space in Caesarea Maritima, Israel.” In Urban Centres and Rural Contexts in Late Antiquity, edited by Thomas S. Burns and John W. Eadie, 77 – 110. Michigan State University Press, 2001. Penland, Elizabeth Claire. Martyrs as Philosophers: The School of Pamphilus and Ascetic Tradition in Eusebius‘ Martyrs of Palestine, Yale University 2010.

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Perkins, Judith. Roman Identities in the Early Christian Era. London: Routdledge, 2008. Thate, Michael J. The Godman and the Sea: The Empty Tomb, the Trauma of the Jews, and the Gospel of Mark. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. Waldner, Katharina.”Visions, Prophecy, and Authority in the Passio Perpetuae.” In Perpetua’s Passions: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis, edited by Jan Bremmer and Marco Formisano, 201 – 219. Oxford: University Press, 2012.

Jennifer Otto

Making Martyrs Mennonite Abstract: Next to the Bible, the Martyrs Mirror is the most revered book in the Mennonite Christian tradition. First published in 1660, Martyrs Mirror plays a significant, if increasingly problematic, role in Mennonite identity formation and devotional piety to this day. The second part of this massive work is by far the more well-known; it recounts the executions of 803 named Anabaptists who were executed over the course of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. More often overlooked is the first, and shorter, section of Martyrs Mirror, which narrates martyrdoms that occurred prior to the sixteenth century, including John the Baptist, Stephen, and of all the original twelve apostles. Perhaps more surprisingly for a text treasured by a tradition that rejected wholesale the veneration of the saints and the belief in their powers of intercession on behalf of the living, Martyrs Mirror also relates the deaths of such famous early Christian martyrs as Justin, Polycarp, Ignatius, Blandina and the Martyrs of Lyons and Vienne, Perpetua and Felicitas, and the military martyr Marinus. By strategically incorporating some—but not all—martyrs of the early church into its massive anthology of faithful deaths, Martyrs Mirror asserts the continuity of the persecuted Anabaptists in a long tradition of Christian faithfulness.

Introduction To the best of my recollection, I was about eleven or twelve years old when I first encountered the concept of martyrdom. It was in the context of my junior high school youth group, at the Mennonite church where I grew up in a small town in Ontario, Canada. In an effort to teach us about the history of our Mennonite tradition, our Sunday School teachers brought out a massive book from the shelf of our church library—the Martyrs Mirror. The book contained page after page of accounts of torture, mutilation, and execution, meted out against our ancestors, both spiritual and genetic, who were guilty of nothing beyond the refusal to renounce their simple faith in Jesus. The stories that drew the most attention were the ones accompanied by gory and macabre images that graphically depicted the scenes described by the text. I do not remember being particularly disturbed by the images’ violence at the time, nor do I remember questioning whether the accounts narrated in that book were true, or whether they were biased, or why they had been recorded and preserved in the first place, or why it was that my youth group was reading them. From what I can remember of my first encounter with https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110682632-010

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the Martyrs Mirror, I think I was mostly impressed with the courage displayed by the martyrs’ stalwart refusal to surrender, even in the face of death, and that I was vaguely afraid that someday I might find myself in the same situation. Next to the Bible, the Martyrs Mirror is the most revered book in the Mennonite Christian tradition. First published in 1660, Martyrs Mirror plays a significant, if increasingly problematic, role in Mennonite identity formation and devotional piety to this day.¹ In some communities, a copy is still given to couples as a wedding gift, ensuring that the Martyrs Mirror can be found in each Mennonite household.² Although it is now universally known as the Martyrs Mirror, the compilation’s full original title was “The Bloody Theatre, or Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Christians, Who Baptized Only Upon Confession of Faith, and Who Suffered and Died for the Testimony of Jesus, Their Saviour, From the time of Christ to year AD 1660.” Its sheer size—the most recent English edition, published in 2012, clocks in at 1158 pages—ensures that the majority of its contents will remain unread by all but the most dedicated owners.³ Martyrs Mirror was compiled by a Dutch Mennonite pastor named Thieleman van Braght who, though credited as the work’s author, drew heavily on previously published martyrologies and histories. The massive work is divided into two parts, the second of which is by far the more well-known, recounting the executions of 803 named non-conformist Christians who were executed over the course of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In addition to narratives of arrests and executions, van Braght incorporated primary source documents into his text, such as songs composed and sung as memorials to the martyrs in Mennonite communities, as well as court proceedings and trial records. More often overlooked, both by popular readers and by Mennonite scholars, is the first, and shorter, section of the Martyrs Mirror, which consists of an account of the martyrs who met their deaths prior to the sixteenth century. In this section, one finds narrated the deaths of Jesus, of John the Baptist, of Stephen, and of all the original twelve apostles. Perhaps more surprisingly for a tradition of Biblicist leaning that rejected wholesale the veneration of the saints and the belief in their powers of intercession on behalf of the living, the Martyrs Mirror also relates the deaths of such famous early Christian martyrs as Justin,

 Critical reflections on the role of Martyrs Mirror in shaping Mennonite identity have been collected in Tongue Screws and Testimony: Poems, Stories, and Essays Inspired by the Martyrs Mirror, ed. Kristen Eve Beachy (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2010).  David L. Weaver-Zercher, Martyrs Mirror: A Social History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), x.  Thieleman van Braght, Martyrs Mirror, trans. Joseph F. Sohm (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2012).

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Polycarp, Ignatius, Blandina and the Martyrs of Lyons and Vienne, Perpetua and Felicitas, and the military martyr Marinus. This essay considers the martyrs of the early Church as they are reflected in the Martyrs Mirror. I argue that by assembling a continuous history of martyrdom stretching back to the death of Christ himself, van Braght’s Martyrs Mirror sets out to overcome distances of space and time that separated a relatively small sect of non-conformist Christians in the seventeenth-century Netherlands from a longer tradition of Christian faithfulness. In the Martyrs Mirror, both geographical space and the passing of centuries are transcended, as the author asserts the conformity of his own community’s faith and practice with the original, unaltered, and true Christian faith for which the martyrs of old suffered and died. As we shall see, however, like the historians and heresiologists of late antiquity, van Braght sometimes needed to cite his sources selectively in order to bolster his claims of the uniformity of true Christian faith and practice across time and space. This he did by passing over inconvenient details in silence, and, on occasion, striking particularly problematic martyrs off his list entirely.

Mennonite Origins Before diving into the text of Martyrs Mirror, allow me first to relate a few brief words about the tradition that produced and continues to see itself reflected in this book.⁴ Contemporary Mennonites understand themselves to be heirs to the so-called “radical wing” of the sixteenth-century Reformation.⁵ The name “Mennonite” is derived from Menno Simons, a former Catholic priest from Witmarsum in Friesland who became a prominent leader of the Dutch radical reform movement in the late 1530s. Mennonite historians trace the origins of the movement back even further, to the circle of humanists who gathered around Ulrich Zwingli in Zurich in the early 1520s to study the scriptures intensively. Convinced that Zwingli’s proposed reforms did not go far enough to rid the Church of dogma and practices that could not be defended from a ‘plain reading’ of the Bible, some of these early followers of Zwingli broke away from both the Catholic Church and the Magisterial Reformation, making mortal enemies in both camps in the process. While sharing many of the critiques of the Catholic Church  For an overview of Mennonite origins, see C. Arnold Snyder, Anabaptist History and Theology: An Introduction (Kitchener: Pandora Press, 1995).  This conceptualization was developed in George H. Williams, The Radical Reformation (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1962) and Roland Bainton, “The Left Wing of the Reformation,” Journal of Religion 21 (1941): 124– 134.

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levelled by the Reform movement more broadly, these activists raised particular objections to the practice of infant baptism and to the doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. On January 21, 1525, at a meeting of the radicals in the home of Felix Mantz in Zurich, George Blaurock asked Conrad Grebel to baptize him, and then proceeded himself to baptize the others present. The moment of Blaurock’s baptism has been freeze-framed in Mennonite memory as signalling the birth of the Anabaptist (or “re-baptizing”) movement, having a symbolic weight for Mennonites similar to Luther’s nailing of the 95 theses to the doors of the castle church in Wittenberg in the Lutheran imagination. Because it rejected the state’s claim to establish and regulate the religion of its citizens, the Anabaptist movement encountered violent government suppression from its outset. Felix Mantz was executed by drowning in the Limmat river on January 5, 1527; George Blaurock was burned at the stake in Tyrol on September 6, 1529. These early experiences of lethal persecution were deeply formative. As Brad Gregory writes, “Anabaptists’ self-selecting radicalism, plus their experience of severe persecution, marked them more deeply than their Protestant or Catholic contemporaries with a martyrological mentality.”⁶ In the 1520s and 1530s, Anabaptist martyrs would far outnumber their Catholic or Protestant counterparts.⁷ The greatest controversy of early Anabaptist history, without a doubt, was the establishment of Anabaptist rule in the Westphalian city of Münster in February 1534. In the weeks that followed, hundreds of Anabaptists flocked to Münster to await the earthly return of Christ, believing it to be the New Jerusalem and a city of refuge for the truly faithful. By the autumn of that same year, the charismatic itinerant tailor Jan van Leyden had set himself up as a latter-day King David. Salacious practices, including polygamy, were attributed to the besieged Münsterites, who held out for more than a year before finally being overrun by the forces of the local prince-bishop on June 24, 1535. Van Leyden and other lead-

 Brad S. Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 198.  Official tallies of the number of Anabaptists prosecuted and executed for heresy in the sixteenth and into the seventeenth centuries are impossible to establish with precision, but there is consensus among historians that 2000 – 4000 total executions is a reasonable estimate, with many more individuals suffering from other forms of judicial persecution, including fines, the confiscation of property, imprisonment, and torture. Brad Gregory comments, “For early evangelicals, executions in the 1520s and early 1530s were sporadic events, albeit well-suited to promoting the Gospel. For Anabaptists, executions were part of life—and confirmation of the very meaning of being Christian.” Gregory, Salvation at Stake, 201.

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ers of the Anabaptist regime were tortured and executed in January of 1536, their bodies left to rot on display in iron cages suspended from the roof of the Münster cathedral. The cages remain there to this day.⁸ After the fall of Münster, many Anabaptists understandably sought to distance themselves from the rebels. It was in this context that Menno Simons rose to prominence as an advocate for an Anabaptism that specifically rejected the arms-bearing that led to such devastation in Münster. Although the creeds and writings of previous Anabaptists frequently included admonitions to Wehrlosigkeit (“non-resistance” or “defencelessness”), in the wake of Münster the rejection of arms-bearing, both in defence of the state and in defiance of it, became a defining characteristic of Anabaptist, and particularly Mennonite, identity. It is in this tradition that, more than a century later, Thieleman van Braght composed his compendium of memorials to those who had suffered for Christ, including in his anthology all—but only—those Christians who both rejected infant baptism and were stalwart in their determination not to use force to defend themselves, even unto death.

Memorializing Martyrs in a Golden Age Thieleman van Braght wrote during an era of safety and relative comfort when the memory of persecution was nevertheless fresh. In spite of severe persecution in the previous century, by the middle of the seventeenth century Mennonites had become both established and materially successful.⁹ The Dutch Golden Age was in full swing, and its citizenry had become enriched by the profits of a booming shipping industry and robust foreign trade. Toleration of religious deviance by the Dutch ruling class and the Reformed Church made the Netherlands a safe haven for religious dissidents, including the members of the Mennonite Church in which van Braght was a pastor. The son of a successful cloth merchant, he was both well-educated—having studied Hebrew, Greek, Latin, German, and French—and financially well-off. Greater toleration by ‘worldly’ authorities was reciprocated by moderate Mennonites with a greater openness to “the world,” so that, in the words of Sjouke Voolstra, “the sharp borders between church and world became faint-

 For the events leading up to the siege in Münster and a nuanced account of Anabaptist rule there, see Willem de Bakker, Michael Driedger and James Stayer, Bernhard Rothmann and the Reformation in Münster, 1530 – 35 (Kitchener: Pandora Press, 2009).  Weaver-Zercher, Martyrs Mirror, 46 – 49.

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er.”¹⁰ It was in response to the threats of complacency, laxity, and materialism, and not to the threat of persecution, that van Braght wrote the Martyrs Mirror. “By means of memory and imagination,” Julia Spicher Kasdorf writes, “the young minister van Braght sought to remind Mennonites living in the Dutch Golden Age of their martyr heritage, even as they were busy buying and selling opulent homes and gardens, wearing fashionable clothing sewn from expensive imported cloth, and hosting lavish banquets.”¹¹ It is not without some irony that the Martyrs Mirror rose to prominence among seventeenth-century Mennonites as a luxury consumer good and status symbol. When van Braght’s 1660 edition met with modest commercial success, its printing rights were purchased by a consortium of businessmen. These publishers were Calvinists, not Mennonites, but sensing the opportunity to turn a profit, they re-published the text in 1685 in both a standard edition, costing 8 guilders, and a “deluxe” edition, printed on higher quality paper, for 13 guilders (at the time, an average monthly salary for a Dutch tradesman was 50 guilders/ month).¹² Both editions saw only minor changes to Van Braght’s text; the major new draw was the inclusion of 104 illustrations contributed by the prominent artist Jan Luyken, who had the added benefit of being Mennonite himself.¹³ The illustrations appear with greatest frequency at the beginning of the Martyrs Mirror; the first forty pages of the 1685 edition contain 20 of Luyken’s 104 images. Weaver-Zercher suggests that “the plethora of early images was designed to set the tone for the text, communicating two important themes right from the start: that suffering and faithfulness often went hand in hand and that the Anabaptists who suffered in the sixteenth century were in good company with the church’s most revered saints.”¹⁴

 Sjouke Voolstra, “The Colony of Heaven: The Anabaptist Aspiration to be a Church without Spot or Wrinkle in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in From Martyr to Muppy: A Historical Introduction to Cultural Assimilation Processes of a Religion Minority in the Netherlands: the Mennonites, ed. Alastair Hamilton, Sjouke Voolstra and Piet Visser (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1994), 15 – 29, 25.  Julia Spicher Kasdorf, “Mightier than the Sword: Martyrs Mirror in the New World,” The Conrad Grebel Review 31 (2013): 44– 70, 48.  Weaver-Zercher, Martyrs Mirror, 90 – 91.  Weaver-Zercher, Martyrs Mirror, 97.  Weaver-Zercher, Martyrs Mirror, 99.

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Anabaptists as Heirs to the early Christian Martyrs Martyrs Mirror is a rather late contribution of the genre of martyr literature that enjoyed great popularity during the Reformation, and the apogee of Mennonite martyrologies.¹⁵ In many respects, Martyrs Mirror resembles the better-known Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, which was compiled almost a century earlier and was used by van Braght as an occasional source. Like Foxe’s pioneering work, Martyrs Mirror served not only to memorialize executed co-religionists, but to narrate and, indeed, to construct a history of a faithful “remnant” surviving in the shadows of Christendom for fifteen hundred years.¹⁶ The earliest memorials written in honour of Mennonite martyrs had been songs, some composed by condemned Anabaptists themselves, which they sung in prison as they awaited their executions.¹⁷ The first Mennonite martyrology to appear in book form, titled The Sacrifice unto the Lord and published in 1562– 3, combined the text of several of these songs with narratives of slain Anabaptists.¹⁸ Eleven subsequent editions of The Sacrifice unto the Lord were published over the next three decades, with each edition adding new material so that what once was a slim volume grew significantly in size.¹⁹ The collection was decidedly local; of the more than one hundred and fifty martyrs memorialized, only three—Jesus, Stephen, and south German Anabaptist Michael Sattler—were not Dutch.²⁰ Chronologically, too, its focus remained on the familiar decades of the recent past, overlooking the history of the church between the Book of Acts and the 1520s. The large chronological gap in historical interest was typical of early Anabaptist writings. Geoffrey Dipple has argued that while a few leaders drawn from the ranks of the educated elite made use of early Christian writings, most Anabaptists were not particularly concerned with the Church’s early history beyond the New Testa-

 For an appraisal of Martyrs Mirror in the context of sixteenth-century martyr literature, see Gregory, Salvation at Stake.  “Foxe and his coeditors thus used peripheral matter to connect their essentially innovative story to that of a long martyrological tradition, and to the traditions of the church as it was lived in the first centuries after Christ.” Sarah Covington, “Paratextual Strategies in Thieleman van Braght’s Martyrs Mirror,” Book History 9 (2006), 1– 29, 3.  Gregory, Salvation at Stake, 212– 215.  This claim is made in Gregory, Salvation at Stake, 228.  Gregory, Salvation at Stake, 231.  Gregory, Salvation at Stake, 227.

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ment.²¹ In an exception to this rule, one surviving German martyr song traces a history of persecution stretching from the prophets of the Old Testament through Jesus, Stephen, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, Agnes, and Martha, but it was not included in the Dutch collection.²² In 1615, Mennonite leader Hans de Ries published The History of the Martyrs or Genuine Witnesses of Jesus Christ, expanding the number of martyrs to roughly six hundred, including the brief mention of a few martyrs from the centuries between the closing of the New Testament and the advent of Anabaptism.²³ An updated version published in 1631– 2, now titled Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Christians, included a new prologue boldly asserting “the conformity of the ancient, apostolic church with the church of these martyrs, as well as the lasting persecution of the suffering of the martyrs from the time of Christ to the beginning of this Martyrs’ Mirror.”²⁴ De Ries’s compilations expanded the scope of Mennonite martyrology; his editorial comments and historiographic framing provided a template that van Braght would follow—and much material that he would borrow—a generation later.²⁵ While de Ries had asserted an unbroken chain of faithful non-resistant Anabaptist Christians stretching from antiquity to his own day, van Braght set about to prove it. In order to do so, he broadened the definition for true martyrs, claiming all those who taught and practiced adult baptism and who refused to take up the sword as compatible with his own tradition.²⁶ Although these criteria vastly expanded the number of possible proto-Mennonite martyrs, the expansion did not result in the blanket acceptance of every early Christian who had died for his faith into the Mennonite fold. To the contrary, van Braght insisted that “whenever we have found that any, as regards the faith professed, were actually guilty of serious errors, offensive misconceptions, or bad actions. . . we have dropped such entirely, and not mentioned them; that the pious and most holy witnesses of Jesus Christ might not be defiled with their unclean and unholy leaven.”²⁷

 Geoffrey Dipple identifies Pilgram Marpeck, Balthasar Hubmeier and Menno Simons as the most historically-conscious early Anabaptist writers. See Geoffrey Dipple, ‘Just As in the Time of the Apostles’: Uses of History in the Radical Reformation (Kitchener, ON: Pandora Press, 2005).  Ausbund 1583, 9 – 23, cited by Gregory, Salvation at Stake, 214.  Gregory, Salvation at Stake, 237.  Hans de Ries, “Voor-reden tot den Leser” in Martelaers Spiegel der Werelose Christenen t’zedert (Haarlem: Hans Passchiers van Wesbusch, 1631– 32), cited in Gregory, Salvation at Stake, 243.  Gregory, Salvation at Stake, 237.  van Braght, Martyrs Mirror, 18.  van Braght, Martyrs Mirror, 18.

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In order to populate his wide-ranging martyrology, van Braght sought out authentic martyrs in a wide-ranging library of sources, ranging from medieval histories to the apologetic literature of a variety of Christian confessions. Acknowledging the Mennonite tradition’s suspicion of extra-biblical authorities, he defended his consultation of a wider range of historical sources by arguing in his introduction that, “since the scriptures do not contain a history of all that happened, we may acknowledge the testimony of any accepted writer as creditable, provided his evidence is not repugnant to the express meaning of the Holy Scriptures.”²⁸ Under these parameters, van Braght could cite even the writings of his sectarian enemies, so long as they could be made to undergird his own purposes. Frequently cited works include the Lutheran Magdeburg Centuries, the Italian Humanist Bartolomeo Platina’s Liber de vita Christi ac omnium pontificum; Italian Catholic historian Caesar Baronius’s twelve-volume Annales ecclesiastici, sixteenth-century German Spiritualist Sebastian Franck’s popular Chronica, Zeitbuch und Geschichtsbibel; conservative Frisian Mennonite chronicler Pieter Jansz Twisck’s Bybelsch Naem en Chronyk-boeck and Chroniik van den Ondergangh der Tyrannen; German Baptist Jacob Mehrning’s Baptismi Historia; and the histories of two Dutch Reformed ministers and historians, Abraham Mellin and Johann Gysius, Eerste deel van het Groot Rechtvoelende Christen Martelaers-Boeck and Oorsprong en voortrgang der Nederlandtscher beroerten. In addition to medieval and early modern works, van Braght cites the writings of numerous ancient Christian authors, including Eusebius, Tertullian, Jerome, Clement of Alexandria, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Ignatius, Epiphanius, Rufinus, Sophronius, Orosius, and Usuard. In most situations, he does not consult the primary sources directly but reads them via the above-mentioned intermediaries.²⁹ An exception is Eusebius of Caesarea’s Ecclesiastical History, for which he gives bibliographical information of the edition he consults, and which he follows nearly word for word in some passages. Next to Eusebius, the most prominent “accepted writer” of the early Church in the Martyrs Mirror is Tertullian. The Carthaginian rhetor’s claim that the “blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church” is not only quoted approvingly but encapsulates the ethos of the generative capacity of martyrdom promoted by van Braght throughout his work. As Jeremy Bergen has recognized, “there is in the Martyrs Mirror an element of nostalgia for a past in which harsh circumstances most clearly separate the  van Braght, Martyrs Mirror, 52.  In a representative example, van Braght ends his account of the second-century beheadings of Rufus and Zosimus with the words, “compare what A. Mellinus adduces in Het groot Christen Martelaers-boek, fol. 19, col. 4, from Polycarpo ad Philippens, with that which J. Gysius has noted in Hist. Mart., fol. 15, col. 3.”

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true Christians from the false one.”³⁰ In his preface to the reader, van Braght himself writes, “we live in a sorrowful time; nay, surely it is a period fraught with greater danger than the time of our fathers, who suffered death for the testimony of the Lord. Few will believe this, because the great majority look to external and visible appearances, which exhibit a better, more tranquil and comfortable state of things; but few bestow sufficient attention upon internal affairs—the state of the soul, upon which, notwithstanding, all depends.”³¹ Whether consciously or not, van Braght’s nostalgia echoes the famously wistful reminisces of the days of the martyrs recorded by Origen in the third century CE, who in his fourth Homily on Jeremiah writes, “but when noble martyrdom arose, when we came to the gathering after conducting the martyrs to their graves and the entire church, unafflicted, was present, and the catechumens were taught by the martyrdoms and by the deaths of those who confessed the truth unto death, neither frightened nor troubled by the living God, then there [sic] were faithful.”³² As for Origen, this, then, is the value of the martyrs for van Braght: they are not saints capable of interceding before God on behalf of the living. Rather, they are exemplars, even goads, challenging his contemporaries to reach the heights of faithfulness demonstrated by their forebears.

Constructing Conformity in Martyrs Mirror Although he would be condemned as a heretic in the sixth century, Origen is counted among the authentic martyrs of the Christian faith by van Braght; he even features as the subject of one of Luyken’s etchings. The final section of this essay will linger on the images of a small selection of famous early Christian martyrs—Origen, his students in Alexandria, and his North African near-contemporaries Perpetua and Felicitas—as they appear in Martyrs Mirror. As we shall see, van Braght uses both subtly selective citation and overt editorializing to overcome vast distances of space and time and make these martyrs into Mennonites.

 Jeremy Bergen, “The Anabaptist Martyrs Mirror in the Past and For Today” (paper presented at the 47th International Ecumenical Seminar, Institute for Ecumenical Research, Strasbourg, France, 8 July 2013), https://www.strasbourginstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/BergenMartyrs-Mirror-in-the-Past-and-for-Today.pdf  van Braght, Martyrs Mirror, 8.  Hom. Jer. 4.3.2, in Origen, Homilies on Jeremiah and 1 Kings 28. Trans. John Clark Smith (Fathers of the Church 97; Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010).

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Van Braght opens his account of martyrdoms in the third century with the ominous verdict that “there never was a time in the church of Jesus Christ, in which so many and great tyrants arose to destroy and extirpate the people of God, as in this century.” Although secular historians accounted the emperors of this century “gracious,” van Braght contends that, in truth, they were “nothing less than unmerciful, cruel, and bloodthirsty tyrants.”³³ Sixty named martyrs are then listed, with an additional “several thousand Christians, besides seventy others,” whose anonymous suffering is briefly invoked to bolster van Braght’s dire assessment of the period’s cruelty. After this short introduction, van Braght proceeds to narrate the sufferings of Christians during the reign of Septimius Severus. Short notices are paid to North African martyrs Rutilius and Mavilus before a longer entry is devoted to the famous North African martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas. His account begins with a short encomium: Perpetua and Felicitas were two very pious and honourable Christian women, at Tuburbi, a city in Mauritania, a province of Africa. Both were very untimely apprehended, to suffer for the name of Christ, as Felicitas was very far advanced in pregnancy, and Perpetua had recently given birth to a child, which she was nursing. But this did not make them fainthearted, nor so surprise them that they forsook Christ, nor did it prevent them from going on in the way of godliness; but they remained equally faithful disciples of Christ, and became steadfast martyrs.³⁴

While Perpetua has the starring role in the Passion that bears her name, in the telling of the Martyrs Mirror her story is almost entirely ignored, while Felicitas takes center stage. It is Felicitas’s martyrdom that is related at greater length, and it is her image that is included in an etching by Luyken. Van Braght incorporates nothing of Perpetua’s purported “diary,” the first-person account traditionally held to have been composed by the martyr during her imprisonment.³⁵ Instead, he fixates on the pregnant Felicitas and her delivery of a daughter while awaiting execution. Here his account closely follows the narrative structure that is recorded in the Passio Perpetuae, including the taunts of her labor pains lobbed by her jailers. Felicitas’s response in the face of the mockery of her foes, however, is significantly altered. The text of the Passio reads,

 van Braght, Martyrs Mirror, 125.  van Braght, Martyrs Mirror, 127.  The authenticity of Perpetua’s diary has been questioned by critical scholars. For a recent review of the scholarship on this question, see Walter Ameling, “Femina Liberaliter Instituta— Some Thoughts on a Martyr’s Liberal Education,” in Perpetua’s Passions, ed. Jan N. Bremmer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 78 – 102.

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Immediately after their prayer her pains came upon her, and when, with the difficulty natural to an eight months’ delivery, in the labour of bringing forth she was sorrowing, some of the servants of the Cataractarii said to her, “you who are in such suffering now, what will you do when you are thrown to the beasts, which you despised when you refused to sacrifice?” And she replied, “Now it is I that suffer what I suffer; but then there will be another in me, who will suffer for me, because I also am about to suffer for Him.”³⁶

The text of the Martyrs Mirror reads, When the pains of labor seized her in prison, and she cried aloud for fear and anguish, the jailer said to her, “You are so much afraid and distressed now, and cry aloud for pain; how then will you behave, when, tomorrow, or the day after, you will be led to death?” Felicitas replied thus, “Now I suffer as a poor woman the punishment which God on account of sin has laid upon the female sex; but tomorrow I shall suffer as a Christian woman for the faith and the confession of Jesus Christ.”³⁷

In van Braght’s version, Felicitas provides a biblical justification for her birth pangs even as she suffers them. Rather than simply signifying her human frailty, her susceptibility to pain in childbirth is presented in the Martyrs Mirror as a mark of her obedient submission to God’s justly apportioned punishment of particularly female sin. Van Braght then editorializes further, emphasizing the connection between Felicitas’s patient suffering and her faithfulness, demonstrated both in her endurance of her labour pains and her endurance of torture: “By these words she sufficiently indicated that she had firmly and immovably founded her faith upon Christ, who never forsakes His own, even though they be in the midst of the fire, and are consumed. God also specially strengthened her, that she might be able to endure her sufferings.”³⁸ At this juncture, van Braght returns to Perpetua, whom he had only briefly mentioned in his preceding remarks. Once again, van Braght avoids directly citing the first-person prison diary attributed to her. In so doing, he avoids repeating her accounts of the visions she experiences while awaiting her execution. Two of those visions concerned the fate of Perpetua’s younger brother, Dinocrates, who had died unbaptized as a child. In the first vision, Dinocrates appears hot and thirsty, stretching to reach a font of water that remains beyond his grasp. After Perpetua prayerfully intercedes on her dead brother’s behalf, she receives a subsequent vision of the boy well-clothed and happy, the font  The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas 5.2, in The Ante-Nicene Christian Fathers: The Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325, trans. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Edinburgh: T&T Clark: 1885).  van Braght, Martyrs Mirror, 127.  van Braght, Martyrs Mirror, 127.

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of water now lowered to his navel and overflowing with water—proof that her post-mortem prayers had been effective. In the subsequent Christian tradition, Perpetua’s vision was cited in support of the concepts of purgatory and the power of the intercession of the saints—concepts rejected by Mennonites as being without scriptural precedent.³⁹ Perpetua’s visions of Dinocrates accordingly go unmentioned by van Braght. Absent too is Perpetua’s fourth vision, in which she sees herself transformed into a man who engages in combat to the death with the devil, personified as an Egyptian gladiator. Perhaps van Braght was offended by the vision’s overt militarism; perhaps by its gender-bending imagery; perhaps by both. Rather than engage with Perpetua’s own words in the Passio, van Braght turns to Tertullian’s comments in De Anima 55, where the authoritative rhetor ascribes to Perpetua a vision that was actually experienced, according to the Passio, by her companion, Saturus. On the day of their execution, Saturus is granted a premonition of the soon-to-be martyrs admitted into paradise. Van Braght quotes Tertullian: “Perpetua, the very strong and steadfast martyr, had a revelation or vision of the heavenly paradise, on the day of her sufferings, in the which she saw none but her fellow martyrs. And why no others? Because the fiery sword which guards the door of paradise gives way to none but those who die for Christ.”⁴⁰ In the context of De Anima 55, the case of Perpetua is cited as part of a longer and more abstruse argument concerning the fate of souls after death but before the Final Judgement. Only the souls of martyrs, Tertullian insists, are granted access to paradise before the general resurrection; all other souls remain in Hades until the Last Trumpet sounds. “The sole key to unlock Paradise,” Tertullian intones in De Anima 55, “is your own life’s blood.” For van Braght, in contrast, it is not the manner of martyrs’ deaths but their staunch refusal to deny Christ that earns them their place in heaven. These two “pious heroines,” van Braght concludes, “died a violent death, for the name of their Saviour”; accordingly, “they will afterwards be crowned with the unfading wreath of immortality.”⁴¹ The next martyr memorialized by van Braght is Leonides, famed both for his own faithfulness in the face of execution by beheading and for fathering the

 On the influence of the Passio Perpetuae on the doctrine of purgatory, see Jeffrey A. Trumbower, “Perpetua’s Prayer for Dinocrates,” in Rescue for the Dead: The Posthumous Salvation of Non-Christians in Early Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). For the Dutch Anabaptist critique of the doctrine of purgatory, see Cornelius J. Dyck, “The Place of Tradition in Dutch Anabaptism,” Church History 43 (1974): 34– 49.  van Braght, Martyrs Mirror, 127.  van Braght, Martyrs Mirror, 127.

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great theologian and philosopher, Origen. After a brief description based on Eusebius’s Historia ecclesiastica, van Braght moves on immediately from Leonides’s martyrdom to recount the deaths of five of Origen’s students. He begins this account by sticking closely to his source material in Hist. Eccl. 6.3 – 4: At this time, Origen, though but eighteen years old, was a teacher of the faith, at Alexandria, in Egypt, where he taught with such excellence, not only to begin with Christ, but also to die with Him, that many of his disciples laid down their lives for the truth of Christ. Among these are mentioned, by name, Plutarch, Heraclides, Hero, and two other men, both called Serenus. Their suffering and death happened in this manner: Origen, the teacher of these pious people, was in the habit of going into the prison to the martyrs who suffered for the name of Jesus Christ, to strengthen them in the faith. Yea, even when they had already received their sentence of death, and were making their last defence, he stood by them, and, at parting, gave them the kiss of peace, as a token of his sincere love.⁴²

Van Braght continues to follow Eusebius’s narration of the deaths of the male martyrs. Problems arise, however, when van Braght turns to the fate of three of Origen’s female disciples, Rhais (called Herais by Eusebius), Marcella, and Potamiena. Van Braght begins, Among the disciples of Origen, who became martyrs, there are also mentioned several women as faithful martyrs. However, we shall only refer to two of these, one called Rhais, the other Marcella, who suffered their faith and lives to be tried with fire, like gold that is refined. Rhais was a catechumen, that is, one that was receiving instruction preparatory to baptism, and hence, had not yet sealed her faith with water; however, as Origen himself declares, she was baptized with fire, that is, burned alive.⁴³

Up to this point, van Braght remains in general agreement with his Eusebian source text. It is the next martyr, Potamiena, who poses a problem. Here is her story, as recorded by Eusebius: The praises of this woman are even today loudly sung by her own people. Endless the struggle that in defence of her chastity and virginity, which were beyond reproach, she maintained against lovers, for her beauty—of body as of mind—was in full flower. Endless her sufferings, till after tortures too horrible to describe she and her mother Marcella found fulfilment in fire. . . As the crowd tried to plague her and insult her with obscene jests, Basilides [a soldier] thrust them back and drove them away, showing the utmost pity and kindness towards her. Potamiaena accepted his sympathy for her and gave him

 van Braght, Martyrs Mirror, 128.  van Braght, Martyrs Mirror, 129.

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encouragement: when she had gone away she would ask her Lord for him, and it would not be long before she repaid him for all he had done for her.⁴⁴

While Perpetua’s saintly intercessions on behalf of her brother were simply ignored, in the case of Potamiena, her promise to intercede on the soldier Basilides’s behalf is judged by van Braght to be sufficient grounds to strike her from the list of authentic martyrs entirely. He writes, Marcella was the mother of Potamiena (of whom the ancients speak in such commendatory terms, as having also laid down her life for the faith; but whom we pass over, on account of certain remarks which she addressed to Basilides, her executioner). After insufferable and dreadful torments, [Marcella] was burned by degrees, in great constancy, until she was reduced to ashes; and thus she exchanged this temporal for an eternal life.⁴⁵

While Potamiena’s presumptive promise to secure Basilides’s salvation is condemned by van Braght, Basilides himself is counted among the righteous. Convinced to convert to Christianity by the witness of Potamiena’s stalwart endurance, Eusebius reports that he refused to swear a military oath on account of his newfound faith and was beheaded the following day. Basilides’s rejection of both military service and the swearing of oaths align particularly well with van Braght’s Mennonite convictions. Accordingly, he is afforded a place in the Mennonite martyrology, while the woman whose faith inspired his own is pointedly rejected. The decades that intervened between the deaths of Origen’s students and his own torture and exile are marked by van Braght with records of numerous other martyrs listed, following his method, in chronological order. When he arrives at the persecution presided by the emperor Decius, van Braght must determine whether to include Origen himself in his list of proto-Mennonite martyrs. Like Perpetua and Potemiena, Origen espoused views that made his accession to Mennonite martyr status more questionable than was the case for figures like Felicitas and Basilides. Van Braght begins his evaluation of the illustrious theologian by affirming that Origen “has left us very excellent and salutary teachings concerning baptism upon faith; and also, that in his teaching he opposed the swearing of oaths, war, compulsory celibacy, the literal view of the Lord’s Supper, those who taught something and did not practice it themselves, the antichrist, etc.”⁴⁶ While admitting that “some very peculiar things were laid to his

 Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 6.5, trans. G. A. Williamson (London: Penguin Classics, 1990), 184.  van Braght, Martyrs Mirror, 128.  van Braght, Martyrs Mirror, 137.

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charge as his views,” van Braght maintains that “the principal ancient writers, as well as later authors, have vindicated him.” Accordingly, while van Braght urges his reader to treat Origen “with Christian discretion,” he goes on to praise his willingness to expose himself to danger for the sake of the faith and especially of the martyrs. Again, van Braght pauses to note that “there are some who accuse Origen of apostasy; but different excellent authors have acquitted him of this charge; though in point of knowledge he had his weaknesses and failings.”⁴⁷ Deferring to the judgment of his contemporary Abraham Mellinus, who concludes “as regards his Christian life and steadfast confession of the name of Christ, we have no reason to call it in question, since even his enemies bear him a good testimony in this respect,” van Braght goes on to describe the tortures that Origen patiently endured, tortures that earned him an entry—and a portrait—in the Martyrs Mirror. ⁴⁸

Conclusion By incorporating the martyrs of the early church into its massive anthology of faithful deaths, Thieleman van Braght’s Martyrs Mirror vastly expands the chronological and territorial boundaries of previous Mennonite martyrologies. Nevertheless, the history he assembles ultimately serves not to expand the prevailing conception of the martyr among his co-religionists but to reinforce the essential conformity of all true martyrs to a uniform, Mennonite faith. While the location and date of each execution is recorded with a chronicler’s precision, and gruesomely innovative methods of torture are expounded upon, the particularities of place and moment receive scant attention from the narrator. Each martyrdom is, in essence, the same narrative of faithfulness told again and again. The title of the book itself invites the reader to gaze not only upon the images conveyed in illustration and in text, but through them, and so to imagine herself in the place of her heroic predecessors. Layering narratives from disparate times and places, Martyrs Mirror encourages readers to see their own lives refracted in the singular narrative of faithfulness at any cost, told over and over again.

 van Braght, Martyrs Mirror, 137.  van Braght, Martyrs Mirror, 137.

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Bibliography Ameling, Walter. “Femina Liberaliter Instituta—Some Thoughts on a Martyr’s Liberal Education.” In Perpetua’s Passions, edited by Jan N. Bremmer, 78 – 102. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Bainton, Roland. “The Left Wing of the Reformation.” Journal of Religion 21 (1941): 124 – 134. Bakker, Willem de, Michael Driedger, and James Stayer. Bernhard Rothmann and the Reformation in Münster, 1530 – 35. Kitchener: Pandora Press, 2009. Beachy, Kristen Eve, ed. Tongue Screws and Testimony: Poems, Stories, and Essays Inspired by the Martyrs Mirror. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2010. Bergen, Jeremy. “The Anabaptist Martyrs Mirror in the Past and For Today.” Paper presented at the 47th International Ecumenical Seminar, Institute for Ecumenical Research. Strasbourg, France, 8 July 2013. https://www.strasbourginstitute.org/wp-content/up loads/2013/08/Bergen-Martyrs-Mirror-in-the-Past-and-for-Today.pdf Braght, Thieleman van. Martyrs Mirror. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2012. Covington, Sarah. “Paratextual Strategies in Thieleman van Braght’s Martyrs Mirror.” Book History 9 (2006): 1 – 29. Dipple, Geoffrey. ‘Just As in the Time of the Apostles’: Uses of History in the Radical Reformation. Kitchener, ON: Pandora Press, 2005. Dyck, Cornelius J. “The Place of Tradition in Dutch Anabaptism.” Church History 43 (1974): 34 – 49. Eusebius. The History of the Church by Eusebius. Penguin Classics. Translated by G.A. Williamson. London: Penguin Random House, 1990. Gregory, Brad S. Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999. Kasdorf, Julia Spicher. “Mightier than the Sword: Martyrs Mirror in the New World.” The Conrad Grebel Review 31 (2013): 44 – 70. Origen. Homilies on Jeremiah and 1 Kings 28. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010. Ries, Hans de. “Voor-reden tot den Leser.” In Martelaers Spiegel der Werelose Christenen t’zedert. Haarlem: Hans Passchiers van Wesbusch, 1631 – 1632. Roberts, Alexander and James Donaldson, eds. The Ante-Nicene Christian Fathers: The Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325. Edinburgh: T&T Clark: 1885. Snyder, C. Arnold. Anabaptist History and Theology: An Introduction. Kitchener: Pandora Press, 1995. Trumbower, Jeffrey A. Rescue for the Dead: The Posthumous Salvation of Non-Christians in Early Christianity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Voolstra, Sjouke. “The Colony of Heaven: The Anabaptist Aspiration to be a Church without Spot or Wrinkle in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.” In From Martyr to Muppy: A Historical Introduction to Cultural Assimilation Processes of a Religion Minority in the Netherlands: the Mennonites, edited by Alastair Hamilton, Sjouke Voolstra and Piet Visser, 15 – 29. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1994. Weaver-Zercher, David L. Martyrs Mirror: A Social History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016. Williams, George H. The Radical Reformation. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1962.

About the Authors Jan N. Bremmer Jan N. Bremmer (Ph.D. Amsterdam, Free University) is Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Groningen, Netherlands. His research focuses on Greek religion, religion in the Roman Empire, and Early Christianity as well as the historiography of these subjects. His chief publications are (with Jan den Boeft, ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae I-V’, Vigiliae Christianae 35 – 49 (1981– 1995); co-editor (with M. Formisano), Perpetua’s Passions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Maidens, Magic and Martyrs in Early Christianity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017) 349 – 454 (studies on the Passio Perpetuae); ‘The Apocalypse of Peter as the First Christian Martyr Text: its Date, Provenance and Relationship with 2 Peter’, in M. den Dulk, J. Frey and J. van der Watt (eds), Second Peter in New Perspective: Radboud Prestige Lectures by Jörg Frey (Leiden: Brill, 2019) 75 – 98; ‘Imitation of Christ in the Passion of the Scilitan Martyrs?’, in A. Bettenworth, D. Boschung and M. Formisano (eds), For Example. Martyrdom and Imitation in Early Christian Texts and Art (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2020) 143 – 69; ‘God and Christ in the Early Martyr Acts’, in M. Novenson (ed.), Monotheism and Christology in Greco-Roman Antiquity (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 222– 248. L. Stephanie Cobb L. Stephanie Cobb (B.A., Waco; M.A.R., New Haven; Ph.D., Chapel Hill) holds the George and Sallie Cutchin Camp Professorship of Bible at the University of Richmond. Her research focuses on second and third century martyr texts, and she is author of Dying to Be Men: Gender and Language in Early Christian Martyr Texts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008); Divine Deliverance: Pain and Painlessness in Early Christian Martyr Texts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017); and The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, forthcoming). Christoper A. Frilingos Christopher A. Frilingos (B.A., Greensboro; M.Litt., St. Andrews; Ph.D., Chapel Hill) is Professor of Religious Studies at Michigan State University. His research focuses on biblical literature and early Christianity. His recent publications include Jesus, Mary, and Joseph: Family Trouble in the Infancy Gospels (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), and “Parents Just Don’t Understand: Ambiguity in Stories about the Childhood of Jesus,” Harvard Theological Review 109 (2016): 33 – 55. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110682632-011

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About the Authors

Nicole Hartmann Nicole Hartmann (MA, Berlin; Ph.D., Erfurt) studied Religious Studies and Ancient History in Cologne, Bologna and Berlin with a focus on religious history of the Roman Empire, including early Christian and Jewish religion. Her doctoral thesis was about the emergence of Christian martyrdom discourses and was published as Martyrium. Variationen eines Diskurses im zweiten Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2013). She worked as Assistant Professor at the Institute of Religious Studies at the University of Leipzig and at the Chair of Ancient Christianity at the Humboldt University Berlin. Her focus of interest lies in religious communication, boundary marking, and connected identity shaping. Currently she works on positions of religious critique and indifference and the dynamics they set free, often countered as ‘atheism’ or ‘apostasy.’ Harry O. Maier Harry O. Maier (B.A., Tacoma; M.A., Saskatoon; D.Phil., Oxford) is Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Studies at Vancouver School of Theology and a Fellow at the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at the University of Erfurt, Germany. He is also a Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Maier is concerned with the interdisciplinary study of Early Christianity from the point of view of social sciences and social history. Research with a focus on spatial geography has appeared in several publications. His most recent monograph is New Testament Christianity in the Roman World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). In 2002 he published Apocalypse Recalled: The Book of Revelation after Christendom with Fortress Press, a study that anticipates some of the themes taken up in the essay that appears here. Other books include, Picturing Paul in Empire: Image, Text and Persuasion in Colossians, Ephesians and the Pastoral Epistles (London: T&T Clark/Bloomsbury, 2013) and The Social Setting of the Ministry as Reflected in the Writings of Hermas, Clement, and Ignatius (Waterloo, ONT: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2002), as well as numerous edited volumes. Jennifer Otto Jennifer Otto (B.A., Halifax; M.A., Montreal; Ph.D., Montreal) is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. Her research focuses on early Christian biblical interpretation and identity formation; ethics and violence in 2nd and 3rd century Christianity; and the conceptions of martyrdom in Mennonite/Anabaptist writings. Her recent publications include Philo of Alexandria and the Construction of Jewishness in Early Christian Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); “Were the Early Christians Pacifists? Does it Matter?” The Conrad Grebel Review 35 (2017): 267– 279; and “The

About the Authors

213

Church that Never Fell: Reconsidering the Mennonite Narrative of the Church, 100 – 400CE.” Mennonite Quarterly Review 91 (2017): 37– 70. Eric C. Smith Eric C. Smith (B.A., North Carolina; M.T.S., Nashville; Ph.D., Denver) is Assistant Professor of Early Christianity and Contemporary Christian Practices at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. His research interests include the material cultures, texts, and discourses of belonging of religions in antiquity, theoretical approaches to antiquity and ancient texts, and biblical interpretation. His publications include Jewish Glass and Christian Stone: A Materialist Mapping of the Parting of the Ways (London: Routledge 2018), Foucault’s Heterotopia in Christian Catacombs: Constructing Symbols and Spaces in Ancient Rome (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), “Paul’s Map and Territory: Rethinking the Work of the Apostle in Light of Ancient Cartography,” Horizons in Biblical Theology 42.1 and “The Fall and Rise of Eutychus: The Church of Paul and the Spatial Habitus of Luke,” Biblical Interpretation 28.2. Michael J. Thate Michael J. Thate (B.A., St. Paul; M.A. and M.Div., Deerfield, IL; Ph.D., Durham, UK) is an Associate Research Scholar at Princeton University. He has held numerous fellowships (Yale Divinity School; Princeton University; Harvard Divinity School; Institut für antikes Judentum und hellenistische Religionsgeschichte, Tübingen; Centre international d’étude de la philosophie française contemporaine at École normale supérieure, Paris). His monographs include Remembrance of Things Past? (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013) and The Godman and the Sea (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019). He is currently finishing a book on smell and moral philosophy in early Christianity and late antiquity entitled Scented Life (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press). Katharina Waldner Katharina Waldner (Lizentiat: Classical Philology and Archaeology, Zürich; PhD Zürich and Munich, Habilitation: Religious Studies, Erfurt) is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Erfurt (Germany) and member of the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural Studies at the University of Erfurt. Her research focuses on Ancient Greek and Roman Religion and early Christianity (martyrdom, cultural context of 2nd sophistic); she is interested in identity formation, performance, ritual and (religious) experience and as member of the Erfurter RaumZeit-Research Group in the spatiotemporality of religion. Her recent publications include “Hippolytus and Viribus: Narratives on ‘Coming Back to Life’ and the Religious Discourse in Greco-Roman Literature” in Coming Back to

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Life: The Permeability of Past and Present, Mortality and Immortality, Death and Life in the Ancient Mediterranean, ed. by Frank S. Tappenden and Carly DanielHughes, McGill University Library and Archives 2017, 345 – 374 and “Die Ästhetisierung der ‘religiösen Erfahrung’ oder: wie sinnlich ist Religion? in Annäherungen an das Unaussprechliche: Ästhetische Erfahrung in kollektiven religiösen Praktiken ed. by Isabella Schwaderer and Katharina Waldner, (Bielefeld: transcript, 2020), 17– 54.

Index of Ancient Authors Hebrew Bible Genesis 6:21 7:2 7:8 Exodus 22:20 24:9 – 11 28:43 29:1 30:20 31:13 40:32 Leviticus 1:1 2:9 6:16 6:18 7:6 8:30 8:31 9:7 – 8 10:9 10:12 – 14 11:34 16:31 18:5 20:8 21:1 – 15 21:1 – 22:16 21:6 21:8 21:15 21:17 21:18 21:21 21:22 21:23 21 – 22 22:3 22:4 22:6 22:7

26 n. 72 26 n. 72 26 n. 72 109 32 33 n. 134 30 33 n. 134 30 n. 108 33 n. 134 30 33 n. 134 20 n. 27, 33 20 n. 27 20 n. 27 30 20 n. 27 33 n. 134 33 n. 134 20 n. 27 26 n. 72 24 32 30 n. 108 20 20 21 n. 28 21 n. 28, 30 n. 108 30 n. 108 21 n. 28 33 n. 134 21 n. 28, 33 n. 134 20 n. 27, 21 n. 28 30 n. 108, 33 n. 134 20, 30, 34 33 n. 134 20 n. 27 20 n. 27 20 n. 27

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110682632-012

22:9 22:10 22:10 – 13 22:11 22:12 22:13 22:16 22:25 23:32 Numbers 18:3 18:7 18:8 – 11 18:9 – 20 18:11 ff. 18:14 18:18 – 19 18:20 18:31 Deuteronomy 21:5 2 Chronicles 21:5 24:22 29:31 Psalms 22:4 40:6 – 8 50:12 – 13 95:7 – 8 104:14 – 15 116:9 Proverbs 10:24 Isaiah 1 Ezekiel 20:12 37:28 40:46 41:22 42:13

30 n. 108 20, 33 21 20 n. 27 20 n. 27 20 n. 27 30 n. 108 21 n. 28 24, 30 n. 108 31, 33 n. 134 31 31 20 n. 24, 33 20 31 31 31 31 33 n. 134 33 n. 134 71 33 n. 134 26 n. 77 26 21 n. 28 24 25 n. 62 189 167 26 30 n. 108 30 n. 108 33 n. 134 32 33 n. 134

216

43:19 44 44:8 45:14 Hosea 6:6 Joel 1:13

Index: New Testament

33 n. 134 20 n. 24 33 n. 134 33 n. 134 26

2:17 Haggai 2:12 Malachi 1:7 1:12

32

2:1 – 2 2:4 4:3 2 Timothy 2:22 Hebrews 1:1 1:2 1:3 1:5 – 14 1:14 2:1 2:3 2:5 2:8 2:9 2:10 – 13 2:10 – 18 2:11 2:12 2:17 3:1 3:1 – 16 3:6 3:8 3:10 3:12 3:14 3:15 3:19 4:1 4:2 4:3 4:6 4:7

47 188 23

26 n. 71 26 n. 71, 32 26 n. 72, 32

32

New Testament Gospel of Matthew 2:16 7 2:16 – 18 63 12:46 – 50 103 23:25 71 n. 35 27:51 70 Gospel of Mark 15:38 70 Gospel of Luke 11:51 71 n. 35 22:46 70 23:47 70 24:11 179 Gospel of John 8:22 16 10:18 16 21:18 – 19 47 Acts 6:7 35 6–7 35 7:59 70 17:18 23 n. 47 Romans 1:2 95 1 Corinthians 9:15 133 n. 45 Galatians 4:26 189 n. 38 Ephesians 2:14 – 18 47 4:3 47 Colossians 2:16 23 1 Timothy 1:5 95

95 23 23, 30 n. 103 31 23 28 n. 88 30 n. 102 30 n. 102/103 30 n. 102 30 n. 102 30 n. 102 28 n. 88 30 n. 107, 31 30 30 n. 104 30 n. 104 30 n. 102/104 30 30 n. 102 24 n. 56, 25 24 n. 56, 25 24 n. 56, 25, 30 n. 104 30 n. 102 24 n. 56, 25 30 n. 102 30 n. 103 26 n. 77, 30 n. 102/103 30 n. 102 29 24 n. 56, 25

Index: New Testament

4:11 4:12 4:13 4:14 4:15 4:16 5:11 6:1 6:3 6:9 6:11 6:12 6:18 6:19 6:20 7:5 7:11 – 28 7:12 7:15 7:18 – 19 7:19 8:1 8:1 – 2 8:1 – 5 8:3 – 10:18 8:4 8:5 – 6 8:7 8:8 8:10 8:13 9:1 – 10 9:1 – 28 9:5 9:8 – 10 9:8 – 28 9:9 9:9 – 10 9:10 9:11 – 14 9:12 9:13 – 14 9:14 9:24 9:24 – 26 9:26 10:1 – 4

30 n. 103 24 n. 56, 25 30 n. 102 30 n. 102/103 30 n. 102 30 n. 102/103 30 n. 102 30 n. 103 30 n. 102 30 n. 102 30 n. 102 30 n. 102 29 n. 95, 30 n. 102/103 30 n. 102 30 n. 103 30 n. 104 29 26 30 n. 102 26, 28 n. 88 30 n. 102 21, 30 n. 102 31 32 27 21, 28, 29 n. 101 28 n. 88 28 n. 88 28 n. 88 24 n. 56 28 n. 88 26 26 30 n. 102 28 n. 88 28 n. 88 24 24 26 32 23 30 n. 107 30 n. 102 29 n. 101, 30 n. 103 32 22, 26 26, 28 n. 88

10:1 – 18 10:5 – 9 10:8 10:9 10:10 10:11 10:11 – 12 10:12 10:14 10:15 10:16 10:19 10:20 10:21 10:22 10:23 10:24 10:25 10:26 10:29 10:30 10:32 10:33 10:39 11:1 11,1 – 40 11:3 11:13 – 14 11:35 11:40 12:1 12:1 – 2 12:2 12:3 – 4 12:9 12:10 12:16 12:18 – 27 12:22 12:25 12:28 12:28 – 29 13 13:1 13:3 13:6 13:7

23 26 26, 28 n. 88 28 n. 88, 30 n. 104 30 n. 102/107 23 28 n. 88, 32 23 30 30 n. 103 24 n. 56 30 n. 102 30 n. 103 30 n. 102 24 n. 56, 25, 30 n. 103 30 n. 102/103 30 n. 102/103 30 n. 103 30 n. 102 30 n. 107 30 n. 102 34 34 30 n. 102 26 n. 77, 30 n. 102 29 n. 95 30 n. 102 21, 29 n. 101 22, 35 22, 30 n. 103, 35 30 n. 102/103 22 6, 30 n. 103 34 30 n. 102/103 30 n. 102/103 29 28 n. 88 189 n. 38 30 n. 102/103 22, 30 n. 102/103, 33 22, 35 20 30 n. 104 35 30 n. 102 23

217

218

13:8 13:9 13:9 – 10 13:9 – 14 13:9 – 16 13:10 13:10 – 14 13:10 – 16 13:11 – 14 13:12 13:12 – 13 13:13 13:13 – 14 13:14 13:15 13:15 – 16 13:18 13:22 1 Peter 4:4 4:12 – 19 Revelation 1:9 1:9 – 10 1:10 2:1 – 3:22 2:5 2:5 – 7 2:9 2:10 – 11 2:13 2:16 2:16 – 17 2:22 2:22 – 29 3:3 3:9 3:9 – 12 3:14 3:16 3:17 3:20 – 22 4:1 – 2 4:1 – 5:14 4:2 – 5:14 5

Index: New Testament

22, 29 n. 95 22, 23, 24, 26, 28 7, 19, 20, 27, 28 n. 88, 34 20 22 28 – 34 35 22 n. 34 21 30 22 30 n. 103, 34 35 21, 28 n. 88, 29 n. 101, 30 n. 102, 34 26 22 30 n. 102 30 n. 104 46 46 41 n. 51 58 56 54 54 41 n. 54 41 n. 54 54 54 54 54 54 54 41 n. 54 50 54 51 58 51 58

1

2 1, 43

1

5:8 – 10 6:9 6:9 – 11 6:10 6:10 – 11 6:12 – 16 6:12 – 27 6:15 – 17 6:16 – 17 7:1 – 4 7:1 – 14 7:3 – 17 7:13 7:13 – 14 7:13 – 17 7:14 8:2 – 9:20 8:7 – 13 9:20 – 21 11:1 – 13 11:3 11:4 – 13 11:9 – 13 11:11 – 13 11:15 – 18 11:17 – 18 12:1 – 17 12:7 – 12 12:11 12:17 13:1 13:1 – 18 13:4 13:5 13:14 – 18 14:1 – 5 14:4 14:9 – 11 14:12 14:17 – 20 15:1 – 16:20 15:2 – 4 15:5 15:24 16:2 – 21 16:4 – 12 16:9

54 41 n. 1, 44 54 53 55 54 51 55 53 59 51 54 58 55 59 44 57 51 54 51 41 n. 1 44 54 54 57 54 51 54 41 n. 1 41 n. 1 41 n. 2 51, 57 55 41 n. 2 55 54, 58 52 54 54 54 57 58 41 n. 1 54 54 51 41 n. 2

Index: Old and New Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha

16:11 16:15 16:17 – 19 16:21 17 17:1 – 6 17:1 – 18 17:3 17:6 17:16 17:18 18:1 – 4 18:2 – 3 18:9 – 10 18:9 – 19 18:9 – 20 18:11 – 17 18:17 – 19 18:21 – 24 19:1 – 3

41 n. 2 54 51 41 n. 2 57 52 54, 57 41 n. 2 41 n. 1, 46, 47 57 57 57 54 57 50, 51, 57 54 57 57 54 54

19:1 – 8 19:6 – 8 19:10 19:11 – 21 19:17 – 20:10 20:1 – 22:5 20:4 20:11 – 15 20:44 21:2 21:7 21:8 22:1 – 5 22:3 – 5 22:8 – 9 22:14 22:16 22:18 22:18 – 19 22:20

58 54 41 n. 1, 55 54 57 51, 54 41 n. 1 54 54 52 54 54 59 54 55 54 41 n. 1 41 n. 1 54 41 n. 1

Old and New Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha Aristeas the Exegete 87 31 n. 119 92 – 93 31 n. 119 95 31 n. 119 Book of Jubilees 21:7 – 18 31 n. 119 30:18 – 20 31 n. 119 31:14 31 n. 119 31:16 31 n. 119 32:3 – 9 31 n. 119 1 Esdras 1:18 31 n. 119 5:46 31 n. 119 5:48 – 49 31 n. 119 5:50 – 53 31 n. 119 5:59 31 n. 119 7:9 31 n. 119 8:46 31 n. 119 8:58 31 n. 119 8:60 31 n. 119 Jesus Sirach 7:29 – 31 31 n. 119 13:7 26 n. 72

30:18 45:6 – 36 50:12 Judith 4:14 – 15 11:3 1 Maccabees 1:46 1:63 3:49 3:51 4:36 – 61 7:33 7:36 10:42 14:42 2 Maccabees 1:21 1:23 1:30 3:15 4:14 14:31

26 n. 72 31 n. 119 31 n. 119 31 n. 119 31 n. 119 31 n. 119 26 n. 72 31 n. 119 31 n. 119 31 n. 119 31 n. 119 31 n. 119 31 n. 119 31 n. 119 31 31 31 31 31 31

n. n. n. n. n. n.

119 119 119 119 119 119

219

220

Index: Greco-Roman Literature

14:34 31 n. 119 15:31 31 n. 119 3 Maccabees 1:11 31 n. 119 1:16 31 n. 119 2:1 – 20 31 n. 119 4 Maccabees 1:34 26 n. 72 4:9 31 n. 119 6:15 26 n. 72 Odes of Solomon 20:1 – 10 31 n. 119 Proto-gospel of James 1.2 74 n. 46 3.3 74 n. 48 5.1 74 n. 47 6.1 75 n. 54 8.1 – 2 75 n. 55 13.3 69 n. 29 15.3 – 4 69 n. 30 18.2 74 n. 49 22.1 – 23.1 64 n. 3 22.3 76 n. 58 22.3 – 4 64 n. 4 23.1 72 n. 39/41 23.2 72 n. 40

23.3

64 n. 5, 66 n. 17, 74 n. 50, 76 n. 59 23.3 – 24.3 64 n. 7 24.2 64 n. 6, 75 n. 56 24.3 64 n. 6, 76 n. 57 24.3 – 4 75 n. 52 24.4 74 n. 51 Psalms of Solomon 2:3 31 n. 119 Testament of Adam 1:12 31 n. 119 Testament of Isaac 4:32 – 42 31 n. 119 Testament of Levi 4:2 31 n. 119 5:2 31 n. 119 8:1 – 19 31 n. 119 9:6 – 7 31 n. 119 14:5 – 8 31 n. 119 17:1 – 11 31 n. 119 Testament of Moses 7:1 – 10 31 n. 119 10:2 31 n. 119 Testament of Solomon 6:4 31 n. 119 Tobit 1:6 31

Greco-Roman Literature Achilles Tatius

Diodorus Siculus

Leucippe et Clitophon (Leucippe and Clitophon) 2.30.1 23 n. 47

Codex Theodosianus/Theodosian Code 9.3 9.3.1 9.3.3 9.3.7 9.38.6 16.10.2

141 145 142 145 140, 143 93 n. 55

31.9.2 31.9.2 – 5

143 140 n. 13

Flavius Iosephus Antiquitates Iudaicae (Antiquities of the Jews) 13.1 – 2 31 n. 119 14.189 25 14.213 – 215 25 14.257 25 14.260 – 261 25 63.1 – 5 31 n. 119

Index: Greco-Roman Literature

Bellum Iudaicum (Jewish War) 1.8.9 2.17.414 2.18.1 6.8.2 7.6.4 Contra Apionem (Against Apion) 2.36.251 38.267

125 n. 19 23 n. 47 188 n. 34 125 n. 19 125 n. 19

Plinius Minor 23 n. 47 23 n. 47

Libanius Orationes (Orations) 33.41 33.42 45.8 45.9 45.11 45.12 45.31

2.198 – 199 27 De vita Mosis (On the life of Moses) II.24 27 n. 84 Quaestiones et solutiones in Exodum (Questions and answers on Exodus) 2.18 24 n. 55

140 n. 13 143 143 141 143 145 143

Epistulae (Letters) 10.96.4 10.96 – 97 10.97.2 96 97

93 46 46 171 n. 63 171 n. 63

Plutarchus Moralia 165E Timoleon 6

140 24 n. 53

Livius

Pontius

Ab urbe condita (History of Rome) 32.26.18 140 39.16.5 93 n. 53

Vita Cypriani (Life of Cyprian) 11.1 86 n. 24

Sallustius

Lucianus Peregrinus 12 14 Toxaris 29 – 30

98 93 n. 52 140 n. 13

Bellum Iugurthinum (The war with Jugurtha) 14.15 140 De coniuratione Catilinae (Conspiracy of Catiline) 55.4 143

Philo Alexandrinus

Thucydides

De cherubim (On the Cherubim) 99 – 100 27 n. 84 De plantatione (On planting) 126 – 129 27 n. 84 De specialibus legibus (On the special laws) 2.193 – 194 27

History of the Peloponnesian War 7.87.1 – 3 140 n. 13

Varro De lingua Latina (On the Latin language) 5.151 140

221

222

Index: Martyr Literature

Martyr Literature Acta Antiochena (Antiochen Acts) 2.1 – 2 167 2.2 165 2.7 165 3–4 166 4.1 166 n. 46 5 166 5.4 166 6.1 167 6.3 167 6.4 167 6.5 167 7.1 168 7.2 167 7.3 167 Acta (Brevia) Perpetuae et Felicitatis (Acts of Perpetua) A 2.1 142 A 7.1 145 B 2.1 142 B 7.1 145 Acta Phileae (Acts of Phileas, Coptic translation, Co) P.Köln.492 84, 87, 91, 92, 106 Acta Phileae (Acts of Phileas, Latin version, La) 1 106 2 95, 96 4 99 4.3 99 5 100 6 101, 102, 103 8 103, 104 9 104, 105, 106 Acta Romana (Roman Acts) 1.3 169 2 169 2.6 169 n. 56 4.1 169 10.6 169 10.8 169 10.9 170 11 171

11.4 170 12 171 n. 63 12.1 170 n. 56 12.4 171 Acta Scillitanorum (Acts of Scillitan Martyrs) 1 100 Apologia Phileae (Apology of Phileas, Papyrus Bodmer, Bo) 1 87, 88, 106 2 88, 90 6 96 16 – 17 102 Martyrium Apollonii (Martyrdom of Apollonius) 3 97 Martyrium Phileae (Martyrdom of Phileas, Chester Beatty papyri, Be) 2 96 3 96 4 97 5 98 6 98 7 99 8 99, 100 9 100 10 100 11 101, 102, 103 12 104, 106 13 – 14 104 14 105 Martyrium Phileae (Martyrdom of Phileas, Ethiopic version, Et) 1 84, 92 2 106 12 99 14 96 31 99 44 101 47 102 49 103 52 104, 106 53 104 55 105

Index: Martyr Literature

59 105 61 105 Martyrium Pionii (Martyrdom of Pionius) 8.14 97 15.2 91 n. 44 16.1 91 n. 44 18.13 91 n. 44 Martyrium Polycarpi (Martyrdom of Polycarp) 9.2, 3 97 10.1 97 14.1 165 n. 44 15.1 179 Martyrium Theodoti (Martyrdom of Theodotus) 6 92 n. 49 Passio Abitinenisum martyrum (Passion of the Martyrs from Abitinae) 17.9 – 13 103 Passio Dativi (Passion/Martyrdom of Dativus) 7.1 95 n. 59 Passio Dioscori (Passion/Martyrdom of Dioskoros, P.Qxy) P.Oxy 50.3529 89 Passio Montani et Lucii (Passion/Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius) 4.2 142, 151 n. 40 4.3 142, 145 4.7 144, 150 5.1 151 n. 40 6.2 – 3 151 n. 39 6.4 151 n. 37 6.5 144 7 151 n. 40 8 151 n. 40 9.1 144 9.2 144, 150 9.3 144 12.2 139, 144

223

16.6 141 17.1 143 17.4 151 n. 40 20.6 145 21 151 n. 40 21.12 144 Passio Mariani et Iacobi (Passion/Martyrdom of Marian and James) 1.3 152 5.10 151 n. 37 6.3 142, 143, 148 9.5 151 n. 37 12.8 152 Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis (Passion/Martyrdom of Perpetuae and Felicitas) 2 4. n. 18 3 68 n. 23 3.4 144 n. 26 3.5 142, 151 n. 40 3.6 143, 145 3.7 150 3.7 – 8 143 3.9 152 n. 46 4 151 n. 40 5 144 n. 26 5.2 204 n. 36 5.5 142 6.2 92 n. 49 7 151 n. 40 7.4 – 8 149 8 151 n. 40 8.1 141, 149 9.1 149, 152 n. 45 10 151 n. 40 11.9 139 11 – 13 151 n. 40 13.5 149 14.3 139 16.2 152 n. 45 16.2 – 3 145 16.3 – 4 150

224

Index: Early Christian Literature

Early Christian Literature Arnobius Maior

Cyrillus Alexandrinus

Adversus nations (Against the nations) 7.1 – 25 108

Contra Iulianum (Against Iulian) 9.22. 8 – 17 96 n. 63

Augustinus

Didascalia

De civitate Dei (City of God) 10.4 – 6 27 n. 81 10.20 27 n. 81 In Iohannis evangelium tractatus (Tractates on John) 49.9 142

Chrysostomus s. John Chrysostom Clemens Alexandrinus Stromata (Miscellanies) 4.9.70.1

16

Constitutiones Aostolorum (Apostolic Constitutions) 5.1 – 2

144 n. 25

Cyprian of Carthage Epistulae (Letters) 25.8 26.1 34.2 37.1 77.1 77.2 77.3

140 141 141 141 141 141 150

19

144 n. 25

Epiphanius of Salamis Panarion haereses (Against Haeresies) 68.8.4 187 n. 30

Eusebius Caesariensis De laude Constantini (In Praise of Constantine) 8.9 93 n. 55 De martyribus Palaestinae (Martyrs of Palestine, LR=Long Recension, SR=Short Recension) LR praef. 182 LR 8.1 189 n. 39 SR pref.–1.5 184 SR 2.1 184 n. 24, 185 SR 3.1 94 n. 57, 184 n. 24 SR 3.5 185 SR 4.5 – 7 186 SR 4.13 186 SR 4.15 185, 186 SR 5.1 184 n. 24, 185, 186 n. 28 SR 5.2 184 n. 24 SR 5.3 186 n. 28 SR 6.7 186 n. 28 SR 7.2 186 n. 28 SR 8.4 184 n. 24 SR 8.11 188 SR 9.2 178 SR 9.4 178 SR 9.5 178 SR 9.6 – 8 178 SR 9.9 178 SR 9.10 178, 179

Index: Early Christian Literature

SR 9.12 179 SR 9.12 – 13 179 SR 10.1 184 n. 24 SR 11.5 – 7 189 Historia ecclesiastica (Church history) 3.18.1 – 5 45 3.36 171 n. 63 3.36.2 – 11 157 5.prol.4 182 5.8.5 – 6 45 6.3 – 4 206 6.5 207 n. 44 6.33.4 187 n. 30 7.32.30 91 n. 43 8 82 8.9.4 10 8.9.5 92 n. 49 8.9.7 87, 88, 103 8.9.7 – 8 83 8.9.7 – 10.1 106 8.9.7 – 10.12 81 8.9.8 104 8.10.2 94 8.10.8 106 8.13.7 87, 187 n. 29 9.11.4 93 Praeparatio Evangelica (Preparation of the Gospel) 4.9 – 23 108 Vita Constantini (Life of Constantine) 2.45.1 93 n. 55

Evagrius Scholasticus Historia Ecclesiastica (Church history) 1.16 162, 165 n. 39

Hieronymus/Jerome De viris illustribus (On illustrious men) 16 162 n. 24 76 91 n. 43

Epistulae (Letters) 112.15

96 n. 63

Ignatius of Antioch Epistula ad Ephesios (Epistle to the Ephesians) 12 166 Epistula ad Magnesios (Epistle to the Magnesians) 7.2 – 8.2 27 8.1 24 n. 55 Epistula ad Polycarpum (Epistle to Polycarp) 7.1 165 Epistula ad Romanos (Epistle to the Romans) 1.1 165 1–4 165 2 165 2.2 130 n. 32, 132 n. 43 3.2 165 4 160, 165 4.1 8, 17 n. 8, 130 n. 32, 132 n. 44, 166 n. 46 4.1 – 2 130 n. 34 4.2 167, 170 5.1 130 n. 35, 169 5.2 165 5.3 131 n. 39, 169 n. 56 6.1 133 n. 45 6.2 165 6.3 17 7.1 133 n. 47 7.2 133 n. 48, 165 7.2 – 3 133 n. 46 7.3 133 n. 46 7.3b–8.1a 133 n. 49 9.3 166 n. 46 Epistula ad Smyrnaeos (Epistle to the Smyrneans) 2 157 n. 5 Epistula ad Trallianos (Epistle to the Trallians) 2.3 24 n. 55 6.1 23 n. 47 10 157 n. 5

225

226

Index: Early Christian Literature

Irenaeus Adversus haereses (Against Heresies) 3.30.1 – 11 45 5.28,4 157 5.30.3 45

Iustinianus I., Imperator Digesta (Digest) 48.19.8

139

Lactantius De mortibus persecutorum (On the deaths of the persecutors) 14.4 94 n. 57 34 93 n. 54

John Chrysostom Homilia in Ignatium martyrem (Homily on St. Ignatius) 15 161 16 161 17 161 n. 23, 162 18 162 Orationes (Orations) 74.21 – 22 22

Johannes Malalas Chronographia 11.10

164 n. 37, 168 n.

Nicephorus Historia Ecclesiastica (Church history) 7.16 87 n. 28

Origenes Commentarii in Euangelium Iohannis (Commentary on the Gospel According to John) p. 190 (transl. Ronald E. Heine) 17 n. 10

De oratione (On prayer) 20 157 n. 6 In Ieremiam Homiliae (Homilies on Jeremiah) 4.3.2 202 n. 32 In Lucam Homiliae (Homilies on Luke) 6 157 n. 6

Pastor Hermae Similitudines 8.6.5

23 n. 47

Polycarp of Smyrna Epistula ad Philippenses (Epistle to the Philippians) 9 157 13 156 – 157

Rufinus Historia Ecclesiastica (Church history) 7.30.9 101 n. 83

Tertullianus Ad martyras (To the martyrs) 1 140, 147 2 141, 147 – 148 3 148 Ad Scapulam (To Scapula) 4.1.3 – 4 95 n. 59 Adversus Marcionem (Against Marcion) 4.34 149 Apolegeticum 44.3 143 De anima (On the soul) 55 205

Index : Dead Sea Scrolls

Rabbinic Literature Babylonian Talmud

Mishna

Moed Katan 25

Abodah Zarah III.1.42c

179 n. 4

1QH 4.3 – 4 1QS 1.12

25 n. 63 25 n. 63

179 n. 4

Midrashim Midrash on Samuel 7.Y.Nazir, 56a 179 n. 5

Dead Sea Scrolls 1QH 1.31 – 32 1QH 2.6 – 10

25 n. 63 25 n. 63

227

Index of Subjects Aaron 30 – 32 Abbahu, Rabbi 179 Abihu 32 advocatus 103 Aelia Capitolina 127, 189 affiliation 128, 185 – 188 agency 119 – 120, 134, 137 agricultural cycles 73 – 74 Alexandria 88, 90, 107, 172, 182 n.18, 206 alienation 29, 32, 34 altar 19, 28, 30 – 33, 70, 74 – 75, 100, 132, 188 amphitheater 8 – 9, 137 – 138, 146 – 147, 167 Anabaptists, Anabaptist movement 10, 193, 196 – 208 angel, angelic 23, 55, 59, 75 – 76, 149 Antonius (martyr) 178, 180 Antioch 128, 156 – 173 antisemitism 28 Apollon 171 apology, apologetic 82 – 83, 87 – 88, 108, 161 n.22, 186 – 170, 185, 187 n.30, 201 apostasy 147, 187 n.30, 189 n.39, 208 apostle 103, 156, 166, 169, 194 arena 4 – 5, 9, 130, 131 n.9 Arian controversy 158 Arnobius 108 asceticism, ascetic 90, 158 Ashkelon 184 Asia Minor 8, 41, 44 – 49, 51, 60, 119 n.1, 127 n.25, 160 – 161, 166, 169 athlete 137, 148 atonement 33, 70, 71 – Day of Atonement 27, 33 Atticus Surbanus (Roman consul) 171 audience 4, 14 – 15, 19, 30, 42, 47, 50 – 56, 102, 133, 147, 187 authenticity 85 – 86, 119 n.1, 157 – 158, 165 n.42, 168, 203 n.35 author 4, 10, 30, 44, 55, 75, 86, 92, 106, 108 – 109, 125 n.17, 137 – 140, 145 – 147,

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110682632-013

149 n.34, 151, 155, 166 n.46, 167 – 172, 180, 185, 190, 194 – 195, 208 Babylon 51 – 53, 57 – 58 – whore of Babylon 46, 47, 52, 57 baptism 196 – 197, 200 – 201, 206 – 207 Bar Kokhba revolt 127, 189, Baronius, Caesar 201 baths 144 – 145, 178, 188 beast 8 – 9, 51, 53, 57, 129 – 132, 137, 155, 160 – 161, 165, 167 – 169, 178, 204 bema 92, 106 Bible 81, 107, 181, 195 – Hebrew Bible, Old Testament 1, 42 n.3, 107, 200 biopower 120 – 125 bishop 4, 81, 87 – 92, 98 – 99, 100 n.80, 106, 144, 150, 156 – 158, 164 – 167, 169 – 172 Bithynia s. Pontus-Bithynia blasphemy, blasphemers 41 – 43, 50 – 51 blood 20 – 23, 35, 44 – 47, 53, 58 – 60, 64 – 65, 68, 70 – 72, 75 – 77, 94, 133, 161, 182, 194, 201, 205, body 8, 64, 96, 119 – 121, 130 – 134, 145, 149, 170, 206 – social body 15, 18 – 19 – embodied 74, 121, 132 bones 131, 141, 156, 160 – 164, 167, 178 boundaries 44, 120, 127 – 129, 208 Braght, Tieleman van 10 – 11, 194 – 195, 197 – 208 brother, brotherhood 30 – 33, 100 – 104, 141, 150, 152, 204, 207 Calvinists 198 canon 63, 70 – 71, 98, 108 capitalism 122 – 124 captive, captivity 120, 128 – 129 carcer 140, 143 celibacy 207 center 8, 119 – 121, 124 – 125, 128 – 134, 185

230

Index of Subjects

chains 101, 138 – 144, 151 cherubim 105 childbirth 204 chronotope (Bakhtin) 7, 41, 52 – 53 church 10, 32, 43, 54, 56, 105, 119, 147, 156 – 158, 163, 166 n.46, 171 – 172, 181 – 185, 193, 195, 197 – 202 – church history 9, 16, 80 – 81, 157, 163, 182 – 183 Cilicia 189 cinematography 56 circumcision 127 citizen, citizenship 21, 23, 28, 196 – 197 city 15 – 16, 19 – 21, 34 – 35, 44, 50, 53, 57, 106, 127, 129, 133, 160 – 163, 178 – 179, 185 – 190, 196 Clement of Alexandria 170, 201 clerics 88, 149, 172 Clodius Culcianus (Roman prefect) 91, 93, 105 n.101 coenobitic movement 95 colonialism, colonial, colonized 6, 8, 41, 48 – 49, 119 – 128, 131, 151 – postcolonial 8, 48, 151 commentarii 91, 165 commemoration 6, 15, 19, 21, 161, 171 – 172, commerce, commercial 53, 57 communication 20 Communion 132, 148 community 5, 7, 10, 15, 17, 19, 21 – 23, 26 – 27, 31 – 35, 56, 128 n.27, 130, 138, 149, 156, 163, 179, 182, 185, 195 competition 50 concealment 7, 65, 72, 75 – 76 confession 22, 32, 101, 105, 141, 144, 178, 201, 204, 208 confessor 141, 144 – 147, 149 – 151, 189 n.39 connectivity 159 – 160 consciousness 98 control over life and death 129, 134 conversion 162 corpse 15, 17, 19, 21, 64, 164, 186 – 187 cosmology 15, 19 cosmos, cosmic sympathy 65, 73 – 76 counsellor 95, 98, 102 – 104

counter narrative 49 counter script 137 court 46 n.13, 101 – 104, 106, 194 court proceedings 104, 194 courtroom 92, 104, 106, covenant 24 – 27, 29, 32 – 34 crime 54, 139 crisis 47 – 49, 54, 181 crowd 4, 35, 138 n.5, 142 – 143, 150, 161 crucifixion 6, 70, 99 cult 9, 23, 25, 27, 33 n.135, 107, 128, 161 – 164, 167, 170, 172 Cyprian 32 n.126, 86 n.24, 140 – 141, 150 Dacians 168 Daniel (prophet) 189 darkness 138, 142 – 143, 146, 148 David 133 death 3 – 9, 16 – 19, 20 – 22, 32 – 35, 47, 64, 66 – 67, 70 – 71, 94, 119 – 120, 123, 125 – 126, 128, 130 – 134, 137, 139, 140 – 143, 156 – 157, 163, 166, 170 – 171, 182 n.18, 186, 189, 194 – 195, 202, 204 – 206, 208 Decius (Roman emperor) 87, 94, 108, 207 devil 24, 105, 131, 140, 144, 147 – 148, 205 devotion 57, 72, 101 – 102, 107, 119, 134, 162, 193 – 194 diaspora 25, 44 – 45, 49, 96 dinner, communal 25 Diocletian 8, 88 – 89, 91 – 94, 103, 177 Dionysos 99 Dioskoros (martyr) 89, 95, 98 – 100 dirge 57 – 58 disciple 129 – 130, 165 – 167, 203, 206 displacement 15, 19, 21, 34 divinity 68, 99 Domitian 41, 45 – 46, 48, 165 drama 15, 19, 60, 65, 74, 106, 152, 171, 184 dungeon 142 ecstasy 120 edge zones 15 – 16, 19 Egypt 44, 81, 87 – 89, 93, 95, 100, 105 n.101, 107, 172, 177, 189, 205 – 206 ekphrasis 41, 55 n.34, 58

Index of Subjects

Eleutheropolis 178 Elijah 189 elite 123 – 124, 149 n.36, 199 emperor 45 – 46, 59, 94, 97, 104, 169, 170, 177, 184, 203 – emperor cult 94, 97, 160, 162, 165, 169 empire, imperial 43, 47 n.14, 49 – 50, 107, 119 – 120, 122 – 129, 133 – 134, 137, 145, 177, 179, 181, 188 – imperial cult 46, 97 emplotment 20, 34 – 35 encomium 29, 203 Ennathas (martyr) 178, 180 Enoch 51 entertainment 130, 134 Epiphanius 187 n.30, 201 episcopacy, episcopate 88, 90, 119, 107 episkopos 160 eros, erotic themes, erotization 4, 71 eschatology, eschatological 26, 31 – 32, 48, 74 n.49 Eucharist 8, 32, 119 – 120, 129 – 130, 132 – 134, 196 eurocentric 120 – 122, 134 Eusebius of Caesarea 9 – 10, 45, 81 – 83, 87 – 88, 90, 93 – 94, 103 – 108, 129, 157, 159, 160 – 161, 166, 169 n.57, 171 n.66, 177 – 190, 201, 206 – 207 execution 3, 10, 17, 45, 48 n.18, 82, 99, 102, 104 – 106, 131 n.38, 143, 152, 156 – 157, 164 – 165, 169, 193 – 194, 196 n.7, 199, 203 – 208 experience 5, 32 – 33, 43 – 44, 47 – 48, 52 – 53, 59, 73, 120 n.2, 122, 132, 134, 138 – 142, 145, 148, – experience of incarceration 138 – 140 eyewitness account 166, 184, 187 6, 10, 17, 25 – 26, 35, 43, 46 n.11, 54 – 56, 93, 96 – 97, 101, 107, 137, 140 – 141, 145, 148 – 152, 193 – 208 familial 30 – 31, 63, 66, 72, 77, 103, 141 n.22, 142 – 145, 148 family 4, 20, 30 – 31, 46 n.11, 72, 77, 101, 103 – 104, 107, 142, 144, 148 – 149, 151, 181, 183, 185, 188, 190, 196, 204 Felix Mantz 196

231

fiction 4, 8, 60, 86, 166, 169, 171, 178 n.1 Final Judgment 57, 148 – 149, 208 Firmilianus (governor of Syria Palestina) 177 – 178, 181 food 19, 21, 24, 27, 75, 130, 132 – 133, 144 – 147, 178 Franck, Sebastian 201 frontier 120, 125 n.16, 126 – 127 funerary banquets 148 Galerius 10, 93, 180 Galilee 16 games 125, 167 gathering 5, 202 Gaza 184, 186 n.28 gaze 4, 208 gender, gendered 6, 51, 68 n.25, 71, 205 – gender-bending 205 genius (of the emperor) 97 genocide 69 Gentile, Gentiles 18, 47, 188 geography 5, 46, 51, 137, 149 n.36 George Blaurock 196 gladiator 137, 205 gnosis 23 God 3 – 4, 8 – 9, 15, 19, 21, 24 – 28, 31 – 33, 44 – 45, 53 – 55, 59 – 60, 64, 66 – 69, 71 – 72, 76, 94, 98 – 100, 128, 130, 132 – 134, 147 – 148, 152, 161, 164 n.37, 169, 171, 182, 188 – 189, 202 – 204 gospel 4, 7, 16, 46, 63, 70, 71 n.35, 99, 196 n.7 government 91, 123 – 124, 196 governor 86 – 87, 101, 104 – 107, 139, 171, 177 – 189 grace 19, 24 – 27, 162 grave 155, 162, 164, 202 Gysius, Johann 201

faith

Hades 140 n.11, 205 Hegesippus 45 heresy, heretic 3, 161 n.22, 202 high priest 21 – 24, 27, 31 – 31, 35, 63 history 8, 35, 52, 82, 106 – 107, 125 n.17, 129, 156 – 157, 163, 177 – 183, 195 – 196, 199, 208 Holy Spirit 75, 148

232

Index of Subjects

homily 156 – 164, 202 household 68, 72, 77, 178, 181, 194 humiliation 103, 127 n.25, 141, 151 identity 5, 9, 11, 33 n.135, 48, 68, 98, 109, 119, 121 n.4, 128, 131 n.38, 138 n.3, 141, 177, 181, 183, 185 – 186, 190, 193 – 194, 197 – ethnic identity 48 idolatry 7, 41 – 42, 49, 54, 57, 59, 147 Ignatius of Antioch (martyr) 6, 8 – 9, 16 – 17, 27, 119 – 120, 122, 127 – 134, 155 – 173, 195, 200 – 201 imagery 20, 22, 70 – 71, 148, 205 imagination 5, 10, 50 – 52, 119, 128 – 129, 140, 147, 155 – 156, 171, 196, 198 imitation 6 – 7, 15 – 17, 19, 22, 26, 30, 33 – 35, 70 imperialism 122 – 127 imprisonment 81, 88, 139, 141 – 142, 147, 196 n.7, 203 incarceration 138 – 147 interrogation 69, 85, 91 – 92, 171 n.64, 189 Irenaeus of Lyons 45, 108, 157, 160, 170 n.57, 171 n.63 Isaiah 95, 189 iudex 181 Jerusalem 16, 25 n.62, 34 – 35, 44, 51 – 52, 54, 59, 96, 127, 177, 189 – 190, 196 – New Jerusalem 196 Jesus, Jesus Christ 5 – 7, 9, 15 – 16, 18, 22, 24, 26 – 27, 30, 33 – 35, 46 – 47, 70, 75, 101, 119, 128, 130 – 134, 179, 182, 200, 203 – 204, 206 Jew, Jewish (Ioudaios) 3, 7, 18 – 19, 25, 35, 41, 43 – 45, 47 – 49, 55, 64, 66 – 67, 70 – 71, 96, 99 – 100, 127, 156, 179, 181, 188 – 190 – Jewish literature 2, 20 Judaism 18, 23, 24 n.55, 25, 27 – 29, 49, 67, 189 – 190 Joachim 74 John Malalas 163 John, author of Revelation 7, 41 – 42, 43 – 46, 48 – 60

John, the Baptist 4, 63, 65 – 66, 72, 76 – 77, 193 – 194 Joseph (of Nazareth) 63, 69, 74 joy 6, 25, 144, 146, 148 – 150, 162, 167 judge 53, 81, 83, 91 – 93, 96, 98 – 109, 147, 186, 207 judgment 20, 57, 91, 148, 149, 208 Justin 170, 193 – 194, 201 Justinian (Roman emperor) 139 lamb 44, 53, 58 – 59, 94, 96 – Paschal lamb 96 lament, lamentation 57 – 58, 71, 74 landscapes 74, 76, 146, 159, 161, 181 Last Trumpets sound 57, 91, 152, 205 law, legal 26, 28, 85, 91, 93, 100 – 102, 106, 138, 143, 145 – dietary laws 25 lawyer 91, 100 – 102, 106 leaders, Christian 158, 177, 181, 185, 187 legal system 138 Levites 29, 31 Leyden, Jan van 196 libation 130, 132, 134, 178 liminal sites 137 liturgy, liturgical 9, 58, 63, 66, 70, 73 – 75, 86, 89, 104, 161, 171 love 66, 70 – 72, 133, 165, 167, 182, 189, 206 Luther, Martin 196, 201 madness 93, 107 magistrate 47, 85, 90, 102, 178, 188 Magnesia 27, 159 Marcellus (Roman consul) 171 martyrdom, martyr – authenticity 85 – 87, 157, 158, 168, 303 n.35 – desire 3 – 11, 16 – 35, 131 – 133, 141, 164 – 168, 182, 197, 190 – fiction, fictional, fictionalized 3 – 4, 8, 60, 166, 169 – 171, 177 n 1. – imagination, imagined 9, 10, 45 – 48, 50 – 54, 129 – 132, 138 n.3, 146, 156 – 157, 208

Index of Subjects

– Judaism, Jewish 2 – 3, 7, 18, 24 n 55, 28 – 34, 43 – 45, 47 – 49, 66 – 67, 127, 177 – 179, 181,189 – 190 – Roman Empire, imperial power 5, 6, 8, 43, 46, 48 – 49, 94, 97,111 n. 5, 119 – 134, 145, 159, 177, 179, 185 – 188 – sacrifice 6, 8, 11, 15, 26 – 35, 70, 71, 81, 90 – 101, 108 – 109, 132, 134, 150, 146 n.37, 165, 169, 178, 186 – trauma, traumatic experience 15 – 39, 48 – 49, 60, 187 – 190 martyria 120, 148, 149 n.34, 161 n.21, 163, 181 martyrology 5, 10, 63, 65 – 68, 70 n.33, 199 – 201, 207 – Mennonite martyrologies 199, 208 Mary (mother of Jesus) 63 – 64, 69, 74 – 75 Maximinus Daia (Roman emperor) 177, 185 meal 6, 15, 19 – 21, 25 – 26, 33 – 34, 50, 149 n.34 – sacral meal 15, 17, 19, 34 Mediterranean 159 medium, media 9, 31, 85 Mehrning, Jacob 201 Mellin, Abraham 201, 208 memoria, memorial 167, 194, 197, 199, 205 memorialize, memorialization 70, 76, 199, 205 memory 5, 7, 8, 11, 47, 82, 182 – 183, 186 – 187, 190, 196 – 198 Menno Simons 195, 197, 200 n.21 Mennonites, Mennonite 193 – 208 ministry 24, 31 Minucius Felix 170 miracle 83, 99, 179, 181, 186 – 187 mission 18 Moses, Mosaic 23, 30, 32, 96, 107 Münster 196 – 197 murder 63 – 67, 70 – 71, 74 – 76, 133, 145 mystery 46, 60, 65, 159 n.14 Nadab 32 narrative 4, 6, 10 – 11, 15, 18, 20, 34, 41, 42 n.3, 43, 48 – 49, 51 – 53, 56 – 58, 63, 65 – 66, 72 – 73, 75, 85, 119, 125 n.17, 129 n.28, 137 – 138, 146 – 147, 149 n.36,

233

150 – 152, 164 n.37, 171 – 173, 177, 181 – 182, 184, 186 – 187, 194, 199, 203, 208 nature 17, 43, 75, 86, 92, 99, 108, 179, 186 Neapolis 159, 166 necropolitics (Achilles Mbembe) 119 – 134 Nero (Roman emperor) 41, 44 – 48, 188 Netherlands 195 – 198 network 159 – 160, 169, 188 New Testament 19, 83, 107, 122, 166, 200 non-resistance (“Wehrlosigkeit”) 197 norm(s) 52, 68, 85, 101 n.88, 120, 125 n.16, 146 n.30 North Africa 68, 137 – 138, 141, 145, 149 n.34, 202 – 203 oath 68 – 69, 97, 207 offering 21, 25 n.62, 26 – 27, 73 – 74, 94 Old Testament (s. Hebrew Bible) onomatopoeia 57 Ontario 193 Origen 17, 73, 157, 160, 181, 187 n.30, 202, 206 – 208 Orosius 201 Osiris 99 Pachomius 95 pagan, pagans 4, 16, 21 n.28, 25, 44 – 45, 93, 98, 103, 105 – 106, 164 n.37, 170, 181, 189 – pagan gods 98, 170 pain 16, 31, 70 n.33, 88, 94, 140 – 144, 178, 184, 189, 203 – 204 – labor pains 203 Palestine 10, 44, 49, 122, 177 – 178, 180 – 190 Pamphilus (martyr) 90, 181, 185 – 189 paradise 149, 189, 205 Parthians 165, 168 passion, passion account 17, 70 – 72, 92, 100, 102, 105, 139, 142, 178, 203 Patmos 41, 48, 58 Pax Romana 125 Peregrinus (Proteus) 93 n.52, 98 performance 5, 52, 54, 59, 120, 146 periphery 120, 124 – 134

234

Index of Subjects

Perpetua (martyr, martyrdom of) 4, 67 – 68, 72, 92, 125, 128, 139, 141 – 146, 149 – 152, 193, 195, 202 – 207 Persecution 6 – 7, 11, 15, 19, 35, 41, 43 – 45, 47 – 48, 55, 87 – 90, 94, 97 – 98, 107, 125 n.17, 165 – 168, 170, 177 – 178, 180 – 187, 196 – 189, 200, 207 – Diocletian 8, 88 – 89 – Galerian 168 – Great persecution 10, 81, 87, 90, 94, 107 – 108, 177, 180 – 184, 190 – Nero 41, 44 – 45, 47 – 48, 188 personhood 120 – 122 persuasion 5, 55 Peter (apostle) 46 – 47, 96, 156, 169 Philadelphia 159 Phileas 81 – 84, 87 – 109 Philippi 157, 159, 166 Philo (of Alexandria) 27, 156 Philoromus 82 – 83, 87 – 88, 103 Pierius (apostate martyr) 90 – 91 piety 182, 194 Platina, Bartolomeo 201 Plato 97 Pliny 46 – 47, 93, 126, 171 Polycarpe (martyr, martyrdom of) 97 – 99, 156 – 157, 160, 165 – 166, 171, 195, 200 – 201 polygamy 196 polytheism, polytheist 93 Pontus-Bithynia 46, 171 Poseidon 171 poverty 48 n.18, 91 power 8 – 9, 50, 55, 59, 68, 119 – 129, 130 n.35, 131 – 134, 137, 146 – 148, 152, 171, 181, 187 n.31, 188, 193, 205 – contestation of power 152 pregnancy 69, 203 priest, priestly 5, 15, 19 – 24, 26 – 35, 63 – 64, 70, 72, 74 – 75 priesthood 20 – 21, 23, 26, 28 – 29, 31 – 32, 34 prisoner 137 – 138, 140 – 145, 157, 159 prison 9, 81, 90, 126, 137 – 152, 187 – 189, 199, 204, 206 prophet, prophetism 23, 27, 45, 50, 95, 148, 189, 200,

protocol, legal 85 province, provincial 46 n.13, 47, 85, 123, 128, 134, 177, 181, 183, 185, 187 – 190 – provincial subject 123, 134 psyche (“soul”) 96 punishment 7, 42, 54, 102, 105, 128, 131, 134, 138 n.5, 139, 141 – 142, 144 – 145, 152, 186, 204 purgatory 205 Puteoli 166 Quintilian 55 n.34 Qumran 20, 25 Rabbinic sources 179 rebellion 127, 179 reception 63 n.2, 85 – 86 redemptive 15, 19 – 20, 22, 26, 71, 132 Reformation 195, 197, 199 refrigerium (“refreshment”) 148 – 150 relatives 101, 103 relics 160 – 170 remembrance 160, 167, 177, 185 – 187 representation 32, 46, 48, 50 – 59, 121, 181, 188, 190 resistance 5, 120, 138 n.4, 146 n.30, 150 n.36, 189, 197 resurrection 107, 151, 161, 205 Revelation, John’s 41, 48 rhetorics, rhetoric 4 – 5, 9, 11, 23 n.43, 29, 33, 35, 41 – 46, 49, 52, 55, 57 – 60, 72, 76, 120, 125, 133, 139 n.8, 146 – 147, 165, 178, 180 Ries, Hans de 200 righteous, the 55, 71, 149, 167, 207 ritual 27, 67, 68, 132, 151, 164 – ritual, purity 27, 64, 67 – 68, 164 Roman(s) 9, 43, 120, 123, 129, 130 – 132, 142 – 143, 147, 152 – Roman authorities 109, 180 – Roman Empire 47 n.14, 49, 120, 122 – 134, 177, 179, 181, 188 – Roman self-identity 141 Rome 8, 17, 35, 44, 47 – 48, 51, 120, 123, 127 – 134, 137, 140, 142, 147 – 148, 152, 156 – 161, 163, 165 – 170, 189

Index of Subjects

Rufinus 201 ruler 47, 50, 133 – 134 sacrifice, sacrificial 5, 6, 8, 11, 15, 19 – 20, 23, 26 – 27, 30, 33 – 35, 71, 81, 90 – 91, 94 – 98, 100 – 101, 108 – 109, 130, 132, 164 n.37, 165, 169, 178, 186, 188, 199, 204 – atonement sacrifice 33 saint(s) 9, 44, 46 – 47, 55, 58, 84, 106, 162 – 164, 169, 172, 194, 198, 202, 205 – calendar of saints 84, 106 – cult of saints 9, 161, 172 – intercession of saints 193 – 194, 205, 207 Samaritans 188 Samuel 189 sanctuary 31, 70, 75, 162 sarcophagus 167 Sardis 159 Satan 43, 54, 57, 147 Sattler, Michael 199 schism, Melitian 84 Scriptures 92 – 95, 99, 195, 201 sea, seaside, seascapes 51, 57 – 59, 166 – 169, 184 – 190 secretarium 93, 100 – 101 self 6, 17 – 18, 33 n.135, 35, 48, 53, 68 – 69, 120 – 124, 130 – 134, 138 n.3, 141 – selfhood 120, 134 – self-sacrificial 22, 130 – 132 Senate 179, 171 Septimius Severus 203 sexual assault 142 shame 16 – 21, 30, 34 – 35, 141 – 142, 151 Simeon 75 Skythopolis 178 slavery, slave, enslavement 53, 101, 122, 125, 127, 142 Smyrna 156, 159 – 160, 166 n.46 society 44 n.6, 49 – 50, 68, 125 n.16, 142 Socrates 98 – 99 soldiers 88 n.32, 128, 130 n.35, 137, 145, 159, 182 solidarity 7, 20 – 21, 30 – 31, 33 – 35, 120, 128 Sophronius 201

235

Soteriology 119 Sovereignty 120 – 134 space, spatial 2, 5 – 6, 9, 11, 17 – 19, 21 – 22, 27, 34, 42, 50 – 59, 65 n. 13, 66, 74 – 76, 93, 101, 120, 125 n.16, 126 – 129, 138 – 139, 145 – 152, 180, 182, 185 – 190, 195, 202 – sacred space 75 – space-time 7, 9, 42 n.3, 52 – 54, 177, 183 – spatial hegemony 133 – spatial theory 5, 7, 41, 137 – spatial turn 1, 129 n.28, 151 – spatiality 42 n.3, 49 n.23, 54, 151 spatiotemporality, spatiotemporal 2, 5, 6, 8 – 11, 41 – 42, 50, 52 – 54, 56 – 58, 60, 184 speech act 42, 67 – 69 spirit 51, 58, 64, 68, 70, 148 statues 93 Stephanus, Stephen (martyr) 70, 193 – 194, 199 – 200 story 4, 7 – 8, 20, 49, 65 – 66, 71 – 72, 74 – 75, 77, 122, 128, 145, 164 – 168, 172, 179 – 180 subjection 120, 125 subjectivity 121, 123, 128, 130 suicide 16 – 17, 22, 131 – 132, 140 – suicide bomber 131 – 132 supplication 101, 103 survivor 155, 183, 187 sword 200, 205 synagogue 49, 179, 188 Syria 89, 97, 127 – 128, 130 n.35, 159, 164, 169, 177, 180, 182 n.18 tabernacle 26 Tatian 170 teacher 4, 27, 90, 189, 206 temple 27, 32, 35, 59, 63 – 65, 68, 70, 72, 75 – 77, 178, 188 Tent of Testimony 31 territory 124 n.15, 127 Tertullian 9, 45, 140 – 149, 201, 205 testimony, testify 4, 31, 35, 41, 43, 53, 95, 105 n.98, 138 n.5, 157, 161, 163, 168, 171 n.63, 172 – 173, 194, 201 – 202 theatricality 120

236

Index of Subjects

Theodosian Code 140 – 145 Theodosius II 162 theology 119, 170 Thielmann van Braght 10 – 11, 194 – 208 thirdspace (Edward Soja) 10, 51, 177, 190 Thmuis 81 – 83, 87 – 88, 90, 92, 100 Thrace 169 throne 6, 51, 53, 55, 59, 149 – throne of majesty 21 time 5, 10 – 11, 17 – 19, 22, 27, 43, 50, 52 – 54, 58 – 60, 63, 66, 73 – 75, 81, 87, 100, 102, 106, 109, 126 – 129, 168 – 169, 171, 182 – 185, 190 toleration, tolerance 93, 125 n.17, 180, 197 – edict of toleration 10, 180 tomb 130, 179 topographia 41, 55, 58, 59 torture 81, 88, 90, 92, 106, 126, 138, 140 – 146, 169 – 170, 178, 181, 185 – 189, 193, 196 n.7, 197, 204, 206 – 208 Trajan 46, 126, 155, 157, 160, 163 – 173 Tralles 159 trauma, traumatic 6 – 7, 10, 15 – 22, 28, 34 – 35, 48 – 49, 52 – 53, 58 – 60, 90, 177, 182 – 190 trial 8, 82 – 83, 85 – 88, 91 – 94, 100, 103, 105 – 107, 164 – 169, 194 trial records 90, 194 trialectical 50 – 51

Troas 159, 166 Twisck, Pieter Jansz Tyre 184 – 187

201

Ulpian (governor of Syria Palestina) 186 Ulrich Zwingli 195 Usuard 201

185 –

victim 27 n.81, 43, 65, 70, 87 – 89, 132, 137, 187 virgin, virginity 52, 65, 164, 178, 206 vision 43, 45, 48, 51, 56 – 59, 66, 141, 149, 151, 167, 204 – 205 vow 68 – 69 voyeurism 4, 58, 66 vulnerability 188 – 190 war 51, 54, 137, 182, 207 – Jewish war 41, 44 – 45, 48, 125 n.19, 127, 188, witness 3, 7, 15, 19, 35, 41, 43 – 44, 50 – 51, 58, 64, 66, 68, 137, 152, 157, 166 – 168, 184, 187, 200, 207 wrestling school 148 Zacharias 63 – 77 Zeus 171 Zürich 195 – 196