Illiterate Apostles: Uneducated Early Christians and the Literates Who Loved Them 9780567662880, 9780567665485, 9780567662897

Citation preview

Library of New Testament Studies 541 Formerly the Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series Editor Chris Keith Editorial Board Dale C. Allison, John M.G. Barclay, Lynn H. Cohick, R. Alan Culpepper, Craig A. Evans, Robert Fowler, Simon J. Gathercole, John S. Kloppenborg, Michael Labahn, Love L. Sechrest, Robert Wall, Steve Walton, Catrin H. Williams

ILLITERATE APOSTLES

Uneducated Early Christians and the Literates Who Loved Them

Allen R. Hilton

T&T CLARK Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, T&T CLARK and the T&T Clark logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain in 2018 Paperback edition first published 2020 Copyright © Allen R. Hilton, 2018 Allen R. Hilton has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-0-5676-6288-0 PB: 978-0-5676-9251-1 ePDF: 978-0-5676-6289-7 eBook: 978-0-5676-8422-6 Series: Library of New Testament Studies, 2513–8790, volume 541 Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

CONTENTS Part 1 THE CAUSE OF THE CRITICISM Introduction to Part 1

1

Chapter 1 AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF ANCIENT LITERACY An Anecdote Definitions Quantifying Literacy and Education Orality and Literacy Quantifying Ancient Literacy Early Christian Literacy The Social Impact of Literacy and Education Ancient Issues and Attitudes Attitudes toward Letters Attitudes toward the Lettered and Unlettered

7 9 10 12 13 15 18 20 23 24 26

Chapter 2 ATTITUDES TOWARD THE ILLITERATE Pagan Perception Lucian Galen Explicit Criticism Celsus Caecilius Implicit Criticism Justin Athenagoras Conclusion

35 37 38 42 44 44 47 50 51 53 56

Chapter 3 THE CHRISTIANS AND THE SCHOOLS Introduction Primary Education: Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic Secondary Education: Learning the Poets Higher Education: Speaking, Thinking, and Living Well

63 63 66 70 75

vi

Contents

Rhetorical Schools Philosophical Schools Exercise Imitation The Peril of the Pretender The Angle of the Apologists

75 76 78 80 82 85

Part 2 A FIRST-CENTURY CHRISTIAN REPLY Introduction to Part 2

95

Chapter 4 THE SOCIAL DYNAMICS OF ΠΑΡΡΗΣΙΑ Introduction Παρρησία Defined The Character of Παρρησία as Speech Παρρησία and Social Status Strategies for Safety Democracy and Friendship The Receptive Audience The Tolerable Speaker Acts 4 and the Social Dynamic Παρρησία Conclusion

103 103 103 106 108 110 111 113 114 118 125

Chapter 5 THE VIRTUE OF ΠΑΡΡΗΣΙΑ Παρρησία as the Speech of the Courageous Παρρησία and Education Training (ἄσκησις) Example (παράδειγμα) The “Philosophical” Setting of Acts 4 Philosophical Community A Philosophical Jesus A Philosophical Paul A Philosophical Peter Conclusion

131 134 136 137 138 139 139 142 143 145 148

Chapter 6 THE “EDUCATION” OF THE APOSTLES The Power of the Spirit The Holy Spirit and Prophecy The Holy Spirit and παρρησία

155 156 157 158

Contents

The Example of Jesus Conclusion Bibliography Index

vii

161 164 167 177

Part 1 T HE C AUSE OF THE C RITICISM

Introduction to Part 1 Pagan onlookers criticized the early Christians for being uneducated. That much we know because the people about whom this charge would have been patently false, the very educated Christian apologists of the church’s first two centuries, chose to stand up for their illiterate brothers and sisters. Their noble instinct fortuitously offers us latter-day access to both their critics’ accusations and their own defense strategy. Using a vocabulary that forms a veritable lexicon of illiteracy, critics characterized the Christians as “uncultured” (ἀπαίδευτος), “ignorant” (ἀμαθείς and rudes), “stupid” (stolidi), “uneducated” (ἰδιῶτης), and even “illiterate” (ἀyράμματος).1 If this fact does not strike a chord of recognition, it is because the early Christians were criticized by their pagan neighbors for many other more notorious and exciting things. They were called “atheists” and thus haters of deity; they were called “misanthropes” and thus haters of humanity. They were variously portrayed as mischievously secretive, incestuous and otherwise sexually promiscuous, murderous, and even cannibalistic.2 An example of this polemic illustrates the sensationalist tone of the critics’ harangue. We all know about their banquets . . . On a special day they gather for a feast with all their children, sisters, mothers, all sexes and all ages. There, flushed with the banquet after such feasting and drinking, they begin to bum with incestuous passions. They provoke a dog tied to the lamp stand to leap and bound towards a scrap of food which they have tossed outside the reach of his chain. By this means the light is overturned and extinguished, and with it common knowledge of their actions; in the shameless dark with unspeakable lust they copulate in random unions.3

Even given the lenient ground rules of ancient polemic, these charges were severe, but it is more important for the present discussion that they were interesting. They engaged ancient imaginations and they have drawn the attention of modern scholars.

2

Illiterate Apostles

Amid these lurid accusations of strange banquets featuring dog shows and sexual promiscuity, the insinuation that the Christians were uneducated sits rather like dry toast on a table full of delicious pastries. Predictably, then, it has not captured the imagination of subsequent generations of Christians or of scholars in the same way that the other criticisms have. Both ancients and moderns have considered the antecedent behaviors that prompted these other charges. The Christians were deemed atheists because their monotheism disallowed them to acknowledge or participate in the worship of traditional Greek and Roman deities; they were misanthropes because they kept to themselves and abstained from many popular social practices on religious grounds; incestuous because they called one another brother and sister; murderous because they used the language of human sacrifice in describing both their founding event and the conduct of their communal gatherings; and cannibalistic because of the body and blood language of the eucharistic liturgies. The extremity of the pagan descriptions stems partly from the private habits of Christians and partly from the conventions of ancient polemic. In this fashion, scholars have offered good explanations for all these criticisms. In contrast, until very recently, I know of no scholar who had even asked why the early Christians were criticized for being uneducated. This oversight may be due in part to traditional scholarly inattention to the question of early Christian educational level. Academic interest in the social history of early Christianity is rather recent, having begun in the second half of the twentieth century and gained momentum into the twenty-first. However, even in the works of recent social historians, the criticism is curiously absent. Researchers who would seem to have reason to examine this matter either ignore the criticism, or, occasionally, simply take it at face value. The specific branch of sociohistorical scholarship from which help might be expected is the study of pagan perceptions of the early Christians. Several major studies have appeared in the last half-century that describe outsiders’ perceptions of Christians in the first three centuries of the Common Era. In these several catalogues of pagan criticism, with titles like “The Christians as the Romans Saw Them” and “Pagan Criticisms of the Early Christians,” this charge is curiously omitted.4 Indeed, in order to find any direct reference to this aspect of anti-Christian polemic, one must scour the footnotes of commentaries on the ancient Christian apologists who address it.5 Even when it is mentioned there, however, the level of engagement is quite unsatisfactory and the question of why the criticism arose receives no direct attention at all. For anyone who should become interested in this question, common sense suggests an obvious answer:  The early Christians were criticized for being uneducated because they were, in fact, uneducated. This hypothesis is certainly the right place to begin. While it clashes with traditional portrayals of the early Christians as a literate crowd that customarily took bibles to their homes and read them,6 it does have the most recent research on ancient literacy to support it.7 Scholars have, in these past three decades, reexamined and challenged a long-standing and widely shared assumption among classicists that literacy was

The Cause of the Criticism

3

widespread in antiquity. The latest authoritative estimates suggest that between 10 and 20 percent of ancient adults would have been able to read and write simple sentences. Barring either a literacy requirement for membership in churches, or an aggressive internal campaign to stamp out illiteracy—phenomena for which we have no evidence—the Christian movement should share a similar ratio. Consequently, the pagan critic who claimed that the masses of Christians were mostly uneducated probably had the facts squarely on his or her side. Origen himself even agrees in his own answer to Celsus: “In the general population, there are many more illiterate and uncultured people than those who have been trained in rational thought. Therefore, it was inevitable that among the masses being overcome by the word, the illiterate should outnumber the more intelligent.”8 Here the apologist essentially admits the truth of his critics’ claim. If we take seriously the word of Origen and, as support, the estimates of historians, this first hypothesis seems confirmed:  The early Christians were criticized for being uneducated because the early Christians were uneducated. We cannot quite declare victory yet, however. While it is very likely that the pagans accurately labeled their Christian neighbors uneducated people, we do not yet know what moved these critics to go out of their way to mention it. This latter observation gains force in the face of the literacy rates to which Origen alludes and which recent research has quantified. If 85 percent of the population could not read and write at a basic level, anyone who endeavored directly to oppose all groups who were mostly uneducated would have been very busy indeed. It is clear, though, that educated people in antiquity had no such whistleblowing agenda. In fact, the opposite is true. The illiterate and uneducated normally pass quietly between the cracks of ancient literature. Hardly ever does an author directly criticize a character or an opponent for being illiterate or uneducated. When this does happen, it is often an intramural harangue toward very educated “uneducated” people like Nausiphanes and Cicero.9 In fact, educated authors rarely even note the illiteracy of characters who undoubtedly would have been unable to read and write.10 Authors rarely mention the illiteracy of individual persons, whether fictional characters or historical figures, and rare indeed is the direct criticism of the barely educated or the uneducated.11 In this context, pagan criticism of Christians stands out as an exception. If most ancients lived out their uneducated lives quietly and almost unnoticed by their educated neighbors, why were the early Christians criticized for being uneducated?12 This is the question we shall address throughout Part 1 of this study. Since the answer to our question clearly involves assumptions that are not entirely explicit, we must first learn our way around the ancient symbolic worlds in which the criticism was issued and answered. Presumably, critic and Christian were both privy to these assumptions and would have applied them when interpreting each other’s words. The first task therefore will be to understand the social facts and cultural assumptions about literacy and education that were taken for granted by ancients. Fortunately, these broader issues related to ancient literacy and education have attracted quite a lot of attention in the academy in recent years, so there are

4

Illiterate Apostles

experts to be consulted. Chapter 1 is devoted to tapping those existing scholarly resources toward the composition of what we might call an ethnography of ancient literacy. Pagan observations about early Christian literacy, and especially the stated criticisms themselves, are the sources that will best illuminate what provoked them. The plain and literal sense of the accusations, the implications drawn from them by accuser and accused, the nuances and between-the-lines innuendoes, the strategy that Christian apologists used to defend against them—all of the communicative elements of the criticisms will be addressed in Chapter 2, through a close reading of six representative pagans. ● ● ● ●

● ●

The satirist Lucian of Samosata; the physician and polymath, Galen; the Celsus whom Origen answers; the fictional pagan, Caecilius, who rails against Christian belief in the Octavius of Minucius Felix; the critic(s) who provoked Athenagoras of Athens’ apology; and the anonymous interlocutor whose attacks prompted Justin Martyr to take up his pen.

These six outsiders will represent for us what must have been a widespread opinion. Through a careful reading of their observations and criticisms, as well as the response of the apologists, we will pinpoint the specific skills and abilities they assume the Christians lack as a result of being uneducated. Once the symbolic world has been mapped and the criticisms have been sketched out and interpreted, the question remains: How much education would the Christians have needed in order to remedy their perceived shortcomings and so satisfy their critics? Would the ability to make out a name on a ballot or to sign one’s own name suffice? Or would the critics be satisfied only with the ability to read and write sentences? Up another rung, would these critics demand that the Christians learn the poets in a secondary or grammar school? Or, even beyond this, would a higher education be required—training in medicine, rhetoric, or philosophy? Chapter 3 reviews the normal sequence of stages in ancient education and then places the Christians’ presumed deficiencies within that sequence. In a brief concluding section, I will venture an answer to the question why the early Christians were criticized for being uneducated. This three-part the social place of uneducated Christians in antiquity.

Notes 1 Evidence that pagans criticized early Christians for their low educational level is primarily in the apologists. These terms appear variously in Arnobius, AN 1.28, 5.32; Justin, 1 Apol. 1.60 and 2 Apol. 2.10; Athenagoras, Leg. 11; Theophilus, Ad Auto. 2.35;

The Cause of the Criticism

2

3 4 5

6 7 8 9

10

11 12

5

Tatian, Or. 32; Origen, C.C. 1.27–29; 3.18, 44, 50, 55, 74; 6.1, 14; Minucius Felix, Oct. 5.4. The specific criticisms are discussed in Chapter 2. The various accusations that were directed against the early Christians are listed in S. Benko, “Pagan Criticisms of the Early Christians” (ANRW 23.2, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1980): 1055–1118; Benko provides analysis in his Pagan Rome and the Early Christians (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984). For a developmental analysis of pagan perceptions, see R. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984). Minucius Felix, Oct. 9.5. The translator is G. W. Clarke, The Octavius of Marcus Minucius Felix (New York: Newman Press, 1974). See note 3 above. Where it is discussed, the education criticism is taken at face value and its motivation left unexplained. See, for example, S. Benko, Pagan Rome, 148. E.g., G. W. Clarke, The Octavius, 183–184, n. 38. Two notable exceptions to this general scholarly inattention to Christian literacy, include H. Gamble’s, Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), which sets Christian literate and illiterate culture within the Greco-Roman book culture of its day; Katherine Taand a recent trilogy of studies by C. Keith, culminating in Jesus’ Literacy: Scribal Culture and the Teacher from Galilee (London: T&T Clark, 2011), which situates Jesus’ education level within the Jewish culture of his time. A. Hamack, Bible Reading in the Early Church, trans. J. B. Wilkinson (New York: Putnam, 1918). See the discussion “Quantifying Literacy” in Chapter 1. C.C. 1.27. The translator is H. Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953). Epicurus makes Nausiphanes out to be “a jelly-fish (πλεύμονα), an illiterate (ἀγράμματον), a fraud (ἀπατεώνα), and a trollop (πορνήν)” in Diogenes Laertius, Vit. 10.8; Seneca claims that Cicero does not know letters in Suas. 7.14. W. V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), writes, “Literacy and illiteracy often go unnoticed or unemphasized in Greek and Roman contexts in which we might expect one or the other to be mentioned . . . A rustic such as the one who appears in Theophrastus’ Characters [4] would commonly have been illiterate, but the detail is not added” (30). These rare examples of criticism for the truly uneducated will be discussed in Chapters 2 and 3. It is, of course, possible that other groups were criticized for being uneducated, either in speeches or in writings that have not survived. However, the extreme rarity of such references in extant sources makes it likely that the educated did not normally criticize the uneducated directly.

Chapter 1 A N E T H N O G R A P H Y O F A N C I E N T L I T E R AC Y

The ability to read and write is both a skill and a significant social fact. That is true in highly literate cultures, and it is especially true in semiliterate ones. Assessing the nature of that importance is a complex task. For example, if a group of social anthropologists wished to study the social impact of literacy and education in, say, contemporary Peru, their task would involve many different components. Of course, they would hope to begin with some relative agreement on definitions for the terms “literacy” and “education,” though reaching this agreement may not be as easy as it sounds. After defining their subject, they might begin to search out the cultural significance of literacy by examining various indicators. One team of researchers would be dispatched to measure the percentage of persons within Peruvian society who are literate. This would require developing a test instrument fitted to the definition of literacy that the team has adopted, and then administering the test to representative population samples. Another group might survey the population or its records to find the percentage of residents who had graduated the various levels of Peru’s educational institutions, from primary school through graduate school. Within this census of literacy and education, researchers might ask other questions that would correlate all of these data with other social and economic indicators, like vocation and salary. These statistics would provide a skeleton for the analysis. However, there would be other webs of significance. For example, a historical examination might uncover antecedent causes to the statistical correlations. From this may come theories about what social changes produced the patterns they identify and how the history of literacy and education in Peru influences that society’s place in the larger world and its concept of itself relative to other nations or groups, to name only two. Finally, interview teams might be sent out to compile personal opinions of the literate and illiterate, the educated and uneducated. They might ask their subjects to give their own opinions about reading and writing itself; about education and its purpose; about themselves on the basis of these skills or their lack; and about other people who can and cannot read, are and are not educated. Once all precincts had reported, the narrative summary and synthesis of all these data would constitute an ethnography of literacy and education in Peru. While researchers would face some logistical snags, the project is presumably quite feasible.1

8

Illiterate Apostles

If this same company of scholars were to begin the same project, but define as their field of research, not contemporary Peru, but ancient Greece and Rome, the manner of the research would be radically altered. The social impact of literacy and education would remain the ultimate goal, but researchers would encounter formidable impediments immediately upon defining their terms. The first of these is obvious: several of the tasks involve personal interaction with the people being studied. Absent time machines, the team of twentieth-century sociologists and anthropologists would obviously be hard-pressed to administer literacy tests in first century Rome. Likewise, it would prove difficult, both to count and evaluate diplomas, and to question the literate and illiterate, educated and uneducated subjects. Worse yet, we know of no ancient proxies who either tested or surveyed the population to discover literacy rates or attitudes toward reading and writing. On its surface, then, the project of producing anything like an ethnography of ancient literacy seems doomed to fail for the utter lack of direct access to the abilities and opinions of Greek and Roman persons. In fact, the time gap would be impassible and the project a hopeless fantasy, were it not for the literary, papyrological, epigraphic, and archaeological remains that these persons left behind. This storehouse of data might help researchers to simulate, however inexactly, the tests and interviews that are the social historian’s and the anthropologist’s methods of choice. Free access to the population is denied by intervening centuries, and, in its place, researchers would find themselves under what one scholar has called the “harsh tyranny of the evidence.”2 But, even given these limitations, the project would be, at some level, feasible. This endeavor of finding the social place and impact of literacy and education in Greece and Rome is not quite so hypothetical as it sounds. Scholars who might, retrospectively, comprise “research teams” have been probing aspects of it in some form since the early Middle Ages, and in a more direct way for the past half century. However, there is an important distinction between the work of these researchers and those on the teams envisioned above. Unlike that Peruvian panel, those who have studied literacy and education in Greco-Roman antiquity have done so independently, without any master plan or organizing design. Sometimes unaware of other scholars’ efforts, other times very much in conversation with them, these researchers have labored separately on various tasks from our list. Most who pass this way venture some set of definitions; hundreds of generations of scholars and educators have interested themselves in the methods and structures of ancient education; some recent historians have attempted to quantify ancient literacy; others have assessed the economic significance of literacy in antiquity; a few have examined the social and economic impact of literacy and illiteracy within specific ancient communities; another group has asked after their contribution to the more slippery issues of large-scale social change and progress in ancient societies; and a very few have surveyed ancient attitudes toward letters and education. In fact, by the happenstance and free-market randomness of scholarly interests, almost all of the various components of the imagined project have been taken up. Without a dictating body, without a grand plan, historians and classicists have managed to assemble something like the team we imagined.

1. An Ethnography of Ancient Literacy

9

In this academic setting, you and I now become the after-the-fact organizers of this strangely unified “team” of independent scholars. It will be our task in this chapter to assemble and assess the various scholarly contributions and fit them together into the outlines of an ethnography. All of this proceeds toward the end of thoroughly understanding the social place and impact of ancient literacy and education in a way that will enlighten our reading of a few early Christian texts. While this project produces something resembling a “history of research” chapter, I make no attempt to be comprehensive. Nor do I feel inclined to list every author and article written on the range of relevant subjects. By no means can the grand ethnography be laid out in this short space. Rather, it will suffice to be representative. I hope simply to demonstrate that the various “research teams” have, indeed, been dispatched—or rather, have dispatched themselves—and have returned to report their findings. We shall see how a late twentieth and early twenty-first-century interest in social history— particularly in ancient literacy studies—has joined an enduring and more traditional interest in ancient education to provide the bulk of our anthropological labor and ethnographic material. Only once these reports have been summarized shall I suggest one exceedingly important aspect of ethnographic data that remains to be recognized and analyzed.

An Anecdote In 81 CE, in the Egyptian village of Soknopaiou Nesos, a woman named Thases wished to sell one-fourth share of a bridal chamber (παστοφόριον) to her sonin-law, Stotoetis. By Roman law, Thases could not, as a woman, conduct official business without her guardian (κύριος)—who by chance is also named Stotoetis— so he has accompanied her. Following custom, Thases and her guardian have traveled to the town offices to seek the services of a scribe. The contract is drawn up in Greek script by this scribe, whose name is Satabous. It reads: In the third year of Vespasian’s reign in the village of Soknopaiou Nesos  . . . Thases . . . (Who is about forty-five years old and has a mark on her left cheek) with her own guardian and kinsman Stotoetis . . . (who is about thirty years old, with a scar on his right shin) agrees [in the presence of] Satabous . . . (who is about thirty-two years old and has a scar on his left shin) to have sold to her daughter’s husband, Stotoetis, the title according to this agreement from the present day for all time to a fourth part of a pastophorion and chamber which belongs to Thases herself  . . . and for Thases, the seller to receive in full from Stotoetis the agreed-upon price of the fourth part of the pastophorian . . . and for him to send through a servant from his house eight hundred drachmas of silver and for Thases, the seller, to verify the sale from her to Stotoetis and to his family with both the public officials and the private citizens . . . Satabous has written (ἔγραψεν) on behalf of Thases (ὑπὲρ αὐτῆς)  . . . because she does not know letters (διὰ τὸ μὴ εἰδέναι αὐτὴν γράμματα).3

10

Illiterate Apostles

The guardian, Stotoetis, has composed line 22 of the contract, a brief subscript that is not included here, in the Egyptian language, Demotic. However, despite her guardian’s ability to write Demotic, Thases must enlist another agent to draw up this contract for her. In his own Greek subscript, the scribe Satabous explains why she has done this. He has written the contract, “because she does not know letters.” Once Satabous has signed the contract on behalf of Thases and her guardian, the transaction is complete and official. You and I might analyze this simple event and the sales slip that records it on many different levels. The contract piques our curiosity in ways that raise several intriguing questions. First and most obvious is the question, why does Thases seek out the services of Satabous, the scribe, when her guardian Stotoetis seems to be literate himself? It seems perfectly logical for her guardian to handle this matter for her. A  second question arises when we imagine the village scene of Soknopaiou Nesos: How much business would this professional scribe have gotten in his Egyptian town? It would be useful to know whether the illiteracy of Thases would have been normal or rare. Another question may not spring so quickly from the minds of modern people, who routinely flash numbered plastic cards to pay for meals or gasoline, read newspapers each morning, and collect receipts for tax purposes; however, in a culture for which “a scar on the left shin” or “a mark on the cheek” are adequate means by which to verify identity, why do Thases and her son-in-law, family members in a relatively small village, need a contract to transact business in the first place? These questions represent several of the anthropological projects that have been undertaken in the past three decades. The papyrus that records the story of Thases represents fifteen hundred others like it in which literate members of society do the legal business of people who cannot write Greek. The event reflects one part of the everyday experience of an illiterate or uneducated person in the Roman Empire.4

Definitions First, then, we turn to the strange and seemingly arbitrary definition of literacy that Satabous presupposes. Despite the fact that he has written a line of Demotic, Stotoetis is passed over when it comes time for Thases to designate her writer. Instead, she seeks the assistance of a literate Greek scribe. It raises the question whether Satabous would have described Stotoetis similarly, as one who “does not know letters.” In view of the business transaction, this seems very likely. Yet, by any strict definition, that description would be wrong. In fact, Stotoetis does know letters; he simply knows the wrong letters: Demotic instead of Greek. The privileged place of Greek language for legal matters in Greco-Roman Egypt reflects the general cultural hegemony of Greece and Rome over the subordinate cultures of the provinces when it comes to determining such definitions. The importance of this distinction between those who could and could not read and write Greek extends further than simply the carrying out of civic functions. Dating to the early Greek distinction between themselves and the barbarians (i.e. οἱ βάρβαροι, people

1. An Ethnography of Ancient Literacy

11

who did not speak the Greek language), and for reasons that we will develop over the course of our discussion in Chapter 3, those who communicated in languages other than Greek (and later Latin) were considered culturally inferior. No matter what other languages a person could read or write, she or he was illiterate (ἀγράμματος) on this accounting if unable to read or write Greek and/or Latin. But how well did one have to write Greek or Latin to qualify as literate? This question can be answered from several perspectives with respect to Greece and Rome, just as it can be for modern Western societies. In both the ancient and modern worlds, literacy has various degrees and kinds, making definition a complex matter.5 UNESCO, the education arm of the United Nations, has offered various definitions of the terms “literacy” and “literate,” covering a range of education levels. The minimal sign of literacy is signature literacy, which UNESCO rejects, by which definition subjects who are able to sign their names are classified as literate.6 Others would define literacy in more demanding terms related to comprehension, requiring that a literate person be able, “with understanding to both read and write a short simple statement on his everyday life.” Again, some would employ a utilitarian requirement of so-called functional literacy, which may be more or less demanding, depending on the culture. By this standard, “a person is functionally literate who can engage in all those activities in which literacy is required for effective functioning of his group and community and also for enabling him to continue to use reading, writing and calculation for his own and the community’s development.”7 To complete our range of definitions, we need to go beyond UNESCO’s concerns and add to these the Oxford English Dictionary definition of literate as “learned or familiar with a specific canon of literature.” At this point, the confusion inherent to the project becomes apparent:  One might be called literate for merely signing his name in a guest book, while another might be labeled illiterate because she has not read Proust. Perhaps it is only slightly consoling to find the same range of meanings in Greek and Latin usage. The terms ἀγράμματος and inlitteratus might describe the utter inability to identify letters of the alphabet;8 on the other hand, an opponent might disparage bookish sorts like Nausiphanes, a rival of Epicurus, and the great orator Cicero with the terms ἀγράμματος or inlitteratus.9 Like modern English definitions of literacy, then, Greek and Roman definitions vary with the specific letters (γράμματα or littera) that the speaker’s subjects lack—whether these should be the letters that make up the person’s signature, a simple sentence, or a great work of literature. Historians who have treated the question of ancient literacy with any sophistication have tended, oddly enough, to search ancient sources in order to find the answer to a modern question. By this I mean that they have set out, armed with a UNESCO definition, and then scoured archaeological and literary sources to identify UNESCO literacy and its absence in the ancient societies they represent. This approach is understandable, in light of the live and animated modern debate about literacy, both in educational and in academic circles. For whatever reason, though, some have essentially disregarded ancient vocabulary, or at best have used

12

Illiterate Apostles

it to seek the answer to their modern question, “How many people could read, how many people could write in the Greco-Roman world?”10 Because their question is not formed in terms of ancient perception (i.e. according to ancient definitions of reading and writing, who could read, who could write in the Greco-Roman world?), these researchers sometimes treat the ancient vocabulary as something of an impediment. The ancient usage has been considered helpful only to the extent that it can be decoded to produce data that is meaningful in answering modern questions. While this procedure certainly has its merits, it is unsound anthropological method. There is value in knowing the lay of the ancient land, as it were, so that the setting can be imagined vividly and realistically. To the extent that accommodating modern categories helps that process, this approach is useful. However, by defining the question and its answer in terms of modern interest, historians of literacy have distanced themselves from their subjects, made themselves cultural outsiders, and essentially limited themselves to what anthropologists would call an “etic” perspective. By using ancient vocabulary as a means to answering modern questions, they have raced past an invaluable conduit to ancient categories and values. An ethnography of ancient literacy will not be complete without the question, “What constituted illiteracy, what made one uneducated in ancient society?”

Quantifying Literacy and Education To understand the social dynamics of a business contract in Soknopaiou Nesos, it would help to know how much business Satabous the scribe would have gotten. It is clear that a certain vulnerability accompanied illiteracy, since Thases could not be certain that her scribe had dealt honestly with her. Indeed, there are examples in the papyri of dishonest dealings, perceived and real, on the part of scribes or business persons who tried to take advantage of the illiterate in the literate world of transactions and contracts. Would the Greek illiteracy of Thases and her guardian Stotoetis be the exception in their town, or the rule? While uttering the obligatory and accurate complaints about sparse evidence, several historians have aired impressions and even quantified estimates of literacy in antiquity. In modern scholarship, the question was initiated by Eric Havelock, who set out to identify the onset of literacy in classical Greece, and so introduced the possibility of mass illiteracy during a period of Greek history. Using evidence ranging from business contracts like the one drawn up by Satabous to the graffiti found in brothels, along with a variety of methods for projecting rates, subsequent scholars have attempted to tease out the ratio of literate to illiterate in various cities and regions. Before surveying the recent attempts to estimate ancient literacy rate, let’s look at the scholarly context in which they have been ventured. William Harris describes the picture painted by traditional classical scholarship in the following way: “Though judgments [of ancient literacy rates] have been vague about numbers,

1. An Ethnography of Ancient Literacy

13

they have given a definite impression of optimism, even extreme optimism.”11 In support of this generalization, he quotes several prominent classicists whose work is both representative and influential, and whose claims cover Greece and Rome from the archaic period onward. About Athens, one history of the early period asserts that “in the period 750–650 writing became widespread in Greece . . .” so that “archaic Greece was a literate society in a modern sense”;12 another general study of literacy through the ages claims that “in Athens in 500 B.C., it is probable that a majority of the citizens could read the laws which were posted round the city”;13 and a thorough study of Athenian literacy concludes that “the great majority of [fourth and fifth century BCE] Athenian citizens” could read and write.14 The same holds for assessments of Roman literacy. One prominent early twentieth-century handbook on private life under the empire generalizes that “reading and writing were learned by a great part of the population not only in Rome but in the whole Roman Empire.”15 This perception prevailed throughout the first half of the century, so that A.  M. Guillemin could claim that literacy would have been the rule instead of the exception, “even among the slaves.”16 These authors state, for the most part without supporting evidence, what had been, before Harris’s culture-changing book, a pervasive and tacitly held assumption of classical scholarship in the modern period: Literacy rates in antiquity were high. While these traditional assumptions have not yet been altogether overturned, scholars of the past half-century have challenged us to reimagine the reach of letters in antiquity. This challenge has come in two stages. The foundations of the traditional position were shaken in the middle of the twentieth century by an increasing appreciation of the role that oral performance must have played in early Greek society. By drawing comparisons between observable cultures with epic traditions and the Homeric tradition in Greece, researchers have called into question the prevailing image of Homer’s work—both as composed by their “author” and as received by their “readers.” This focus on oral forms eventually expanded to include other literatures. As a result, students of antiquity began to question assumptions about the literacy of the general population in Greece and Rome. As it became clear that many of the transactions and expressions that had previously been understood to be written were in fact oral, it became possible to imagine a society of limited literacy. From 1950 to 2000, among those who have addressed ancient literacy, these two issues—the balance of oral and literate culture and the quantification of literacy rates—attracted the most attention. More recently, theoretical works have come in beheir revisionist work to reassess and interpret the significance of literacy as a social phenomenon. Orality and Literacy During one twelve-month span in 1962–63, Marshall McLuhan, Claude LeviStrauss, Jack Goody, and Eric Havelock each published an important work that underscored a rather new distinction between oral and literate cultures.17 This convergence of interests was influenced by two very different sources. The first was a growing cultural and scholarly fascination with twentieth-century audio (and

14

Illiterate Apostles

video) technology. The second and more obvious influence was the recent Homeric research of Milman Parry and Albert Lord into the oral patterns of folktales and tellers within Balkan cultures.18 Parry and Lord saw parallels between the oral formulas in twentieth-century Balkan folktales and certain patterns of repetition that appear in the Iliad and the Odyssey. They concluded that Homer’s epics were primarily oral performances, the written texts of which were quite secondary to their original contexts and functions. Their work prompted a radical re-visioning of life in early Greece, a project that naturally led to a new appreciation for that culture’s oral aspects. This new consciousness of oral culture in Greece led to a logical sequence of questions. Once interpreters began to acknowledge the centrality of oral performance in ancient societies, it occurred to some that the medium by which information, entertainment, and even thought would have been communicated was not necessarily, or even primarily, the written word. This acknowledgment represented a radical departure from traditional classical scholarship. One author lists the view that all ancients shared a literate and bookish culture as one of the four general assumptions that underlay his mid-twentieth-century classical training at Cambridge University. He was taught to assume “that Greek culture of the Classical period was a wholly literate phenomenon, much like our own. Homer, Pindar, and Aeschylus, no less than Thucydides or Aristotle, were writers whose works were composed for readers to take in their hands.”19 As this assumption of primary literacy has been called into question, the inquiry has reached to all aspects of ancient life, including even private reading itself. It is now generally believed that there was never an ancient practice like the silent reading that moderns consider normal and that classicists had formerly imagined to be normal in antiquity. Even the lone reader read aloud.20 These discoveries concerning orality prompted attempts to pinpoint the transition from oral to literate culture. The rationale for such a search proceeds as follows:  If Homer’s Greeks, the ancestors of Western culture, were a mainly oral people, and Western culture as we know it is literate, there must exist some historical period or moment within Western history in which the pattern of the culture changed. Taking Plato’s decision to write prose instead of the poetic (and therefore, it is believed, oral) meter in which previous authors had expressed themselves, Eric Havelock located this shift from orality to literacy in the fifth century.21 Havelock concludes that a great divide in Greek culture had begun to occur, perhaps at the time when Plato was born or a little earlier, which separated an oralist society relying mainly on metrical and recited literature for the content of its cultural knowledge to a literate society that was to rely in the future on prose as the vehicle of serious reflection, research, and record.22

Other studies have probed the extent to which literate practice replaced oral practice across the ancient social landscape. Because the moment of transition may be subjectively defined, little agreement has been reached. In fact, recent studies have

1. An Ethnography of Ancient Literacy

15

opted more and more for a fluid definition of the transition that acknowledges the formidable role of orality in daily practice of cultures throughout antiquity. This more fluid model of the transition has shifted the center point of the discussion from abrupt and monolithic cultural changes to the interaction between these two components of a complex culture.23 Quantifying Ancient Literacy In the quest to put a number on the literacy level in ancient societies, some researchers have generalized from evidence for literacy rates in specific cities or regions. Certain archaeological, epigraphic, documentary, and even literary discoveries have yielded considerable evidence about reading and writing. Scholars have hoped to take impressions from these locations and apply them to the broader landscape of antiquity. As promising as this procedure may seem, there is an obvious danger inherent in this method of generalizing from the specific settings that randomly discovered evidence elucidates. For results to be trustworthy, the historian must first be able to ask what constituted a normal or representative setting; yet, given the widely diverse cultural systems of GrecoRoman antiquity, this question is almost impossible to answer. That literacy levels varied from town to town and region to region is indubitable, and the two sites with the most abundant evidence demonstrate this fact. Hellenistic and Roman Egypt and the cities that were covered by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, particularly Pompeii—two places in which everyday writing that was elsewhere claimed by decay, fortuitously has been preserved—have, of course attracted the most attention among scholars of literacy. The arid climate of Egypt has preserved fibrous materials, including papyri, so it is a rich source of commonplace documents. As was noted above, over 1,500 papyri mention illiterates. These papyri provide evidence that is far more extensive than that which is available from other sites. In a series of articles presented during the 1970s, Herbert C. Youtie identified the illiteracy papyri and began to develop their implications for the social history of Egypt. Youtie contends that the vast majority of artisans and farmers in Greco-Roman Egypt were illiterate in Greek. Since a large part of the population was involved with these two occupations, Youtie infers that illiteracy was widespread. Just as Youtie has projected the implications of the discoveries on the broader Egyptian society, one might be tempted to project that generalization on the larger Hellenistic and Roman world. This would imply very low literacy rates throughout the empire. The evidence concerning literacy in Pompeii, a provincial but wealthier town in southern Italy, may be contrasted with the Egyptian evidence. The considerable lot of writing that survives in Pompeii has prompted relatively high estimates of literate practice in that city, as scholars have surveyed the inscriptions, and particularly the graffiti. While the general impression has been that literacy rates would have been higher than elsewhere,24 actually quantifying this impression has proved difficult, not least because no agreement has been reached as to the population of the city.25 This and a host of other complicating circumstances have

16

Illiterate Apostles

prompted some to conclude that “meaningful statistics are beyond the evidence.”26 James L. Franklin has improved on earlier efforts at assessing Pompeiian literacy levels by categorizing the writing according to class and profession. Drawing on the considerable work that has been done to reconstruct the city and its activities, Franklin has established the wide variety of professions that feature the literate. He claims that people of all classes wrote graffiti in Pompeii. He traces the colorful scripts to an architect’s laborers, the prostitutes of a brothel, a certain Cypare, whose name implies lowly status, and even the gladiators of the games. While he is hesitant to use numbers, Franklin suggests that these examples of literacy even below the craftsman on the social scale “suggest widespread literacy” in Pompeii.27 The problem with taking either an Egyptian village or an Italian town as typical is obvious. Given the contradictory portrait of literacy rates between Egypt and this part of the Italian peninsula, it is natural to ask which is normal. Other factors further muddy the waters. For Egypt, we have already encountered one of these in the Demotic literacy of Stotoetis. Our papyrus and others like it may elucidate Greek literacy in regions where Greek is not the first language of the population. However, it does not allow us to assess the social importance in those areas of literacy in the native tongue. In Pompeii, we have no examples of the sort of attribution that is entirely normal in Egypt: the scribes or rogatores of that town do not record the illiteracy of their clients. This leaves us in the dark as to the function of the scribe—whether and how often they were hired pens for people who could but did not want to write, or necessary agents for the illiterate. Undoubtedly, they sometimes served the latter function. The fact that they do not make that function explicit handicaps us in our quest for literacy rates. The year 1989 marked a pivotal moment in the history of scholarship in literacy. That is the year that William V.  Harris proposed a solution to these vexing problems in the most comprehensive treatment of the question to date, his book, Ancient Literacy. Harris challenged classicists and historians to reassess high estimates of literacy levels in Greece and Rome. In that book, he ultimately draws the revisionist conclusion that literacy rates in any given Greco-Roman city could not have exceeded 20 percent and would likely have ranged between 10 and 15 percent on the average.28 Thus, from the fog of imprecise and sparse evidence, Harris emerges somehow with clear pictures and relatively precise numbers. Skepticism is appropriate in the face of such a confident assertion. How does Harris presume to make such a bold claim? While he is fully aware of the evidence and of the various existing efforts to quantify literacy, Harris takes a less evidencebased approach than his predecessors—or, better, moves on a different kind of evidence. Apart from an occasional head count of voting Athenians or the evidence for Hellenistic school buildings, his case is made on the basis of an analogy between ancient Greece and Rome, on the one hand, and certain more observable societies in early-modern and modern Europe, Japan, and Latin America. A type of comparative method is of crucial importance for discovering the extent of ancient literacy. . . Investigation of the volume of literacy in other

1. An Ethnography of Ancient Literacy

17

societies . . . has shown that writing ceases to be the arcane accomplishment of a small professional or religious or social elite only when certain preconditions are fulfilled and only when strong positive forces are present to bring the change about.29

Societies that (like Greece and Rome) lack the technologies and social structures necessary to produce mass literacy do not exceed 10 to 20  percent. Therefore, says Harris, Greece and Rome probably did not exceed these numbers either. He attempts to solve the problem of regional variation and quirky social context by supplying a ceiling above which the structures—or rather, the absence of certain structures—would not have allowed literacy levels to rise. Are William Harris’s triangulated percentages to be trusted? Strictly, the answer must be no. Proof by historical analogy has never fully satisfied the canons of scientific demonstration, for two reasons. First, the cultures being compared are distant from one another in time and space and can therefore exert no causal force on one another; so, however instructive comparison may be, in terms of historical causality, it is irrelevant. Second, beginning with August Comte’s social positivism, attempts to posit and prove the existence of scientific laws pertaining to human social behavior have generally failed as well.30 Even if the literacy rates of all observable cultures that lack literacy-producing technologies and structures were found to hover between 10 and 20 percent, then, this fact would ultimately prove nothing about Greece and Rome. Harris knows this, and his boldness is appropriately flavored with caution. He himself agrees, we can only deal in ballpark figures and probabilities, but he can abide this inevitable imprecision, because his larger project does not depend upon the precise accuracy of his estimates. Harris simply endeavors to transfer the burden of proof. It is clearly more important to him to challenge traditional extravagance regarding ancient literacy than to name the precise literacy rate in first-century Egypt or Pompeii. He therefore throws down the glove and invites scholars who estimate high literacy levels to back up their claims with evidence. Defined in this way, Harris’s project has been an almost unqualified success. His book and the work of others who have carried out his project have changed the way most historians and even classicists picture the ancient Greco-Roman world. By demonstrating that no known society has produced mass literacy without certain obvious necessities like an extensive educational system and plentiful reading materials, he has decisively placed probability on the side of lower literacy projections. He would undoubtedly welcome an evidence-based attempt to refute, but, aside from pushback about local exceptions, not a single substantial case has been made. His project is vindicated by the sometimes-grudging acceptance it has been granted in the field.31 While some would quibble a bit about numbers, and about the implications of bi- or multilingualism, the absence of any formidable scholarly opposition continues to the present. Thus, if Harris’s precise numbers do not inspire confidence, his major point surely must: most ancients could neither read nor write.

18

Illiterate Apostles

Early Christian Literacy On the way from broad Greco-Roman antiquity to the many and diverse Christian groups, Harris’s thesis encounters two hurdles. The first is a dearth of empirical evidence. If materials that bear on ancient Greek and Roman literacy levels are sparse, early Christian evidence is minuscule. The Athenian ostraca and Hellenistic school buildings, archaeological remains that provide Harris with his limited empirical base, have no early Christian counterpart. Almost all evidence is literary for the first three centuries, and even that body of material is spotty and sparse. A second difficulty involves a conflict between two different observations that may both claim to bring common sense to the issue. On the one hand, we are dealing with “a people of the book” who trace their origins to another “people of the book”: the Jews. Texts were central within the practices of Jews and then the early Christian groups. We have a generous deposit of Jewish and early Christian writings, descriptions of the Jews and Christians often include references to their books,32 their meetings seem to have featured someone reading those texts aloud, and, for Christians, manuals of church order like the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus enjoin the believers to read, both when gathered and when separate.33 In such “textual communities”—as in specific local municipalities like Pompeii, that appear to be more literate than most cities—it is at least conceivable that literacy rates might be higher than normal.34 So we might picture literates from around Corinth or Antioch walking past the houses of their illiterate neighbors to join their also-literate brothers and sisters at church. On the other hand, Jews and Christians had reason to avoid great swaths of the bookish culture available to them. Even the most educated Christians began quite early to take issue with the curriculum offered in pagan schools. In fact, the Apostolic Tradition attributed to Hippolytus of Rome includes the grammar teacher among those professions that are to be forbidden in the church.35 Indeed, when Celsus accuses the Christians of fleeing the school teachers’ watchful eyes, the very well-read Christian author, Origen himself writes: If we turn [children] away from teachers who instruct them in the improprieties of the Comedy and the licentious writers of iambics, and in all else which neither improves the speaker nor benefits the hearers, and who do not know how . . . to choose in each case those [poems] which contribute to the welfare of the young, then we are doing something which we are not ashamed to confess.36

In light of this kind of comment, it would be sensible to suppose that Christian communities would feature diminished—or at least limited—literacy. Contemporary Christians who avoid movies that offend their morality shrink their range of choices, and the ancient Christians who avoided bawdy literature shrank theirs in the name of purity. Consequently, our two observations support, on the one hand, a high estimate of early Christian literacy, and, on the other hand, a low one. This sort of common sense approach clearly does not resolve the issue.

1. An Ethnography of Ancient Literacy

19

Harry Gamble has taken a page from Harris’s book in order to get around these two problems in the first chapter of his fascinating study, Books and Readers in the Early Church. Harris correlates literacy rates with status and class in preliterate societies, maintaining that the bulk of the literate would have been found among the privileged social and economic elite. Gamble appropriates this insight by pointing out that the early Christian groups were generally representative of the socioeconomic distribution in the Roman Empire. He writes, In one of the most interesting developments in recent biblical scholarship… studies of the social constituency of the early church have shown that, especially in its urban settings, Christianity attracted a socially diverse membership, representing a cross section of Roman society  . . . In terms of social status, Christian communities had a pyramidal shape rather like that of society at large. But since members of the upper classes were less numerous, high levels of literacy—as a function of social status or education, or both—would have been unusual.37

Gamble builds a profile of early Christian literacy rates by combining Harris’s judgments on general ancient literacy with a relatively recent (to him) scholarly consensus about early Christian social status.38 The apparent thin ice of Gamble’s inference has the same stable footing as Harris’s claims: the burden of proof rests with those who would refute the probable. We can surely imagine that some early Christian groups, as elective associations, did not so faithfully mirror the general economic stratification of the Roman Empire. Christians like Clement of Alexandria likely hosted a salon of the literate, and the occasional church might have self-selected for literacy. However, for the broad population of Christian groups, Gamble has Harris’s probabilities squarely on his side. Thoroughgoing literacy is unlikely to appear without the technology and educational structures that normally produce it, and there is no evidence of an aggressive literacy initiative in the early churches. Prudence therefore recommends Gamble’s conclusion: “We must assume . . . that the large majority of Christians in the early centuries of the church were illiterate, not because they were unique but because they were in this respect typical.”39 Again here, the third to fourth century voice of Origen comes in to shout his “Amen!”40 The efforts of Harris, Gamble, and the flood of literacy studies that have ensued from their work, help modern minds to reimagine antiquity more realistically, and herein lies their great value.41 Like the Renaissance painters who set their Madonna with Child and Crucifixion scenes against the backdrop of Tuscan landscapes, classical scholars and historians have tended to view ancient texts with lenses colored by their experience in the very literate modern subculture of academia. By pointing out this stark distinction between ancient and modern social life, Harris and others remind us that most ancients could not read the inscriptions, the menus, the edicts, and the books that the literate of their cultures have left to posterity. In Christian studies, we can no longer imagine, as Hamack did, that private reading of the scriptures was standard practice in the early churches.42 To

20

Illiterate Apostles

be sure, the ancient literary and documentary deposit still communicates to us, but now, more than ever, we understand that its voice is not the voice of antiquity, but of a small and privileged ancient population. Within and outside Christianity, it is most likely that the masses of common people were illiterate.

The Social Impact of Literacy and Education The function of literacy and education in the story of Thases and Stotoetis could be discussed on various levels, known and unknown to them. These range from the very basic economic observation that Satabous could write a legal contract, while his clients could not, to the socio-cultural matter of how the characters in our drama looked at one another. Satabous’s literacy makes him employable in a way that Thases and Stotoetis are not. Additionally, their illiteracy makes them vulnerable to the literate in business deals such as this—forced to “take their word for it” unless they have trusted literate friends or relatives. Satabous’s skills are significant only because of the shift in the ancient near east that we noted above, which has been variously dated and placed, from an oral to a written medium for transactions. This beginning paved the way for an advance of literacy into many aspects of ancient life, but it is significant that literacy probably began as a tool for record-keeping. One could therefore ponder whether the exchange of words on paper occasioned by, say, a rising Roman bureaucracy, marks a step forward or backward—whether a literate system of laws itself is progressive or regressive. Between the simple question of a literate man’s employment or an illiterate woman’s vulnerability, on the one hand, and the complex question of a society’s cultural orientation, on the other, lie several levels of significance that have interested historians. On the most basic level, Satabous’s literacy functions to equip him for his job as a village scribe. While his is one of the very few forms of employment in antiquity for which reading and writing were absolutely essential—a list to which we might add the teachers of literature, rhetoric, and philosophy—many people found themselves more employable or better-employed because of their letters. In many professions, literacy was preferred. When Soranus, a first-century physician, lists the qualifications of the proper midwife, he requires lithe fingers and a kind disposition, but adds, “a suitable [midwife] . . . will be literate (ἡ ἀyραμμάτων ἐντός) . . . so that she will be able to receive the craft (ἡ τέχνη) through theories (διὰ θεωρίας) as well.”43 (Judging by what we have already learned about literacy rates, it is likely that this requirement would have drastically thinned his pool of applicants.) Vegetius speaks of the intricacy of the army’s bureaucracy, which made literate soldiers necessary,44 and, indeed, it seems that literacy figured often in some soldiers’ duties.45 Among other professions, architects, accountants, bailiffs, shepherds, doctors, and surveyors are all better off literate as well.46 Thus, while it was clearly possible to amass formidable wealth without being able to read and write, literacy and education were a means of economic advancement for some people, like Satabous.

1. An Ethnography of Ancient Literacy

21

Literacy functions on another level to produce a power imbalance between literate and illiterate people doing business. Thases and Stotoetis are at the mercy of others in the conduct of their business. Several papyri suggest that they would have had a right to be wary that others would take advantage of them in these matters. In the early fourth century in Arsinoe, an illiterate man named Aurelius Demetrius contracted to deposit a certain sum of money with the former gymnasiarch, Aurelius Sotas. When the time specified in the contract had come and gone, Sotas had not returned any of the money to Demetrius. In his attempt to reclaim his rightful possession, Demetrius leveled his accusation, necessarily through a scribe: “[Sotas] attempted to commit a fraud to my detriment because I  am illiterate.”47 It is not difficult to imagine that this kind of deception was attempted often in the semiliterate societies of antiquity. Illiteracy exposed persons to some social and economic risk. Although illiteracy may have divided people in these examples of business fraud, on the other side of this vulnerability was a unifying function. While Thases’s fear and Satabous’s security were conscious to them, H. C. Youtie has named a function for her illiteracy and his literacy that would not have been consciously noticed by the residents of their small Egyptian town. Youtie has identified a pattern in papyri like the one that reveals the story of Thases and Satabous, which mention a substitute signer (ὑπογραφεύς). It seems that, unlike Thases, who contracted the services of a professional scribe, the illiterate commonly sought out either family members or fellow club members to write for them. This tendency to seek a trusted relative, colleague, or friend was no doubt a means of avoiding trickery. Whatever its cause, Youtie has suggested that the disparity in educational levels within families and small communities would have been a cohesive element. In a scenario similar to a sixty-year-old man in the twenty-first century begging his nine-year-old granddaughter to help him set up a Twitter account, Youtie claims that the need for literate assistance would have “operated as a centripetal force.” He writes, “Illiteracy . . . promoted domestic cooperation, what we should be inclined to call family solidarity.”48 To be sure, the people of Soknopaiou Nesos would not have paused to observe, “How close our illiteracy has brought us!” However, this tightening of familial bonds may very well have been one function of the broad disparity between education and literacy levels. On a wider scale of social significance, debates have raged in the academy over another unconscious function of literacy in the broader development of Greek and Roman society. In 1963, Eric Havelock suggested that the cultural revolution that spawned the Western world as we know it resulted from a dramatic increase in Athenian literacy during the fifth century BCE. According to Havelock, this surge in literacy had a radical effect, both culturally and politically. On this reading, it was this momentous period that started the intellectual culture of the West on its way toward logical and critical thought. Only when discourse could be reviewed and scrutinized and the free exchange of ideas could outlive the moment of oral performance could the intellectual culture escape the constraints of face-to-face time and memory storage.

22

Illiterate Apostles

Havelock’s case for the role of literacy in political progress is similar. By increasing the importance of written communication in the bureaucracy, Athens paved the way for an extension of government beyond the bounds of the polis. According to Havelock and his supporters, the expanse and efficiency of the Hellenistic and Roman Empires are unimaginable without literate practices in government. This identification of a cause-and-effect relationship between literacy and progress has produced a great deal of discussion. Some, like J. Goody and I.  Watt have followed Havelock, attempting to buttress his case with data from their own fieldwork in semiliterate cultures. Havelock attributes the highly developed logical processes and the cultural progress based on them to the Greek introduction of idea-expressing prose. This position has gained a considerable following in some circles49 and empirical support has been offered through comparative research.50 Others have questioned the notion that logical and sequential thought hinges on literacy, and even that such cognitive processes represent progress. Ruth Finnegan, for example, claims that the progress thesis of Havelock and Goody and others like them should be understood as a way that literacy is made into a “mythical charter” in Western thought. This mythical charter is the view “that writing brings a series of consequences—mainly beneficial—at every level:  for individuals, groups, and societies.”51 She challenges this position “that literacy represents one of the vast unilinear stages of human history, marking an upward and in some sense irreversible progress in human affairs.”52 As a mythical charter, the set of cultural assumptions about literacy functions “to uphold the dominant social order and its ideals” by “providing a conceptual framework and a story—a particular version of world history and the ‘rise of civilization’—which in effect sanction existing interests and explanations by an apparently incontrovertible authority transcending (but supporting) the current establishment.”53 Finnegan and others have called into question, both the cause–effect assumptions and the positive assessment of the so-called salutary outcomes that arise from the view that literacy is a step forward. This critique of the traditional view has grown increasingly stronger in the postmodern academy. In fact, Finnegan claims that “querying the universal applicability of the long-revered ‘effects’ of alphabetic literacy is itself becoming the accepted wisdom among some anthropological and historical scholars.”54 Questions concerning the validity of Western notions of progress and the role of literacy in those developments are clearly recent ones. They represent a broader debate about the character of Western culture. However, it is worth asking what role they have in the historian’s task. It seems to me that there is a real danger that the bits of ancient evidence will become so many pawns in a modern intellectual and cultural chess game. If we wish, as students of antiquity, to move from an outsider’s “etic” perspective, into a more ancient subjectivity and an insider’s view that anthropologists would call “emic”, historians must suspend contemporary political and cultural debates long enough to notice the issues that mattered to ancient people.55 It is to that part of the ethnographic endeavor that we now turn.

1. An Ethnography of Ancient Literacy

23

Ancient Issues and Attitudes We have heard from each team in the anthropological research group we envisioned at the outset of this chapter. The guiding definitions of literacy and education have been submitted; we have heard reports about educational processes and structures, both informal and formal, by which persons became literate or educated; informed opinions have been aired as to the extent of literacy and education within Greek and Roman populations; we have also heard analyses of the social function of literacy and education, which have proved helpful, both in terms of the broader cultures involved and in terms of the more intimate details of everyday life. Clearly our research team has enlightened us on the subject of ancient literacy and education, and the various components of this work complement one another beautifully, despite the random element of scholarly interest that leaves us without any kind of central research design and delegation of tasks. However, one important deficiency remains. The research we have reviewed thus far is striking for its persistent interest in concerns that are essentially modern. It is not at all clear that ancients cared to know what percentage of their number could read and write. This is certainly true of the literate to whose opinions we have access. Almost without exception, literacy passes unnoticed. It stands to reason that the illiterate to whom our access is much more limited would have shared this apathy about census figures. Nor did all ancient people wonder when and where the balance of their culture turned literate, or when and where the seeds of Western progress were sown. What is more, the sources do not naturally lend themselves to answering these questions. Because they were mostly not interested in these questions, ancient authors have not left the kinds of data that would help moderns who are interested to answer them. No one imagines that a revolutionary manuscript discovery will permit precise quantifications of literacy rates and neither is any definitive word expected on the issue of cultural progress. Thus, modern scholars find themselves in a stalemate with the evidence on some of the questions that interest them most, because ancient authors did not share their interest. There are, on the other hand, certain other matters concerning literacy and education that did quite interest ancient authors. Two fascinating issues dominate ancient discussion. The first has to do with letters themselves. Because alphabetization and the use of writing were rather new technologies, even to the Greeks of the classical period, the positive or negative value of the conventions for culture had not yet been determined. Our data reflects this evaluation process and a certain cultural ambivalence. Even the most literate Greeks seem not wholly reconciled to the medium. Second, along with their attitudes toward letters and related to them, ancient authors also give considerable attention to their attitudes toward others who know letters and toward those who do not. Amid the other ancient social dividers of wealth, gender, and class stands education, and those who possess it portray the divide as a broad chasm. In order to understand the importance of letters and education in antiquity, one certainly must account for

24

Illiterate Apostles

the affect that an unequal distribution of them in the population had on social relationships. Unfortunately, these two ancient interests have not generally attracted much modern notice. Traditional scholarship has, for the most part, assumed that ancients shared the rather unreserved reverence for letters that has characterized modern classical studies in Europe and America. There has been a strong interest in locating precise moments of beginning—whether of writing itself, of alphabetic writing, or of various media used for manuscript production. Recently, as we have seen, scholarly interest has gravitated to literacy and orality, literacy rates, and speculation about the role literacy played in cultural change. As they have raced to answer these questions, scholars have mostly ignored evidence for ancient attitudes. As an example, when seeking the beginning-point of letters, researchers have largely run past the various ancient answers to the question. As “myths,” they have not met modern standards of scientific intention and accuracy, and so have been classified among examples of ancient credulity or, at best, placed in the realm of ancient entertainment. In contrast to this general trend, I am inclined toward Deborah Tam Steiner’s very practical decision: “Rather than persist with inquiries that yield much valuable information but no certain responses, I want to return to questions the sources themselves do answer . . . .”56 In colloquial terms, if antiquity has indeed handed us a database of lemons, it is our scholarly duty to make lemonade. It is not at all clear, of course, that the questions ancient authors raised and answered about literacy and education, or the attitudes they expressed constitute lemons. Particularly in an age when social history and anthropology have become necessary tools for the study of history, it is crucial that historians pay close attention to myth, speculation, and opinion. In the field of literacy studies, myth, speculation, and opinion are quite abundant in the sources. In order to complete our ethnography of ancient literacy and education, it will help to heed this data as well. Attitudes toward Letters It is impossible for us to know, on the basis of a very brief business receipt, what Thases, Stotoetis, and Satabous thought about Greek letters and literacy. We might guess that the two “illiterates” thought differently about them than their hired scribe. After all, Satabous earned his livelihood by means of letters and charged his illiterate clients for his services. Perhaps we would speculate additionally that the thoughts of Stotoetis, who writes in Demotic, would differ from those of Thases, who apparently does not. However, attitudinal markers are quite naturally absent from this receipt. The reader is left without answers to several interesting questions: Can the participants remember, or have they heard stories about a time when the Egyptian equivalent of a paperless handshake would have sufficed to close a business deal? If so, do all parties see the onset as a blessing? Or do some pine for the olden days? If we cannot access attitudes through this papyrus text, though, we do know voices who spoke on this issue and who may reflect something of our Egyptian friends’ own sentiments. In her book, The Tyrant’s Writ, Deborah Tarn Steiner gathers clues to ancient attitudes by investigating sources ranging from myths to

1. An Ethnography of Ancient Literacy

25

treatises on democratic theory. She demonstrates that, from Homer’s first mention of writing in Iliad 6, throughout antiquity, many authors directly or indirectly indicate their attitudes toward writing as a part of culture. The irony that ancient attitudes toward writing may now be accessed solely through written texts is intriguing in itself. The matter gains appeal, when even some of the most literate ancients reveal an unmistakable ambivalence toward the technology. Steiner traces out hints of suspicion that stand side-by-side with more positive appraisals of the relatively new craft of writing. On the one hand, as we might guess, the literate generally revere letters and learning. In fact, the elite often credit their education for their own superiority to commoners. Letters are listed among Prometheus’s benefactions to humankind in Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound, where the god boasts, “I invented for them, and the combining of letters, creative mother of the Muses' arts, with which to hold all things in memory.”57 Others expounded on this benefaction in forms that seem like school exercises. Diodorus of Sicily issues one such paean in the twelfth book of the Histories: It is by means of [writing] that the most important and the most useful of life’s business is completed—votes, letters, testaments, laws, and everything else which puts life on the right track. For who could compose a worthy encomium of literacy? For it is by means of writing alone that the dead are brought to the minds of the living and it is through the written word that people who are spatially very far apart communicate with each other as if they were nearby. As to treaties made in time of war between peoples or kings, the safety provided by the written word is the best guarantee of the survival of the agreement. Generally, it is this alone which preserves the finest sayings of wise men and the oracles of the gods, as well as philosophy and all of culture, and hands them on to succeeding generations for all time. Therefore, while it is true that nature is the cause of life, the cause of the good life is education based on the written word.58

This profound sense of indebtedness and even reverence toward reading and writing would have been shared, for various reasons, by many of the people who possessed the skill. On the other side of the ledger lie texts that reveal a downside to letters. The most famous example of this negative appraisal is Plato’s discussion in the Phaedrus. The author is the consummate prose stylist, able to differentiate subtly the speech patterns of Socrates’s diverse lot of interlocutors and vary his narrative with the rhetorical requirements of the circumstance. Yet, even Plato reflects an ambivalence toward letters when he sounds an alarm about the devastating blow written language deals to the memory. After the Egyptian god Theuth claims that his invention of letters “will make the Egyptians wiser and improve their memories,” the reigning king Thamus replies, Most ingenious Theuth, one man has the ability to beget arts, but the ability to judge of their usefulness or harmfulness to their users belongs to another;

26

Illiterate Apostles and now you, who are the father of letters, have been led by your affection to ascribe to them a power the opposite of that which they really possess. For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory.59

As usual in Plato’s dialogues, the author’s voice is elusive in this passage, and Plato may be putting two voices from his own mind into conflict on the page. It is more likely, however, that he gives the dialogue’s last word to his own opinion:  “this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it.” Just as some in the United States feared that pocket calculators would be the end of basic arithmetic knowledge for American schoolchildren, and others currently think that Google searches will turn people into information processors, rather than synthesizers of thought, some Greeks saw the spread of writing as a threat to one of the most prized skills in their culture: memory. If even a wordsmith like Plato can question the worth of letters, one would expect that other Greeks shared his apprehensions, and indeed Steiner documents a second main concern. She traces out an intriguing connection in fifth- and fourth-century Greek literature that betrays the authors’ discomfort with, and even apprehension toward, writing as a technology. Steiner shows that several authors associate the tyranny and oppression of barbarian states with the use of written language in those states, thus drawing a link between totalitarianism and literacy. Identifying ancient attitudes toward letters themselves thus seems a promising ethnographic quest. While Steiner’s book focuses on Greek sources from the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, her project could presumably be, and indeed is being, carried out to a small extent for other ancient cultures as well. This book hopes to move that inquiry forward. What does it mean, for instance, when Plutarch anachronistically depicts the mythic founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, learning letters as schoolboys? An author who places literacy in the prehistoric and certainly preliterate past projects his values as a learned first-century Roman citizen into his tale. Nothing less than the, in a way that makes it essential for Plutarch that literacy and education be a centrally Roman thing. Myriad other prompts exist in our literature that identify a promising avenue for research. Attitudes toward the Lettered and Unlettered If Steiner’s work has informed us regarding how some ancient people perceived letters and education, we still know very little about how ancient people perceived one another as a result of their literacy or illiteracy, education or lack of education. Not much has been done in academic circles to identify perceptions between the two broad classes, or between the subgroups one might draw within each. This oversight is puzzling in light of the considerable evidence available on the matter. A  few illustrations must suffice to introduce an array of texts that reveal these attitudes. Asked how the educated (oἱ πεπαιδευμένοι) differ from the uneducated (oἱ ἀπαίδευτοι), Aristotle is said to have replied, “As much as the living from the dead.”60 Diodorus Siculus claims that, by not serving the muses, the uneducated

1. An Ethnography of Ancient Literacy

27

have forfeited access to the things that are noble and expedient.61 Plutarch even tries once to relate the sentiment at the other side of the social chasm:  “When poor parents expose their babies,” he surmises, “it is because they fear that if they are not properly educated (ἀπαίδευτοι), they will become servile and boorish and destitute.”62 As we’ll see below, Plutarch likely missed the mark by a margin. This list could go on and on. Each passage reflects the normal attitude of a privileged elite both toward the scarce commodity that they possess and toward those who lack it. The sheer mass of the texts that represent these attitudes makes it clear that ancient authors thought often of this distinction and were not bashful about sharing their conclusions – at least (and this clarifier is crucial) with others who could read. The source of these opinions, namely, the company of familiar ancient authors, may explain the general scholarly inattention. In the past half century, in what deserves the label “paradigm shift,” scholars have often widened, or even shifted their focus from the traditional military and political history of Greece and Rome to the history of ordinary people in those societies. Since the educated classes who produced texts have been more than adequately represented by traditional historians, social historians have understandably rushed past their writings to scour scant documentary evidence. It is indeed true that everyday ancients are underor unrepresented in ancient literary sources and this imbalance of representation obviously pertains to literacy:  the educated people who produced texts have dominated the way traditional scholars represent ancient life and thought, but this elite crowd surely formed only a very small minority of the population. Ideally, all comers of ancient societies would be represented, and the endeavor of the social historians has been to minimize the inherent imbalance of coverage. One might resort to imagination to fill the evidence gap. Most illiterate people in the Greco-Roman world probably did not perceive their lack of education as the same handicap or demerit that the educated saw in it. In fact, the opposite would probably be the case. In the American context, an anti-intellectual attitude has prevailed among the less-educated for decades. Some who lack education surely envy their educated neighbors (as Plutarch presumes they would). However, in many less educated circles, an “educated elite” who “pahks the kah in Hahvud Yahd” or litters speech with “whoms” and “up with whiches” is more likely to be ridiculed than adored. In recent US elections, exit polls have revealed a vast difference between the voting patterns of educated and uneducated Americans. We would expect this two-way derision to travel across any social divider, and the same dynamic must have existed in antiquity. Sextus Empiricus verifies this. In his treatise Against the Professors, he puts the sociological pattern succinctly: “Just as the scholar (ὁ φιλολόγος) is ridiculed by uneducated people (oἱ ίδιώται), so is the uneducated person (ή ἰδιωτική) ridiculed by scholars (oἱ φιλολόγοι).”63 This candid report is an unusual treat. Rare indeed is the ancient source that reveals the illiterate perspective on the literate. In other words, while Aristotle and Diodorus and Plutarch clearly open windows to ancient attitudes toward the illiterate and uneducated, these are primarily the windows of homes that contain the literate and educated—the very homes to which traditional historical methods have

28

Illiterate Apostles

offered access all along. Thus far, social historians have not found this window very interesting. There is a problem, however, with discounting or ignoring “old evidence” about people historians have known for ages. While the classic texts may be wellknown, their application to social history has often not been probed. This evidence about educated views of their own learning and others’ lack of learning has strong implications for the station and even the daily lives of the less represented classes. Records of these elite attitudes are surely valuable to the social historian, both of early Christianity and of the ancient world generally. They reveal attitudes that figure in social dynamics both within the educated class and between the classes. This is the case when illiterates or uneducated people are being discussed in the abstract, as when Epictetus compares the illiterate to the unmusical and uses them both to illustrate a point about unphilosophical people. Such texts reveal stereotypes that pervade what we might call the “class-think” of the ancient educated. Even more valuable than elite speculation about the difference between educated and uneducated people would be some record of interaction between the two groups. While it is clear from the quotations above that the educated elite knew and pondered the category “illiterate people” or “uneducated people,” however, they seem not to have known many individuals from those classes, or at least not to have concerned themselves about them. The same is true of the other side of the divide. One author has suggested that “the vast majority of the population made its living with little or no use, even indirect use, of pieces of writing.”64 What is said here about “pieces of writing” must have been true of writers as well.65 Indeed, it was quite possible for literates and illiterates to live largely separate and nearly unrelated lives. Among the very few sources that reveal the social exchange between educated and uneducated people in antiquity are a small handful of Christian texts that record and address pagan criticism of Christian illiteracy. The location of these passages in apologetic texts, which are by their nature dialogical, implies that they reflect real (if only literary) conversation. Christian authors like Justin, Athenagoras, Minucius Felix, and Origen have heard or read accusations about Christians who lack education and have responded. In some cases, these Christian authors have restated those accusations; other times they have simply assumed them. When they are stated, these disparaging remarks give some indication of the things about uneducated people that irritated the educated. Authors who do not restate the criticisms may have assumed that such a review was unnecessary to their audience. In either case, the apologists’ responses provide a second source of information about perceptions and attitudes. They therefore offer invaluable ethnographic information. The apologists themselves are literate, of course, and letters supply the medium of their apologetic response. Therefore, what we actually “hear” is a conversation between two people who can read and write quite well. However, the apologists very clearly did not wall themselves off from their uneducated Christian siblings. In fact, in a caste-segregated ancient Greco-Roman world, Judaism and Christianity

1. An Ethnography of Ancient Literacy

29

would have been rare examples of socio-economic and educational integration. Because of the nature of their task, these apologists become literate representatives of illiterate Christians whom they knew. By advocating for their communities, these relatively learned Christian authors defend against accusations directly aimed at their illiterate Christian family. In this role, they must understand the case of the educated critic and the station of the uneducated people who are at the other end of the polemic. For historians of Christianity, it must be counted a fortuitous happenstance that such a rare conversation on this issue happens to involve the early Christians. The task of this first half of the present study is to explain why this apparent coincidence is not so random after all.

Notes 1 For a brief general introduction to the anthropological method as I employ it in this work, see J. L. Peacock, The Anthropological Lens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 2 T. Cornell uses the term in describing the frustratingly incomplete and sporadic nature of the evidence for ancient literacy studies, in his essay, “The Tyranny of the Evidence: A Discussion of the Possible Uses of Literacy in Etruria and Latium in the Archaic Age,” in Literacy in the Roman World, ed. M. Beard (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991), 7–33. Cornell epitomizes his claims, when he asserts “that the surviving epigraphic evidence is unrepresentative, biased and misleading.” He continues, “These limitations and distortions cannot be overlooked by the historian, who must engage in a constant struggle to break free of the tyranny of the evidence, and to escape from the confines of what happens to survive” (33). 3 P.Ryl. II 161. 4 For one of the only serious attempts to imagine the experience of the uneducated ancient, see A. Ellis Hanson, “Ancient Illiteracy,” in Literacy in the Roman World (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991), 159–197. 5 For a discussion of this problem of defining literacy, see the methodological discussions in J. Cook-Gumperz, The Social Construction of Literacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); R. Finnegan, “Literacy Versus Non-literacy: The Great Divide,” in Modes of Thought: Essays on Thinking in Western and Non-Western Societies, ed. R. Finnegan and R. Horton (London: Faber, 1973); S. Scribner, “Literacy in Three Metaphors,” AJE 93 (1984): 6–21; B. Street, ed., CrossCultural Approaches to Literacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); and J. Szwed, “The Ethnography of Literacy,” in Variation in Writing: Functional and Linguistic-Cultural Differences, ed. M. Farr Whiteman (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1981). 6 For an argument in favor of the signature as an accurate index of literacy, see F. Furet and W. Sachs, Annales E.S.C. 29 (1974): 715–721. Among the scholars of early modern England and colonial America who have employed this method, see D. Cressy, Literacy and the Social Order. Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); L. Stone, “Literacy and Education in England, 1640–1900,” P & P 42 (1969): 98–99; and K. A. Lockridge, Literacy in Colonial New England (New York: Norton, 1974), 7ff. Historians resort to this index because it significantly expands their evidence base, since there is an abundance of signature evidence from marriage registers. The question of signature literacy

30

7

8

9

10

11

12 13 14 15 16 17

18

19 20

Illiterate Apostles in antiquity is complicated by contradictory usage in two Egyptian texts. In P.Oxy. 33.2676 (151 CE), an ἀγράμματος signs his name, while in P.Petaus 11, the village scribe hopes to demonstrate that a colleague is in fact literate by showing that he has signed his name. Both texts are the subject of debate. See H. C. Youtie, “Βραδέως γράφων: Between Literacy and Illiteracy,” GRBS 12 (1971): 239–261 = Scriptiunculae 2.629–51; Harris, Ancient Literacy, 6. Unesco. Compendium of Statistics on Illiteracy (Paris: Unesco, 1978), 8. For differing opinions on the usefulness of these definitions for studying ancient societies, see, e.g. Harris, Ancient Literacy, 1–3; Hanson, “Ancient Illiteracy,” 161–162. The documentary evidence is nearly unanimous in using these terms to describe illiteracy in its narrow sense as the inability to read and write. See Harris, Ancient Literacy, who cites the numerous Egyptian papyri for Greek evidence, FIRA 3.150, (a) and (b) and F. Sbordone, RAAN 51 (1976), 145–147, for Latin evidence (5). Literary authors occasionally use ay ράμματος and inlitteratus in this way (e.g. Plato, Tim. 23a). Nausiphanes is ἀγράμματος in Diogenes Laertius, Vit. 10.8. Seneca Suas. says of Cicero that he “negebat litteras sciere᾽”(7.13). This negation of scio with litteras is a semantic equivalent of inlitteratus. These are the words with which W. V. Harris begins his important study, Ancient Literacy, 3. The approach is widespread and can be observed in studies ranging from the very popular and general to the very scholarly and specific. Ancient Literacy, 8. The quotations below from O. Murray, M. Stubbs, F. D. Harvey, J. Marquardt, and A. M. Guillemin are all given by Harris. Harris’s use of the term “optimism” in referring to assumptions of high literacy rates places him on one side of a modern debate about the significance of literacy to culture. See “The Social Impact of Literacy and Education” below. O. Murray, Early Greece (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980), 94, 96. M. Stubbs, Language and Literacy. The Sociolinguistics of Reading and Writing (London, 1980). F. D. Harvey, “Literacy in the Athenian Democracy,” REG 79 (1966): 628. J. Marquardt, Das Privatleben der Romer (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1896). Le public et la vie litteraire a Rome (Paris, 1937), 77. M. McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962); C. Levi-Strauss, La pensee sauvage (Paris: Plou, 1962); J. Goody and I. Watt, “The Consequences of Literacy,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 5 (1962– 63): 304–345 (= Literacy in Traditional Societies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968, 27–68); and E. Havelock, Preface to Plato (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963). Havelock supplies a brief history of this development and its antecedents in his article, “The Oral-Literate Equation: A Formula for the Modern Mind,” in Literacy and Orality, ed. D. R. Olson and N. Torrance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 11–27. Parry’s doctoral thesis, L ‘Epithete traditionelle dans Homere, appeared in 1928 and was followed by several supporting articles. His pupil, Albert Lord, offered The Singer of Tales in 1960. E. Havelock, “Pre-Literacy and the Pre-Socratics,” in The Literate Revolution in Greece and Its Cultural Consequences (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 220. See, for example, the article of B. Knox, “Silent Reading in Antiquity,” GRBS 9 (1968): 421–435.

1. An Ethnography of Ancient Literacy

31

21 Preface to Plato. See also the articles in Havelock’s later collection of essays, The Literate Revolution in Greece and Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). Havelock’s controversial claim that this “literate revolution” paved the way for Western progress is treated below in the discussion regarding the function of literacy. 22 “The Oral-Literate Equation,” 23. In a lecture series, entitled Prologue to Greek Literacy (Semple Lectures, University of Cincinnati, 1971), Havelock identifies Herodotus as a transitional character, “poised midway between complete non-literacy and complete literacy.” 23 R. Finnegan, Literacy and Orality: Studies in the Technology of Communication (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), concludes that orality and literacy are not “clearcut and opposing technologies, leading to a series of inevitable or (at least) highly probable social and cognitive consequences, and perhaps even to different and revolutionary historic stages in human development or human thought and consciousness” (175). 24 H. H. Tanzer, The Common People of Pompeii (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1939), concludes that Pompeii was literate “to a high degree.” In a recent study, James L. Franklin, Jr., “Literacy and the Parietal Inscriptions of Pompeii,” in Literacy in the Roman World, agrees that the evidence “suggests widespread literacy” (97). 25 Even good estimates of Pompeii’s population range from 8,000 to 20,000 persons at the time of the eruption. For one attempt at assessing the evidence, see W. Jongman, The Economy and Society of Pompeii (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1988), 108ff. 26 Franklin, “Literacy” 81. 27 Franklin, “Literacy” 97. 28 Harris, Ancient Literacy, 323–332. 29 Harris, Ancient Literacy, 11. He later adds, “Behind this lie the ‘negative’ facts about the ancient world: not only the lack of techniques which would have permitted mass diffusion of written texts [i.e., the printing press], and the weakness in antiquity of the ideological notion that all citizens (or all believers) should be able to read and write, but also the slackness of demand for a literate workforce” (327). For references to Athenian voter counts and school buildings in Chios and Astypalaea, see page 328. 30 While Comte’s strong confidence that sociology could accurately predict human behavior was misplaced, the positivist voice has by no means left debates in contemporary epistemology of science. For an accessible discussion of the current state of the discussion, see L. Laudan, Science and Relativism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). 31 About Literacy in the Roman World, a collection of responses to Harris, the editor, J. H. Humphrey can say, “It is worth noting that the contributors have hardly challenged Harris’ basic point, that levels of literacy in Greco-Roman antiquity were never high (5).” Some have suggested that literacy rates among the Jews, a “people of the book,” would naturally be higher than Harris’s inference. For the most complete survey of the issues around Jewish literacy in antiquity, see Catherine Hezser, Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine (TSAJ 81; Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001). 32 E.g., Lucian, Peregrinus 11. For a systematic treatment of the types of early Christian literature, see H. Gamble’s section entitled “The Scope and Character of Early Christian Literature” in Books and Readers in the Early Church (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 21–40. 33 According to Apostolic Tradition xii, “The Reader (ἀναγνώστης) is appointed by the bishop’s handing to him the book.” Apostolic Tradition xxxi.l advises, “and if there is

32

34

35 36 37 38

39 40 41

42

43 44 45 46

47

48 49 50

Illiterate Apostles a day on which there is no instruction (καθήγησις) let each one at home take a holy book and read in it sufficiently what seems profitable” (G. Dix edition). The term is used by Robin Lane Fox in his article, “Literacy and Power in Early Christianity,” in Literacy and Power in the Ancient World, ed. A. K. Bowman and G. Woolf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 127. For a representative claim that Christian literacy would have exceeded that of the general population, see J. Leipoldt and S. Morenz, Heilige Schriften (Leipzig, 1953). A.T. xvi.13 outlaws the teacher of worldly knowledge (Dix edition). C.C., 3.58. Gamble, Books and Readers, 5. Catherine Heszer has applied some of the same principles to challenge exaggerated claims of ancient Jewish literacy in her excellent book, Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001). Gamble, Books and Readers, 6. C.C. 1.27. Tr. H. Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953). Hanson, “Ancient Illiteracy,”, writes, “[I]t is the achievement of William Harris’s Ancient Literacy that extravagant claims for widespread literacy at certain times and places in the Greco-Roman world, offered in the past by enthusiastic students of a particular milieu, have been tempered by his thorough collections of the evidence” (159). A. von Harnack, Bible Reading in the Early Church, trans. J. R. Wilkinson (London: Williams and Norgate, 1912). See also C. H. Roberts, Cambridge History of the Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), who pictures extensive literacy in the first century Near East “at almost all social levels” (48). Gynecology 1.3. Vegetius 2.19. See K. Hopkins, “Conquest by Book,” in Literacy in the Roman World, 138. See also E. E. Best, “The Literate Roman Soldier,” CJ 62 (1966): 166–167. Harris, Ancient Literacy, names architects, citing Vitruvius, De arch. 1.1.4 (203); dispensatores, citing Cicero, De rep. 5.3.5 (197); bailiffs, citing Varro, R.R. 1.17.4 (256) and Columella 1.8.4 (257); shepherds, citing Varro, R.R. 2.2.20 (256), and doctors, citing Xenophon, Mem. 4.2.10 (82). N. Horsfall, “Statistics or States of Mind?” in Literacy in the Roman World, adds surveyors, citing Agennius Urbicus, Gramatici 1, p. 13 (65) and points out notice of a Latin text that prescribes that doctors be literate (see F. Kuhnert, Allgemeinbildung und Fachbildung, Berlin, 1961, 22). P.Oxy. 1.71 Col. 1. The text is discussed by H. C. Youtie in his essay, “Ὑπογραφεύς: The Social Impact of Illiteracy in Greco-Roman Egypt,” ZPE 17 (1975): 206 (= Scriptiunculae Posteriores II, 184). In this context, Youtie produces two other examples in which fraudulent behavior is motivated by the perpetrator’s knowledge that she or he is doing business with an illiterate. See P. Vindob. Worp 16, lines 7–10 (53 CE) and P.Oxy. 17.2111, lines 1–12. “Ὑπογραφεύς: The Social Impact of Illiteracy in Greco-Roman Egypt,” 220 (= 198). See especially Goody and Watt, “The Consequences of Literacy.” For example, S. Scribner and M. Cole, “Unpackaging Literacy,” in Writing: The Nature, Development and Teaching of Written Communication, vol. 1, Variation in Writing, ed. M. Farr Whiteman (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1981), tested various cognitive processes among the Vai of Africa, correlating high achievement in most functions

1. An Ethnography of Ancient Literacy

51 52 53 54

55

56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65

33

to literacy (71–87). See also J. Goody, M. Cole, and S. Scribner, “Writing and Formal Operations: A Case Study among the Vai,” Africa 47 (1977). R. Finnegan, “Literacy as Mythical Charter,” in Literacy: Interdisciplinary Conversations (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton, 1994), 32–33. Finnegan, “Literacy as Mythical Charter,” 33. Finnegan, “Literacy as Mythical Charter,” 35. Finnegan, “Literacy as Mythical Charter,” 36. Other critics of this overwhelmingly favorable view of literacy’s function include, in that same volume, R. Scollon, “Cultural Aspects in Constructing the Author,” 213–228; and P. Michalowski, “Writing and Literacy in Early States: A Mesopotamianist Perspective,” 49–70. Others who have challenged the traditional conception include B. V. Street, Literacy in Theory and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) and several articles and books written during the 1980s; H. J. Graff, Literacy and Social Development in the West: A Reader (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981) and “The Legacies of Literacy,” in Journal of Communication 32 (1982): 12–26; and the essays contained in K. Schousboe and M. T. Larsen, eds, Literacy and Society (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1989). Here I neither presume that complete objectivity is possible for the observer, nor that ancient Greek or Roman attitudes have been insignificant to forming contemporary Western ones. I privilege ancient attitudes on literacy and illiteracy—in Peter Berger’s term, the “symbolic world” of ancient Greeks and Romans—over contemporary ones because the scope of this study pertains to the attitudes toward two Galilean fishermen who are portrayed as illiterate and uneducated in a New Testament text. D. Tarn Steiner, The Tyrant’s Writ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 4. Aeschylus, “Promethius Bound,” line 460. Translated by Herbert Weir Smyth (Loeb). Hist. 12.13. The translation is freely rendered by W. V. Harris in Ancient Literacy. Phaed. 274E-275A. Translations from Greek and Latin texts are given according to the appropriate Loeb Classical Library edition except when otherwise noted. Diogenes Laertius, Vit. 5.19.6. Hist. 4.7.4. Mor. 497.E.6. Math. 233–235. Harris, Ancient Literacy, 29. Some authors have tended to romanticize the ancient context as a setting where the literate and illiterate could not only peaceably coexist but could also live as one piece of seamless social cloth. H. C. Youtie, “ΥΠΟΓΡΑΦΕΥΣ,” maintains that ancient societies “made a large place for illiteracy.” He continues, “The illiterate person [in Greco-Roman Egypt] was able to function in a broad variety of occupations, to be recognized as a respectable member of his class, to attain financial success, to hold public office, to associate on equal terms with his literate neighbors” (201/179). While the several parts of this statement may have been true, summing them up by placing literate and illiterate “on equal terms” is misleading, as we shall see in Chapters 2 and 3. See also his comment in the same essay that “no stigma rested on those who could not read or write” (205/183).

Chapter 2 A T T I T U D E S T OWA R D T H E I L L I T E R AT E

Why do we send our children to school? Polls tell us that vocational training, developing a community of friends, access to knowledge, the ability to process information and communicate, and other reasons like this drive nations to continue inserting education’s enormous price tag into their budgets.1 To the related question of why we pursue higher education and advanced degrees, more reasons follow at a time when increased tuition has put higher education under the culture’s microscope. We have our own variety of reasons for educating ourselves. As historians look backward in time, we do well to lay aside our contemporary reasons for education and focus on the reasons an ancient family without statefunded schools would go out of their way to educate their children. One piece of that decision would surely be forging one’s identity as an educated person. At the close of Chapter  1, I  listed several passages from ancient authors that illustrate the willingness of educated people in antiquity to opine abstractly about the uneducated who live on the other side of society’s tracks. These informants offer us privileged access to the reasons they sent their children to school, or celebrated their own education. Our list was by no means exhaustive. Various authors ranging from classical Athens into the Christian period, portray the uneducated as categorically inferior, prone to deficiencies ranging from bad taste in music and poetry2 to defective opinions about divinity.3 Moral weakness is prominent among these shortcomings. Education, and especially philosophical education, is regarded throughout antiquity as the most important cause of virtue. Evidence is abundant, beginning with the very definitions of education. For Plato, it is ‘ἡ προς ἀρετήν ἐκ παιδών παιδεία’—training toward virtue from childhood4—and Dio Chrysostom’s Socrates defines paideia similarly as “[learning] what one must know to be a good and noble person.”5 These and other examples indicate that, from the perspective of the educated elite, the uneducated person is closed off from participation in the cultured and good life. If lacking education so discredited and handicapped a person’s moral potential among the educated Greco-Roman classes, the specific location of one cache of references to uneducated folks might initially be surprising. These texts describe Christian people and appear in the writings of first through third century apologists, the very spin doctors of early Christianity who would have been most inclined to

36

Illiterate Apostles

paint a flattering portrait of the churches. We understand more clearly, however, once we open the apologists’ writings. In those pages, illiteracy joins infanticide, wild orgies, and cannibalism on the list of accusations non-Christian authors leveled against the Christians. The apologist’s task was to hear and register such charges, and then to refute them. These customary refutations functions to defuse the attack and recast Christianity—whether for the ears of critic or criticized—as an acceptable and proper, even a noble institution. Strangely, the apologists do not refute the charge that Christians could not read or lacked education. Not one of the apologists who address this criticism denies its accuracy.6 In fact, far from simply admitting the truth of this accusation, the Christian apologists even emphasize the extremity of the case. Athenagoras specifically contrasts Christian people who are uneducated (ἰδιῶται) and artisans (χειροτέχναι) and old women (ypαΐδια) to the learned crafters of syllogisms in the pagan world.7 Justin describes people who are “altogether uneducated” (παντελώς ἰδιῶται)8 and do not even know the letters of the alphabet (οἱ οὐδὲ τοὺς χαρακτήρας τῶν στοιχείων ἐπισταμένων).9 In the context of the aspersions Aristotle, Diodorus, and Plutarch cast on people who lack education, this seems a curious way for the apologists to defend their Christian subjects. When the apologists admit to the accusation that most Christians were illiterate, they do so out of necessity. As we have already inferred, the accusation was true. The accuracy of the critics’ assertion left the apologists with three options:  they could lie and portray the Christian masses as learned, they could remain silent on the matter and leave the charge unaddressed, or they could confess and make the best of it. Modern readers have access to this conversation precisely because several authors chose the third option and faced their critics. In fact, Origen clearly says about ancient education the same thing that Harris and Gamble have used comparison and inference to discern about ancient literacy.10 To repeat his very significant words, “In the general population, there are many more uneducated and uncultured people than those who have been trained in rational thought. Therefore, it was inevitable that among the masses being overcome by the word, the uneducated should outnumber the more intelligent.”11 The specific Greek words here translated “uneducated” and “uncultured,” along with the rest of the critics’ vocabulary, will receive their proper attention soon. At this point, though, it will suffice to recognize that when the educated non-Christian critic claimed that Christians were uneducated, educated Christians who replied did so in unison and with surprising enthusiasm: “Yes, sir, you are correct!” Another element in Origen’s confession should catch our attention, especially in light of recent estimates of ancient literacy rates. Origen does not simply confess that most Christians are uneducated. Rather, he attributes that fact to the character of Greco-Roman societies in general: most Christians were uneducated because most of the empire’s population were uneducated, and Christian churches mirrored the proportions of the broader society. In Chapter 1, it became plain that many modern scholars have recently come into alignment with Origen’s claim about Christian education levels. Estimates that the literacy rate would have hovered

2. Attitudes toward the Illiterate

37

between 10 and 20 percent have yet to be seriously challenged, and even if they are moderated slightly, it remains very likely that most ancient people could not read and write. To repeat Harry Gamble’s assessment, “We must assume . . . that the large majority of Christians in the early centuries of the church were illiterate, not because they were unique but because they were in this respect typical.”12 If Origen and the recent estimates are correct, and most ancient Greeks and Romans were uneducated, it is worth asking why critics picked on the Christians. It seems that other illiterate swaths of society faced no such critique. It was quite common, and in fact normal, for ancient illiterates to live out their lives without drawing the mention, or even the attention of their educated neighbors. In light of the pejorative comparisons of educated and uneducated in Aristotle, Plutarch, and Diodorus, we might imagine a general disdain on the part of the educated elite toward their social and educational inferiors. However, in the literature of Greek and Roman antiquity which was generated by this educated class, the illiterate goes largely unnoticed and certainly un-criticized. When it does occur in polemic, an illiteracy charge almost always runs from one very educated person to another. When Nausiphanes and Epicurus spar on a certain philosophical matter and the name-calling begins, Nausiphanes attacks Epicurus as “a fraud, a harlot, a jellyfish, and an illiterate.”13 Other examples reflect the same principle: it is often not the unor under-educated who draw this criticism, but the otherwise-educated. The next question is by now obvious: Why, in an empire full of quiet illiteracy, did Christian illiteracy merit mention? This question ushers us to the texts, for they alone reveal the significance of illiteracy to ancients. In some cases, the harms of Christian illiteracy are stated alongside the charge itself. Other times, they are less explicit and must be inferred from the specific form of the Christian reply. In all cases, the texts give us privileged access to ancient attitudes, both toward illiterates and toward the Christian churches. Six authors from inside and outside early Christianity will help us answer the question, why were the early Christians criticized for being uneducated?

Pagan Perception Sometime during the mid to latter part of the second century, the Roman elite familiarized itself with Christianity sufficiently to motivate some to investigate the lurid rumors of an immoral superstition that dominated earlier perceptions. From the number and kind of literary comments about the Christians, one can imagine that they had become something of an intrigue—perhaps a trendy topic for parlor conversation. Interest level ranged from mild amusement to enthusiastic opposition, but the Christians had most assuredly attracted attention. No less a personality than Emperor Marcus Aurelius devotes an official letter and several of his reflections to his surly disdain for the Christians.14 In this context, Roman intellectuals began to develop increasingly betterinformed opinions about the Christians. Here we shall survey the comments of the four authors from the upper crust who comment specifically on the Christians’

38

Illiterate Apostles

education level: Lucian of Samosata, Galen the famous physician, the Celsus whom Origen answers, and a probably-fictional character called Caecilius, among others, specifically mention the Christians. Lucian and Galen write from a relatively disinterested perspective, here praising and there criticizing the Christians, but concerned directly with them only as characters in a scene or illustrations of a point. Celsus and Caecilius, on the other hand, raise their voices in aggressive opposition to the Christians. The former aired his critique in a treatise he facetiously titled The True Word, much of which Origen excerpts in his own response to it, Against Celsus; Caecilius, on the other hand, seems to be a composite of a lost anti-Christian treatise and the reality-informed imagination of Minucius Felix.15 These authors develop themes that reflect their similar perceptions of the relationship between Christians and educated culture. We will attend not only to their assessment of Christian education levels, but also, and even especially, to the significance they attach to it. We begin with the members of this group who are ostensibly the least interested, Lucian and Galen. Lucian Lucian of Samosata wrote mostly satires. Accordingly, he chose characters and themes that would entertain his educated audience and make them laugh. His emphases help us social historians to flag the live topics of his elite Athenian set. Lucian’s stock and trade is the comic underside of the religious and philosophical propagandists. It is not clear when and where Lucian first encountered the Christians—or even if he ever met one. But twice in his corpus he mentions them by name. It is not at all clear, as C. R. Haines suggests, that the word Χριστιανοί “was taboo with the pagan stylists as a barbarism.”16 Each time Lucian mentions the Christians, once in The Passing of Peregrinus and once in Alexander (or The False Prophet), he highlights their response to the deceptions of a charlatan. In the pages of his Peregrinus, Lucian follows the career of his antihero from ignoble beginnings in Armenia, through a brief sojourn among the Christians, and on to his career as a Cynic, and ultimately to his spectacular demise on an Olympian pyre.17 Fortunately, Lucian narrates the work of Peregrinus among the Christians in some detail. Forced to flee Armenia when he is discovered by a jealous husband, Peregrinus immediately seeks out a lucrative haven to the South. Though lengthy, we include this whole passage for its relevance to our query. It was then that he learned the wondrous lore of the Christians, by associating with their priests and scribes in Palestine. And—how else could it be?—in a trice he made them look like children; he was prophet, cult-leader, head of the synagogue, and everything, all by himself. He interpreted and explained some of their books (βιβλία) and even composed (συγγράφω) many, and they revered him as a god, made use of him as a lawgiver, and set him down as a protector, next after that other, to be sure, whom they still worship, the man who was crucified in Palestine because he introduced this new cult into the world  . . . The poor

2. Attitudes toward the Illiterate

39

wretches have convinced themselves, first and foremost, that they are going to be immortal and live for all time, in consequence of which they despise death and even willingly give themselves into custody, most of them. Furthermore, their first lawgiver persuaded them that they are all brothers of one another after they have transgressed once for all by denying the Greek gods and by worshipping the crucified sophist himself and living under his laws. Therefore, they despise all things indiscriminately and consider them common property, receiving such doctrines traditionally without any definite evidence. If any charlatan and trickster, able to profit by occasions, comes among them he quickly acquires sudden wealth by imposing upon simple folk (ἰδιῶται).18

In this tale, Peregrinus enjoys immediate success among the Christians, and Lucian here supplies the reason: their naive credulity, illustrated in their willingness to receive doctrines “without any definite evidence,” makes the Christians an easy target for hucksters. For Lucian, they are easy prey because they are ἰδιῶται, a term which A. M. Harmon translates as “simple folk.”19 The term merits our attention, as it is the one our authors use most often to emphasize Christian illiteracy. Examining the use made of ἰδιώτης in Greek literature, and particularly Lucian’s own usage, will help us form our own definition for this passage and others. The ἰδιώτης is the perennial “un-character.” The term is most often used to describe an opposite person—someone who lacks some training or office. Classical authors employ it to depict a private person and oppose the ἰδιώτης to the city or the public official, whether king, ruler, judge, or citizen. Elsewhere, the term describes lay persons of all sorts, whether they are non-doctors, non-poets, non-orators, non-athletes, non-soldiers, or non-philosophers.20 It is in their role as opposites or laypersons that ἰδιώται are uneducated, for they lack whatever specific education or vocational training the author has in mind. In interpreting the term, then, it is important to identify the implied or stated opposite that defines the ἰδιώτης. A professional musician, for example, could conceivably be a layperson in the field of medicine. If no opposite is given, the reader should infer an intended meaning from the context in which it lies. Thus, while the term can describe the more general imbecile,21 it is methodologically important to give the author an opportunity to hint at an opposite. Lucian’s own use of ιδιώτης, which appears more than fifty times in his corpus, illustrates the term well. Some sense of his usage may be gained from the company the ἰδιώτης keeps. The ἰδιώτης is grouped with the “un-free” slave (δοῦλος), the “un-rich” penniless,22 and the “un-cultured” rustic (βάναυσοι, ἀγοραίοι, and ἀγροίκος),23 and ἰδιῶται are named as an opposite to kings (βασιλεῖς).24 In a handful of occurrences, the word is nuanced by either synonyms or antonyms that place it in the realm of education vocabulary. For instance, the ῖδιώται are mentioned alongside the uneducated (ή ἀπαιδευσία and ἀμαθεῖς)25 or opposite the educated (οἱ πεπαιδευμένοι ἄνδρες),26 including the doctor (ἰατρός) and the philosopher (ὁ φιλόσοφος).27 In fact, Lucian’s ἰδιῶται are generally uncultured, rejecting philosophy28 and not exhibiting an ear for good poetry (ἥκιστα ποιητικός).29 They are unable, for example, to appreciate the perfections of Homer’s heroes.30 In fact,

40

Illiterate Apostles

because of their faulty or weak power of perception (ἄδηλα τοῖς ἰδιῶταις) they are easily deceived (ἐξαπατηθέντες).31 The credulity of the Christians who are duped in Peregrinus 11–13 fits nicely into this general profile of Lucian’s ἰδιῶται. Because they are uneducated, the Christians have not developed their faculty of judgment sufficiently to see through the charlatan’s ruse. They are laypersons with respect to such analytical skills. In fact, throughout Lucian’s other portrait of a charlatan, Alexander the False Prophet, the satirist attributes the success of his protagonist to the low education level of his vulnerable audience. Alexander works his deception on the “simple-minded” (ἠλίθιοι), “thick-witted, uneducated fellows” (παχέσι καὶ ἀπαιδεύτοις ἄνθρωποις), those “bereft of their brains and sense” (ἁπάντες τοὺς ἐγκεφάλους καὶ τὰς καρδίας ἄνθρωποι).32 In fact, in a phrase Harmon loosely translates “illiterate servingpeople” (ἰδιῶται τίνες οἰκέται),33 the helpless unfortunates are referred to as ἰδιῶται. The vocabulary Lucian employs to describe his simpletons spans the range of the lexicon of illiteracy. As members of the classes Lucian finds vulnerable to deceit, the Christians who are called ἰδιῶται in Peregrinus 11–13 could presumably receive all these other designations as well. An apparent contradiction appears within the brief portrait of the Christians in Peregrinus: at least some of Lucian’s ἰδιῶται read. Peregrinus has the good sense to exploit this crowd’s fondness of the word by interpreting their books. In fact, he even composes a couple of treatises of his own. The featured place of books in the Christians’ practice signals the presence of at least some literate members. Yet Lucian makes no effort to differentiate these readers and writers from his general label, ἰδιῶται. Presumably, readers and nonreaders alike jumped on Peregrinus’s bandwagon. In fact, Lucian reports that Peregrinus situated himself among the members of the group who are the most likely to have been literate, the priests and scribes.34 Despite the education that has taught them to read sentences, they are still vulnerable ἰδιῶται. Lucian does not hesitate to depict literate ἰδιῶται, so the lack of education pictured by the term clearly covers a considerable range. The specific education that these ἰδιῶται lacked lay well beyond the reading primer. The Christians have a bit different face in Lucian’s other mention of them. This second satire unmasks the misguided attempt by the talented prophet Alexander to profit by masterminding his own religious ruse. Alexander chooses his location in Pontus and Abonoteichus and then prepares the townspeople for his triumphal entry by planting a phony oracle. He enjoys immediate success among the unwitting populace by offering vague prophecies and picturing, in fortune-cookie fashion, very optimistic futures for his supplicants. Quickly, Alexander’s fame spreads beyond the region. In time, even the Roman imperial dignitary, Rutilianus, gets wind of this marvel and sends servants from Rome to consult with Alexander. The popular prophet has few detractors. However, the delirious momentum of his success suffers occasional and minor interruptions by skeptical opponents, among whom Lucian numbers himself, Democritus, Epicurus, Metrocles, and, of all people, the Christians.35 These Christians distinguish themselves from the foolish, gullible crowd and, it would seem, from the naive and credulous Christian ἰδιῶται of Peregrinus 11–13. Here, they are the charlatan’s worst nightmare, and

2. Attitudes toward the Illiterate

41

Lucian names them alongside other “sensible people” (πολλοὶ τῶν νοῦν), like the followers of Epicurus.36 In fact, Alexander begins his elaborate ritual ceremony by dismissing the wary with “a promulgation designed to scare them, saying that Pontus was full of atheists and Christians who had the hardihood to utter the vilest abuse of him; these he bade them drive away with stones if they wanted to have the god gracious.”37 How are we to fit the credulous simpletons who fall prey to Peregrinus under the same Christian umbrella as the philosophical skeptics who expose Alexander? Two solutions present themselves. Let us call the first the geographical answer. One might imagine that Lucian is differentiating the education level of the Christians by region. Here, Peregrinus would naturally have achieved enormous success among the Christians in Palestine, precisely because they were ἰδιῶται. But different conditions prevail in Pontus. If the geographical theory is trustworthy, Alexander encountered there a different, better-educated brand of Christians who had been trained, just as philosophers, to smell the deceptive skunk. Thus, the educated Pontic Christians are named alongside Democritus, Epicurus, Metrodorus, and the like because they have received a suitable, philosophical education by which one would be groomed and ready to spot a hoax. While not absurd, this explanation seems unlikely for three reasons. First, it requires that we attribute to Lucian a close and discriminating acquaintance with the regional variations within Christianity. Palestinian Christians are dolts, Pontic Christians are pillars of enlightenment. Even during this period, when Christian ideas and practices are better known to inquiring minds than in the earliest days of the church, this specific knowledge would have been unlikely. Seen as a whole, Lucian’s portrait of the Christians is quite stereotypical.38 In Peregrinus, he even refers to “their synagogues,” apparently unaware of the boundaries between Christianity and Judaism. It is unlikely that he intends such specific nuance, not least because it would assume that his reader shares this same subtle understanding. The second reason for rejecting the geographical explanation is the absence of supporting evidence. I am unaware of any ancient characterizations of Pontic Christianity that especially praise its erudition, or compare it favorably on this issue with the churches in other regions. The most telling reason to discard the geographical theory, however, is the soundness of a second explanation. An alternative explanation, call it the theological answer, would differentiate the two charlatans by kind. Peregrinus presents himself to his audiences as an intellectual and the ruse to which he subjects the Christians is pseudophilosophical. He involves himself within the context of their tradition, advances to high status within their practice, and finally persuades them that he is the most excellent among them. In fact, the ἰδιῶται of Palestine proclaim him the new Socrates! Alexander, on the other hand, is a pagan prophet and his hoax is of a different, pseudo-religious sort. He attempts to convince his audience of the deity, both of himself and of his side-kick, the human-headed snake Glycon. His lack of success among the Pontic Christians owes not to their erudition, but to their monotheism. The Christians were renowned “atheists” and innately unwilling to entertain the notion of deifying Alexander. In fact, this atheism, or at least a

42

Illiterate Apostles

religious skepticism, is the characteristic that unites Democritus, Epicurus, and Metrodorus with the Christians. Additionally, it is clear that education alone hardly protects one against Alexander’s schemes. Even the followers of Plato, Chrysippus, and Pythagoras could be netted, because they lack Epicurus’s sharp skepticism about matters divine. No taxonomy that groups the Christians among the “haves” and Platonists among the “have-nots” could be concerned with education level! Rather, the Christians win points with Lucian here for their dogged resistance to polytheism.39 When the two accounts are brought together in cooperation rather than contradiction, a coherent portrait appears. Lucian’s Christians are a harmless, uneducated lot, who are almost coincidentally immune to the religious ruse, owing to their dogmatic disbelief in pagan deities. This skepticism exalts them for a moment to the ranks of Democritus and Epicurus, worthy educated skeptics who see through religious veils. However, the Christians are not educated and so enjoy no such immunity when it comes to the philosophical fraud. They are not rescued from vulnerability, even by the minimal education through which some gained the ability to read and write. In fact, Lucian’s portrait reveals their problem: they honor philosophy but cannot weed out its inferior forms. They show their philosophical pretensions by proclaiming the imprisoned Peregrinus “The New Socrates.” Prone to think of themselves as philosophical folk, they lack the intellectual equipment— equipment that Lucian and his reader share—that would produce good judgment and help them sift truth from falsehood, hero from huckster. They consequently fall under the spell of the opportunistic Peregrinus. Galen’s evaluation will prove similarly mixed. Galen Galen, the second-century physician and amateur philosopher,40 mentions “the followers of Christ” a mere four times within his extensive corpus.41 His references have an offhand tone and he brings them to illustrate his larger point, rather than introducing the Christians as a separate subject. Despite this disinterest, or perhaps because of it, his comments are quite valuable to us in our attempt to locate the Christians relative to the intellectual communities and issues of their day. A bit of background on Galen will help provide a context for his comments. Galen customarily divided the world he knew into two distinct kinds of people. On the one side were the dogmatics, who received tradition as truth. On the other side were Galen’s favorites, who had learned to weigh arguments and require scientific demonstration. The distinction is clear in this passage from his work, On the Order of My Own Books: “People admire this or that particular physician or philosopher without proper study of their subject and without a training in scientific demonstration, with the help of which they would be able to distinguish between false and true arguments.”42 (Notice how much this sounds like the Christians’ enthusiasm for Lucian’s Peregrinus.) Consequently, Galen can only hope that his own books will be useful to “one or two who are specially gifted, have

2. Attitudes toward the Illiterate

43

enjoyed education and training, and have above all taken up a position outside the craze for particular schools.”43 Galen allows that his opponents, the dogmatics, sometimes do actually arrive at truth. However, because they have no precise and scientific method by which to pursue it, they do so haphazardly, simply accepting on faith the word of a founding figure or another authority. Galen compares them unfavorably to physicians and philosophers who are trained in dialectic and have acquired through their education the ability to assess and discern truth. It is quite surprising, given his disdain for uncritical loyalty to authorities, that Galen portrays the Christians as heroic dogmatics. We might by now consider that phrase rather an oxymoron for him. On the one hand, the Christians choose their tenets irrationally. They live by “undemonstrated laws (νόμοι ἀναπόδεικτοι)”44 and resist the demonstrations of reason: “One might more easily teach novelties to the followers of Moses and Christ than to the physicians and philosophers who cling fast to their schools.”45 They rely on received dogma so heavily because they “are unable to follow any demonstrative argument consecutively.”46 Why do the Christians lack skill at understanding arguments? Presumably, they have not been educated, at least in Galen’s strict sense, and therefore must rely completely on the pronouncements of an authoritative founder. In these passages, Galen seems to slap the Christians’ wrists right in line with the other dogmatic schools that resist scientific demonstration and argument. There is an important other side of the coin for Galen, though, namely his label for the Christians. His nomenclature should not be overlooked. For Galen, Christianity is a διατριβή, a school or sect. He uses the same term to describe the various sects of physicians and philosophers. There is a measure of respect, or at least a recognition of some intellectual status, in that alone. This respect and his classification of Christianity as a sect become clear in his description of Christian morality. He observes: The people called Christians sometimes act in the same way as those who practice philosophy. For their contempt of death and of its sequel is patent to us every day, and likewise their restraint in cohabitation. For they include not only men but also women who refrain from cohabiting all through their lives; and they also number individuals who, in self-discipline and self-control in matters of food and drink, and in their keen pursuit of justice, have attained a pitch not inferior to that of genuine philosophers.47

This passage helps provide a context for Galen’s use of διατριβή. Galen clearly distinguishes the Christians from “those who practice philosophy” and “genuine philosophers.” Unlike true philosophers, they “are unable to follow any demonstrative argument consecutively.”48 However, he willingly acknowledges their very philosophical-looking moral achievements. Therefore, he refers to “the school (διατριβή) of Moses and of Christ,” even while grouping the Christians with the dogmatics who get the critical back of his hand.

44

Illiterate Apostles

Two contradictions have emerged. The first is between Galen’s decidedly negative estimate of the Christians’ means of pursuing truth and his high praise of their noble behavior. This contradiction lies on the uneasy border between the two main provinces of ancient philosophy: rational argument and lived morality. The uneducated Christians are unequipped to follow arguments and weigh truth with any acuity. The access they do have to true statements, they gain accidentally, through a naive adoption of authoritative pronouncements. This discrepancy results in a second contradiction: the Christians both are and are not philosophers. They merit the title διατριβή, and they achieve the virtue characteristic of philosophers, so, if philosophy is the proper execution of a virtuous life, they are in. However, despite these attainments, they are clearly distinguished by their haphazard method and their inability to follow arguments from “those who philosophize” and are “genuine philosophers.” If philosophy is the rational and critical pursuit of truth, they are out. When we set Lucian’s presentation of the Christians alongside Galen’s, a pattern emerges. Both authors mention the Christians within discussions of philosophers and acknowledge their inclination toward partial resemblance to the philosophical schools. They demonstrate this inclination by their reverence for Socrates, by their soft spot for the itinerant philosopher, by their concern with books and ideas, and by their sometimes-heroic morality. However, both authors also group the Christians among the commoners—οἱ ἰδιῶται in Lucian, the Arabic equivalent of οἱ πολλοί in Galen—who have not been trained to be philosophically discerning. This educational deficiency makes them vulnerable to error, whether in the dogmatic reception of a false teaching or in the naive reception of a false teacher. This divided picture will serve as a helpful grid on which to plot the attacks launched by the much more Christian-attentive commentators, Celsus and Caecilius.

Explicit Criticism It is difficult to divine the specific social circumstances that aroused educated Romans to take up their pens in direct opposition to the Christians. Whether because of the encroachment of Christian teachers on their constituency of students,49 or an irritating conversation with a dogmatic Christian, or a less personal concern about the philosophical climate of their city, some chose to engage in active literary opposition. The detached comments of Lucian and Galen have their more polemical counterparts in those of Celsus, to whom Origen replies in his treatise Against Celsus, and Caecilius, the probably-fictional pagan interlocutor in Minucius Felix’s Octavius. Celsus The most extensive portrayal of early Christian educational levels lies in the “conversation” between Origen and the second-century polemicist, Celsus. Origen

2. Attitudes toward the Illiterate

45

has preserved much of Celsus’s treatise, The True Doctrine, in his own refutation, entitled, Against Celsus. As his satirical title suggests, Celsus writes primarily to disparage Christian teaching. He seems, in fact, only incidentally interested in the people who embrace that doctrine. His is a philosophical polemic. Of course, the adherents are implicated in the inferiority of the message, but they are not his primary target. Among the many arguments Celsus advances is his charge that the Christian message must be faulty to attract such an uneducated crowd. Significantly, his reference to the Christians as ἰδιῶται functions not as accusation but as evidence: the ignorance of the adherents is evidence that the message is ignorant. Like attracts like. This strategy is reflected in the following quotation from Book One. Origen writes, “Celsus . . . regards the Word’s love of humankind . . . as common (ἰδιωτικός), capturing only the uneducated (ἰδιῶται) because it is common (ἰδιωτικός) and altogether void of facility with words (οὐδαμώς ἐν λόγοις δυνατός).”50 As Lucian before him, Celsus describes the Christians as ἰδιῶται in this passage. We have already seen that Lucian produced the term in order to explain why Peregrinus had such success among the Christians. They were credulous, because they were uneducated. Celsus does something of the same sort, but focuses on the message itself, rather than the messenger. Origen admits that Celsus’s description is largely accurate. In a text we saw earlier, he reasons, “It was inevitable that in the great number of people overcome by the word, because there are many more vulgar and illiterate people than those who have been trained in rational thinking, the former class should far outnumber the more intelligent.” However, Celsus has claimed that the gospel attracts only the uneducated, and Origen will not quite let him get away with such a vast generalization. In the interest of accuracy, he quotes Celsus back to himself, in a manner of speaking, in the following words: “Not even Celsus asserts that only vulgar people have been converted by the gospel to follow the religion of Jesus; for he admits that among them there are some moderate, and intelligent people who readily interpret allegorically.”51 This nuanced observation by Celsus indicates his greater level of acquaintance with Christians. Whether he knew Origen personally, we cannot tell. But he knows that allegorizing Christians exist. Celsus next attacks Christians’ recruitment strategy. In his second treatment of Christian illiteracy, Celsus reprises his disdain for the Christian gospel, but this time he implies that Christian evangelists themselves share his judgment by putting his pen to their imagined appeal. Their injunctions are like this. Let no one educated (πεπαιδευμένος), no one wise (σοφός), no one sensible (φρόνιμος) draw near. For these abilities are thought by us to be evils. But as for anyone ignorant (ἀμαθής), anyone stupid (ἀνόητος), anyone uneducated (ἀπαίδευτος), anyone who is a child, let him come boldly. By the fact that they themselves admit that these people are worthy of their God, they show that they want and are able to convince only the foolish (ἠλίθιοι), dishonourable, and stupid (ἀναίσθητοι), and only slaves, women, and little children.52

46

Illiterate Apostles

Celsus here insinuates that Christian teachers recognize the inferiority of their message and consequently focus their attention upon the only crowd in which they can hope to be persuasive:  the slaves, women, and little children who are altogether uneducated. In Celsus’s presentation, not only do these caricatured Christian evangelists chase the unwashed masses, they also expressly exclude anyone who is educated, wise, or sensible—anyone who might blow the whistle on their falsity.53 Thus, Celsus accuses these Christian messengers of a missionary strategy fitted to their message. Like any good salespersons, they have pitched their product to a target audience on the basis of its appeal. Celsus maintains that the deficient Christian gospel will not sell among the educated, who know better than to embrace it. In his polemical portrayal, the Christian sales department know the liabilities of their product well enough to avoid learned crowds. This accusation piques Origen enough to draw a refutation that spans fourteen chapters54 and ultimately compares Christians favorably to philosophers. He recoils at the claim that Christian evangelists “do less than nothing to encourage men to be wise,”55 producing the wisdom tradition of the Hebrew Bible, the teaching of the Gospels, Paul’s letters, and Acts – a sort of Christian paideia – along with current Christian practice, in order to refute the claim.56 He also attempts to trace out the source of Celsus’s misconception, suggesting that it originates with faulty readings of 1 Cor. 1:17 (“not many of you are wise” [σόφος]) and/or 2 Cor. 4:18 (“we fix our eyes on what is unseen”).57 (Notice again how Origen treats Celsus as one who pays close attention to Christian doctrine and its sources.) To counter Celsus, Origen likens the Christian evangelist to a Cynic philosopher. Both intentionally teach among the uneducated. They do this, not to avoid the scrutiny of better minds, but because they “wish to educate all people with the Word of God.”58 In fact, the Christians advance beyond the Cynics by providing their audience a deeper engagement in private before they admit them to public meetings, rather than preaching indiscriminately to anyone who happens along in the crowd.59 Origen pictures Christian outreach as both philanthropic (because it leaves no class out of consideration) and selective (because it tests the souls of the interested to weed out the ignoble). In their exchange about the nature of the Christian population and group practices, Celsus and Origen clearly agree on three things: (1) the Christian groups consist of both educated and uneducated members; (2) the uneducated comprise the great majority of this number; and (3)  Christian teachers intentionally recruit among the less-educated classes of society. They disagree, however, on the ramifications of these granted facts. Celsus shares with Lucian and Galen the expectation that people who lack education cannot properly discern truth. On this basis, to him the proportion of the Christian group that lacks education reveals something about the message. In Celsus’s view, this intellectual inadequacy not only makes the uneducated unworthy of truth, but casts doubt on any ideas they do embrace. Further, the decision of Christian evangelists to take their message specifically and especially to this crowd marks them off as deplorable opportunists.

2. Attitudes toward the Illiterate

47

Of course, Origen disagrees. All three facts speak well of the Christians, in Origen’s view. We have seen that he explains the ratio of educated to uneducated Christians by the same ratio in the larger population. The strategy of Christian evangelists is likewise well- rather than ill-intended, as the Cynic parallel demonstrates. For Origen, then, the large numbers of uneducated Christians are a testimony to the compelling truth of the gospel, rather than proof of its inferiority. Of course, Origen himself, one of the bright bulbs of Christian Greco-Roman antiquity, embodies in his brilliant self an obvious refutation:  I believe this, his erudite answer implies, and I am far from uneducated! How do Celsus’s uneducated Christians compare to those of Lucian and Galen? First and foremost, he presupposes the same vulnerability of the uneducated that was evident in the characterizations given by those authors. Because they have not been trained to evaluate truth claims rationally, the uneducated quickly fall prey to false teachers. However, whereas Lucian satirizes those who are already Christians for their uneducated credulity before Peregrinus, Celsus attributes the very decision to become Christians to the credulity of the uneducated. To put the comparison in other terms, whereas Lucian adduces Christian un-education in order to explain away the success of Peregrinus, Celsus adduces the un-education of potential converts in order to explain away the success of the Christian gospel. They both share with Galen the view that the uneducated are at the mercy of the authorities they choose and are unequipped to choose their authorities well. Finally, while Celsus does not mention philosophy when he issues his criticism, Origen does. He likens the Christians to the Cynics in their willingness to take their truth to the uneducated lower classes. This notion of uneducated Christian philosophers will reappear in the Octavius of Minucius Felix. Caecilius In his literary apology, The Octavius,60 Marcus Minucius Felix stages the conversation by having his narrator recollect his earlier conversation with the pagan Caecilius and the Christian Octavius. Octavius prompts the debate by going on the offensive. In our present chapter’s context of Christian defense, he stands out when he comments to Marcus that the idol worship of Caecilius originates with the “blindness of vulgar ignorance (inperitiae vulgaris).”61 Caecilius rightly understands that this opponent has aimed this charge of ignorance (inscientia)62 at him. Caecilius therefore requests an informal debate to settle the matter, with Marcus serving as referee and judge. In the course of his speech, Caecilius denies the existence of providence, defends traditional Roman religion, and critiques Christian eschatology. At the beginning and end of his speech he chides the uneducated Christians for their brash willingness to pronounce on things that even philosophers have not yet settled. The first criticism appears within a general endorsement of skepticism. All things in human affairs are doubtful, uncertain, and unsettled, and  . . . all things are rather probable than true. Wherefore it is the less wonderful that

48

Illiterate Apostles some, from the weariness of thoroughly investigating truth, should rashly succumb to any sort of opinion rather than persevere in exploring it with persistent diligence. And thus, all must be indignant, all must feel pain, that certain persons—and these unskilled of learning (studiorum rudes), strangers to literature (litterarum profano), without knowledge even of sordid arts (expertes artium etiam sordidarum)—should dare to determine on any certainty concerning the nature at large, and the (divine) majesty, of which so many of the multitude of sects in all ages (still doubt), and philosophy itself deliberates still.63

According to Caecilius, all humanity should take offense because Christians pronounce on the universe and the divine. The Christians offend simply by their audacity in making such assertions at all, since “the mediocrity of human intelligence is so far from (the capacity of) divine investigation.”64 However, their case is exacerbated by their own lack of education: these would-be cosmologists have not even learned the meanest skills, much less breathed the lofty air of philosophical training. Near the end of his speech, Caecilius restates this same claim against the ignorant speculations of Christians. This time, he exhorts the Christians to accept their proper station. “If you have any wisdom or modesty, cease from prying into the regions of the sky, and the destinies and secrets of the world: it is sufficient to look before your feet, especially for untaught, uncultivated, boorish, rustic people: they who have no capacity for understanding civil matters, are much more denied the ability to discuss divine.”65 Subsequently, Caecilius recommends that, if the uneducated insist on trying their hand at philosophy, they would be safer to follow Socrates on the path of the Skeptics, who have rightly understood Socrates.66 This comment is enlightened by the later claim of Octavius that the Christians are the truest of philosophers. In light of the perfect match between the cosmology of eminent pagan philosophers and the Christians, “One might . . . think that either Christians today are philosophers or philosophers in time past were already Christians.”67 What Caecilius calls pretense, Octavius readily proclaims:  the Christians in the Octavius pride themselves on doing philosophy. Like Origen, Minucius Felix concedes that most Christians lack education. This is clear from the absence of any attempt to refute Caecilius’s claim. Consequently, instead of addressing the criticism at the level of fact, he must counter its implications. He does this in two ways. First, he challenges Caecilius’s assumption that wisdom belongs exclusively to the educated. Recalling his interlocutor’s “angry storm of outraged indignation,” Octavius replies to Caecilius at length. I would have him be aware . . . that all men, regardless of age, sex, and class, have been born with the capacity for reason and with the power of understanding; wisdom is not acquired by the accidents of fortune, it is implanted by nature. Why, he should not forget that even philosophers themselves, as well as those who are remembered in history as discoverers of the arts, were considered to be born common men, ignorant and half clad, before their intelligence won

2. Attitudes toward the Illiterate

49

them an illustrious name . . . The obvious inference is that genius is not bestowed through riches nor acquired through study.68

Octavius here blurs the lines between issues of class, age, gender, and education. He begins by discounting the notion that reason is withheld from the young, women, and the poor (aetatis sexus dignitatis). Caecilius, for his part, names neither age nor gender. He rather immediately narrows his interest to class and education. His introduction mentions education, money, and skill (inliteratos pauperes inperitos), and his conclusion attributes genius to neither wealth nor study (apparet ingenium non dari facultatibus nec studio parari). How, then, has Minucius Felix countered this form of the illiteracy charge? The simple claim that “genius is not acquired through studies” clarifies his rhetorical aim:  he intends to undermine the implications of his opponent’s accurate illiteracy charge by challenging the necessity of education for both intelligence and discernment of truth. After all, the reasoning faculty is produced with the generation of the brain and is not conditioned on subsequent wealth or education. For this claim, Octavius supplies very little evidence. He directs attention to the unassailable fact that great minds have arisen from lowly station, although he states no specific cases. Even more importantly for our purposes, Octavius does not even cite a general category of uneducated philosophers. From the legitimate claim that some who were born poor have advanced to illustrious philosophical careers, it does not follow that their progress occurred without instruction. Here, by any strict canon of debate, the apologist loses the argument. Not surprisingly, he changes the subject. Perhaps conscious that he is in trouble, Octavius advances a second claim to contend against Caecilius’s assumption that the uneducated Christians are disadvantaged with regard to truth. This new line of argument is clothed somewhat unfittingly, or at least ironically, in the elegant Latin prose of the learned Minucius Felix: “Reasoning gains in lucidity the more one’s speech is lacking in skill.” In other terms, Octavius claims that when it is unadorned by “a parade of stylish oratory,” reasoning “stands on its own merits, supported only by the standard of truth.” While it clearly marks a retreat from the earlier claim, this standard philosophical slogan represents an advance of another kind. By the earlier argument that the poor and uneducated incur no intellectual disadvantage, Octavius merely endeavored to put the Christians on equal footing with their wealthy and educated neighbors. Now, however, he asserts that the Christians’ un-education actually puts them at an advantage. Their lack of rhetorical skill forces them to speak in plain unvarnished truths. This attempt of Minucius Felix to counter the illiteracy criticism exhibits three themes that are now familiar to us. The first is the pagan expectation that uneducated Christians will be deficient at making intelligent judgments about important matters concerning truth. While Caecilius doubts whether anyone can ultimately solve the enormous questions of God and the cosmos, even in his optimistic moments he cannot imagine the uneducated providing any assistance. After all, the greatest inquiring minds have fallen short.

50

Illiterate Apostles

A second familiar theme is the dogmatism of the Christians. Here, strangely, it is because they have grown weary that they “rashly succumb to any sort of opinion.” Their own abortive truth quest has left them exhausted, so they have ceased whatever “diligent search” for truth they might otherwise have begun in favor of idle speculation about physics and metaphysics. Third, again the Christians are mentioned alongside the philosophers and then explicitly differentiated from them. They undertake questions that are still deliberated by “the multitude of sects” and by “philosophy.” As before, the Christians exhibit a propensity to undertake the philosopher’s tasks without acquiring the philosopher’s intellectual equipment through education. In the symbolic world of their educated critics, it follows that they are hopelessly vulnerable to “any sort of opinion.”

Implicit Criticism Justin of Rome and Athenagoras of Athens compose their apologies to address official persecutions. Unlike Origen and Minucius Felix, therefore, they address their works directly to Roman emperors. This rhetorical purpose and stated audience profoundly influence the form and content of their apologies, whether or not we can imagine the far-fetched prospect that official eyes would ever actually peruse their pages. Both Justin and Athenagoras direct their primary arguments against official charges. They defend most strongly against the charge of atheism and its attendant Christian opposition to paganism. For this reason, the intellectual and social criticisms so prevalent in Against Celsus and the Octavius receive only secondary attention in the two apologies of Justin and the Plea of Athenagoras. Despite this specific focus on official charges, both Justin and Athenagoras mention uneducated Christians. This is odd, given that Roman law did not punish illiteracy. In fact, within the intellectual climate that gave rise to the illiteracy criticism, it is difficult to understand why a Christian apologist voluntarily supplies the information that Christians are uneducated. Yet, writing a half century before Origen and Minucius Felix,69 both Justin and Athenagoras describe their Christian brothers and sisters as uneducated. Athenagoras refers to his fellow Christians as uneducated people (ἰδιῶται), artisans (χειροτέχναι), and old women (γραΐδια),70 while Justin claims that “not only philosophers (φιλόσοφοι) and scholars (φιλόλογοι) believed in Christ . . . but also manual laborers (χειροτέχναι) and those who are altogether uneducated (παντελώς ἰδιῶται).”71 The mention of Christian un-education within their apologies implies that Justin and Athenagoras are aware of similar (non-legal) accusations to those Origen and Minucius Felix addressed.72 This very likely conclusion, if correct, would move the earliest known non-Christian attack on Christian illiteracy to the middle part of the second century. Because neither apologist explicitly records the criticism, reconstructing it is quite problematic. Apologists customarily restate the accusations that they answer.

2. Attitudes toward the Illiterate

51

Origen serves as the prime example, as he quotes his opponent’s argument outright and structures his defense in terms of it. Minucius Felix facilitates direct refutation by structuring the speech of Octavius so that it addresses in order the individual points of Caecilius’s case against Christianity. That speech of Caecilius, in turn, represents live pagan criticisms by incorporating some passages directly from the anti-Christian treatise of Fronto and restating other popular accusations. Justin and Athenagoras also quote accusations, as when, for example, both state the charge of atheism outright. Unlike Origen and Minucius Felix, however, Justin and Athenagoras do not relate the substance of the illiteracy criticism, even summarily. We have seen that Lucian, Galen, Origen, and Minucius Felix supply the non-Christian observer or critic’s explanation of the specific debit that un-education represented to the Christian account. For Justin and Athenagoras, not only the implications, but even the accusation of Christian illiteracy itself are absent, being only implied. We rely, then, on a mirror or shadow reading of their apologies to infer the charge and its negative implications solely from each apologist’s (apparent) reply to it. Justin Justin calls Christians ἰδιῶται three times in the course of his two apologies.73 Each time, he names a different implication that arises from their lack of education. The first of these appears within a string of demonstrations that the Hebrew prophets predicted the future accurately.74 The prophet Micah had proclaimed, “The law will go forth from Zion and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem, and he shall judge in the midst of the nations and rebuke much people.”75 The predicted result of this preaching appears in 4:3: “[the people] shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and nation will not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” According to Justin, the prophecy has been fulfilled in the mission of the twelve Jerusalem apostles to the Gentiles around the Roman Empire. Their preaching has had its predicted result in the peaceable behavior of the persecuted Christians: “We who once killed each other not only do not make war on each other, but in order not to lie or deceive our inquisitors we gladly die for the confession of Christ.”76 Nowhere in his prophecy does Micah suggest an underdog status for the word of God. It is therefore surprising that Justin adds a superfluous detail: these twelve men were uneducated (ἰδιῶται). What is more, because they were uneducated, Justin informs his readers that they should therefore have been unable to give speeches (λαλεῖν μὴ δυνάμενοι). Why does Justin add this characterization? The other two references to Christian ἰδιῶται elucidate matters by revealing a pattern in Justin’s rhetorical strategy. Another fascinating setting hosts the Roman apologist’s second mention of ἰδιῶται. Justin is famous for charging eminent pagan philosophers and poets with plagiarizing Christian ideas. In 1 Apol. 54 — 60, he attributes a wide array of phenomena, ranging from the Olympian myths that imitate Mosaic prophecies to the appearance of a pair of messianic pretenders in Palestine, to intentional

52

Illiterate Apostles

counterfeits. In his last example in this string, Justin accuses Plato himself of piracy for prefiguring in his Timaeus the cosmic centrality of the cross.77 While Justin has time on his side for the claims about Moses, he is hard-pressed to explain how Plato could steal the cross four centuries before Christ died on it. He accomplishes this, partly by attributing the work to demons (δαίμονες), whose job it is to oppose the gospel wherever it appears. To increase the persuasiveness of his case, Justin adds a second bit of evidence: the Christians could not have gotten the idea of the cross from Plato’s cosmocentric Χ (chi), because some of them do not even know the letters of the alphabet. Justin writes, It is not that we hold the same opinions as others, but that what all others say is an imitation of ours. Accordingly, you may hear and learn these things from those who don’t even know the characters of the alphabet (oἱ ούδε τοὺς χαρακτήρας τῶν στοιχείων έπιστάμενοι). On the one hand, these are uneducated people (ἰδιῶται) and people who don’t speak the Greek language (βάρβαροι); but on the other hand, they are wise and faithful with respect to the mind, and [there are also] some crippled and blind among us, all to show that these things have not happened by human wisdom but have been spoken by the power of God.78

This is a strange and illogical claim: because some of the Christians who hold the beliefs in question could not have read them, none of the Christians could have borrowed those ideas. While his argument does meet the standards of logic—Justin exhibits his own erudition, for example, in the very act of presenting this evidence, and he will soon allude to the written memoirs (ὑπομνήματα) of the apostles79—the passage is a fascinating attempt to put Christian illiteracy to apologetic use. Additionally, Justin’s rhetorical purpose produces the most extreme description of Christian illiteracy that we have yet encountered: Justin avows that some Christians do not even know their Greek letters. Whatever their facility in a native language,80 these ἰδιῶται can certainly not read Greek. While Justin’s uneducated Christians may not know their alphabet, they are exceedingly moral. Justin introduces a third role for the ἰδιῶται with his third reference. If the uneducated apostles of 1 Apol. 39 should not have been able to give speeches, and the illiterate Roman Christians of 1 Apol. 60 could not have read Plato, the uneducated heroes of 2 Apol. 10 exhibit unfathomable virtue. Justin writes, “Not only philosophers (φιλόσοφοι) and scholars (φιλόλογοι) have believed in Christ, but also artisans (χειροτέχναι) and people who are altogether uneducated (παντελώς ἰδιῶται.). And what is more, all of them scorned glory and fear and death.” These are sturdy and faithful characters. Justin even compares them favorably to the followers of Socrates, not one of whom died for his cause. As in 1.60.11, so here, Justin not only admits, but even emphasizes Christian illiteracy. These faithful people are not just uneducated, but altogether uneducated (παντελώς ἰδιῶται). He also juxtaposes his uneducated Christians to philosophers, both Christian and non-Christian. In the First Apology, Justin likened Socrates, not to Christ, as would become the fashion of later Christian writers,81 but to the

2. Attitudes toward the Illiterate

53

Christians themselves. Here, the Christians are compared with the followers of Socrates, “not one of whom was willing to die for him.” While this is the first time that Justin has done this, Lucian, Galen, Origen, and Minucius Felix all introduce Christian illiteracy in a context that also discusses philosophy or philosophers. Despite their apparent handicap, the Christians have exceeded the courage even of Socrates’s disciples. It is in this bravery that the ἰδιῶται of Justin most resemble those of Athenagoras, to whose apology we now turn. Athenagoras The thoroughly philosophical tone of Athenagoras’s Plea is sounded even from the opening address, which is directed “to Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and Lucius Aurelius Commodus, conquerors of Armenia and Sarmatia, and, above all, philosophers (τό δὲ μέyiστον φιλοσόφοις).”82 Athenagoras organizes the work around the two main charges against the Christians of atheism and immorality.83 He allots far more space to the former, devoting twenty-seven of his thirty-three chapters of argumentation (4–30) to that issue. To counter the claim that Christians are atheists, Athenagoras adduces three bits of evidence. First, in 4.1–10.5, the Christians have an enlightened doctrine of God that is shared by the best pagan poets and philosophers; second, in 11.1–12.4, the Christians live excellent moral lives that would be impossible apart from their acknowledgment of the divine; and third, the facts usually provided to demonstrate Christian atheism—the refusal to sacrifice and the unwillingness to venerate images, to name two—prove not atheism but monotheism.84 Athenagoras mentions Christian illiteracy within his brief moral defense in chapters eleven and twelve. There, he reiterates his assumption about the philosophical inclinations of his addressees. He assumes that he will be allowed full freedom of speech (παρρησία), “as one who is making his defense before philosopher kings (ἐπὶ βασιλέων φιλοσόφων).”85 On this assumption, he proceeds to define piety (εὐσεβεία) in ethical terms, as moderation and philanthropy (τὸν μέτριον καὶ φιλάνθρωπον), rather than using intellectual or religious terms, as skill with syllogisms or the offering of sacrifices.86 By way of elucidating what he means by moderation and philanthropy, Athenagoras produces his own conflation of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount and Luke’s Sermon on the Plain, which he calls “the teachings on which we were brought up.”87 Athenagoras juxtaposes the simple Christians to two different groups among the pagans, one uneducated and one educated. The majority (oἱ πολλοί) of those who accuse the Christians of atheism know neither God’s nature nor science and theology. They are ignorant people (ἀμαθεῖς) with respect to these matters and consequently define piety (εὐσεβεία) in terms of animal sacrifice (θυσίαι). On the other end of the spectrum stand the learned logicians. Of the latter group’s morality, Athenagoras paints a grim portrait. Which of those who solve syllogisms (τούς συλλογισμούς ἀναλύοντες) and eliminate ambiguities and trace etymologies  . . . promise to make their

54

Illiterate Apostles followers happy (εὐδαίμωνας ἀποτελεῖν)? Which, I  say, are so pure in soul (ἐκκεκαθαρμένοι εἰσὶ τάς φυχάς) that they love rather than hate their enemies, bless (as most befits a person of moderation) rather than speak evil of those who are prompt with reproach for them, and pray for those who plot against their life? On the contrary, with ill will they constantly dig up just such abuse against one another and constantly seek to bring off some wickedness, for they have made the concoction of words their business rather than the doing of deeds.88

Clearly, Athenagoras does not grant this sort of erudition the power to produce virtue. Athenagoras portrays the virtuous Christians over against these sacrificers and syllogizers. He does not, as a counterpoint to the logicians, claim for the Christians a different form of study or erudition that does produce virtue—aside from “the teaching on which we were brought up.” While they may be raised to behave well and taught good behavior from Jesus’s sermon, the Christians of Athenagoras do not study. However, unlike οἱ πολλοί who accuse them, they do know certain important truths. They know (εἰδέναι . . . εἰδότες . . .) “him who is truly God” and “the Word that issues from him”; they know something of trinitarian relationships; and they know that a better life awaits them after death.89 This basic theological and eschatological knowledge, accessible neither to the uneducated commoners nor to the learned logicians, forms the basis for the Christians’ sturdy morality and makes them able to love, not only their friends, but even their enemies. Unlike their learned counterparts, the Christian ἰδιῶται “love, rather than hate their enemies, bless rather than curse those who reproach them, pray for those who plot against their lives.”90 Simply put, it is the bold claim of Athenagoras that his simple Christians outdo the religionists’ and philosophers’ morality. Justin and Athenagoras draw one outcome of illiteracy that we have not yet seen. When Lucian, Galen, Celsus, and Caecilius observed Christians who lacked education, they all focused primarily on the Christians’ consequent inability to perform certain intellectual tasks. In each case, the Christians were considered ill-equipped to weigh arguments and so discern truth from falsehood. For Lucian, education would have prepared the ἰδιῶται to recognize that Peregrinus was a false philosopher; Galen’s Christians are forced by their lack of training in arguments to accept dogmatically the traditions presented to them; Celsus hopes to demonstrate the inferiority of the Christian message by pointing out that it could attract only ἰδιῶται, who know no better; and Caecilius scoffs at the audacity of uneducated Christians who presume to pronounce on the nature of the cosmos. For all these, intellect is primary. But Justin and Athenagoras, who wrote before these others, focus on the Christians’ will rather than their intellect. Their ἰδιῶται may have stumbled, like the others, upon a true worldview; indeed, Justin oddly claims this as evidence for the divine origin of the message. However, both Justin and Athenagoras add sturdy Christian ethics to the discussion, by lauding the courage of their uneducated: they

2. Attitudes toward the Illiterate

55

maintain charity, even amid torture, and do not compromise convictions, even in the face of death. While this assertion of the ethics of the uneducated is not altogether missing from our other four spokesmen,91 Justin and Athenagoras hold it higher. Two mirror readings are possible here. One scenario would picture the critics launching an attack like this: “The Christians are uneducated. They are therefore weak-minded, untrained to weigh arguments, and, consequently, unqualified to discern truth. Their adherence to the gospel discredits the message itself.” If this was indeed the force of the critics’ case, the two apologists have turned the rhetorical tables, in essence replying, “You are right that we are uneducated. However, you are wrong when you suppose that we cannot discern truth. Truth is in action, not in words. You craft syllogisms, we stand courageously before our executioners. Who actually possesses truth?” Significantly, by this reading, Justin and Athenagoras leave in place both the accusation and the specific harm that their critics associate with their lack of education. Justin even admits that some have no knowledge of the Greek alphabet. Additionally, they do not refute the critics’ claim at the level of implication, for example, by insisting that despite their lack of education, Christians somehow excel intellectually. On this first reading, then, the critics’ case remains untouched and the apologists imply that it is insignificant by juxtaposing the empty intellectual attainments of followers of Socrates and crafters of syllogisms to the profound ethical achievement of the illiterate Christians. A second reading of this exchange pictures Justin and Athenagoras fielding a different criticism than we have seen. Because philosophers, and educated persons in general, relate education closely with morality,92 it is possible that when Justin and Athenagoras refer in this way to the uneducated Christians, they do so in order to reply directly to their critics’ stated claims about illiteracy. Perhaps nonChristian opponents have linked illiteracy to moral weakness in a manner like this:  “You Christians are uneducated folk. No matter how philosophical you claim to be, you cannot be virtuous because you are not educated toward virtue. To the contrary, your lack of education can only lead to moral inferiority and vice.” In this scenario, the critics have set the terms. Unable to refute the basic charge that most Christians are uneducated, these apologists take issue with the critics’ stated natural consequence of moral weakness. “We may not be educated,” so the argument would go, “but, contrary to your claim, we nonetheless produce the proper fruit of education in a very observable way: we are morally virtuous.” As evidence for their case, both authors then proceed to stress the heroism of common, uneducated Christians—the same heroism that made a significant enough impression on Galen to draw his admiration for those with “contempt for death and of its sequel.” Whether these last two Christian apologists answered a charge of inferior reasoning or inferior morality, they answered with a bold claim about uneducated Christian self-mastery. In doing this, as we shall see, they offered their critics a key coin of the realm.

56

Illiterate Apostles

Conclusion We have now surveyed six pagan observers who speak to early Christian education levels. Their voices span seven decades that cover the latter half of the second century and the first quarter of the third, and they hail from Italy, Greece, Egypt, and Syria. When we lay these six perspectives on early Christian education levels side-by-side, certain distinct patterns emerge. These patterns will be clearest if we isolate three distinct categories, by asking what each author contributes to our knowledge of (1) early Christian education levels, (2) the expressed or unexpressed implications of their lack of education, and (3) the critics’ definition of education. It is ironic that the four apologists who readily confess the illiteracy of the Christians are so obviously learned themselves. Origen is, by some accounts, one of the great minds of antiquity; classicists often assign the Octavius of Minucius Felix to their students as a pure example of Ciceronian Latin; and Athenagoras and Justin, though perhaps lesser lights, exhibit knowledge and talent sufficient to place them squarely in the most highly educated 1 percent of Roman society. That their books provide our access to Christian illiteracy immediately eliminates the possibility that all Christians lacked education. Appropriately, these authors portray Christianity as a mixed bag, educationally. Lucian, Celsus, and Justin explicitly mention the presence of some educated people in the churches; Galen, Caecilius, and Athenagoras do not speak directly to it, but do address the social place of Christians within the realms of educated Greco-Roman culture. Lucian’s Peregrinus maneuvers primarily among a literate crowd of Christian priests and scribes, who honor books enough for writing to become the charlatan’s ticket to upward mobility in their group. Origen seizes on Celsus’s grudging admission that, yes, “there are among them some moderate, reasonable, and intelligent people who readily interpret  allegorically.”93 On the other hand, the six authors all make it quite clear that the vast majority of the Christians they know or know about are uneducated. We have said before something that bears repeating: not one of the four apologists featured here, nor any of the small handful of other early Christian authors who reflect this criticism, deny its accuracy. They thus present the same broadly pyramidal profile that Harry Gamble prepared us to expect: a few Christians were very educated; some were somewhat educated; most were uneducated. More difficult and probably more important than profiling low Christian education levels is determining precisely what bothers the critics about Christian lack of education. Nowhere in these texts does a critic denounce Christians’ reading abilities or lampoon their ignorance of specific literary texts. In fact, it is precisely Lucian’s most literate Christian ἰδιῶται who most clearly demonstrate their ignorance by embracing Peregrinus. The only voices who emphasize and even possibly exaggerate Christian illiteracy are the Christians, Justin and Athenagoras. For these authors, then, basic literacy is not the primary issue. Instead, they focus on three shortcomings to characterize the uneducated. First, they lack rhetorical skills. Both Origen and Justin discuss the expectation that Jesus and his apostles, respectively, should naturally be unable to make speeches. Second, and most commonly, critics assume that these uneducated Christians lack the

2. Attitudes toward the Illiterate

57

skills to weigh arguments and discern truth. This assumption appears in Lucian, Galen, Celsus, and Caecilius. For all of these authors, the uneducated Christians are left vulnerable to falsehood and tend to mistakenly embrace inferior doctrines. Lucian’s Christians jump quickly on to Peregrinus’s bandwagon, because they “receive” doctrines traditionally, without any evidence.94 Galen attributes the Christian dogmatism to the fact that they “are unable to follow any demonstrative argument consecutively.”95 Celsus infers that the educational inferiority of this band of devotees implies a faulty message. And Caecilius resents the fact that “people lacking education  . . . and skill” even speculate on matters of the divine and the cosmos that stump real philosophers.96 All of these authors assume a basic inability of the Christians to weigh arguments and decide wisely, and they attribute that handicap to their lack of education. The third failure of the uneducated that is implied in the criticisms we have read regards the deficit their booklessness inflicts on their morality. The early Christians were commonly attacked for their immorality and these authors report some of the charges. This matter is connected to the seemingly unrelated subject of education by Justin and Athenagoras. Both authors emphasize the illiteracy of Christians who demonstrate heroic ethics. While no critic explicitly claims, “You are uneducated and therefore immoral,” the mention of both issues in the same context signals a connection, even in the criticisms behind Justin’s and Athenagoras’s apologies. One final theme threads its way through all of the texts we have discussed:  philosophy comes up a lot as these critics talk about Christians. Lucian illustrates the uneducated Christians’ vulnerability by citing their enthusiastic willingness to dub Peregrinus “the New Socrates”; Galen compares Christian ethical attainments to those of genuine philosophers and criticizes their dogmatism in the same breath as he levels the same charge against philosophers and physicians; Celsus claims that the Christians are no better than barking Cynic philosophers, extending their message to all comers; Caecilius recommends that, if the uneducated Christians plan to engage in philosophy, they should join the school of the Skeptics and keep silent with their silly speculations; Justin claims that his uneducated Christians excel Socrates’s disciples; and Athenagoras favorably compares the love and bravery of his Christian ἰδιὠται to the contentiousness and scheming of the learned syllogism-makers. It will be worthwhile to keep an eye on this association of Christians with philosophers and ask why observers from both inside and outside the borders of Christianity consistently mention the two in the same breath. With that live curiosity and three implications of illiteracy to track, we turn to a discussion of Greco-Roman education.

Notes 1 For one educational professional’s list or reasons, see UCLA education professor Mike Rose on the Equity Alliance blogsite at http://www.niusileadscape.org/bl/why-do-weeducate-our-children/.

58 2 3 4 5 6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15

16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

Illiterate Apostles Dio Chrysostom, Or. 32.63.1; Aristotle, Rhet. 1404.A.27. Plutarch, Mor. 379.B.2; Epictetus, Diss. 3.26.28. Leg. 643.E.l. Or. 13.27. Evidence that pagans criticized early Christians for their low educational level is primarily in the apologists. See Arnobius, AN 1.28, 5.32; Justin, 1 Apol. 1.60 and 2 Apol. 10.5; Athenagoras, Leg. 11; Theophilus, Ad Auto. 2.35; Tatian. Leg. 11. 2 Apol. 10.5. 1 Apol. 60.11. See Chapter 1, section titled “Quantifying Literacy and Education.” C.C. 1.27. H. Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 6. Diogenes Laertius, Vit. 10.8. See the Letter of Antoninus to the Common Assembly of Asia, which is preserved in Eusebius, HE 4.13. It is difficult to ascertain in which of his Meditations Marcus has the Christians in mind, as he never mentions them by name. Candidates include 1.6; 3.16; 7.68; 8.48, 51; 9.3; and 11.3. The maximalist reading portrays a persecuted sect (7.68; 8.48, 51; 9.3); and Letter of incanting, exorcizing (1.6), private and unpatriotic atheists (3.16). Marcus, not himself opposed to appropriate suicide, nonetheless detested the Christians’ obstinate readiness to die on the grounds that it was not produced by the “inner judgment” άπό (δικής κρίσεως). On discerning which meditations concern the Christians, and on the question of Marcus’s relationship to Christianity, see C. R. Hains, ed. and trans, The Communings with Himself of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (New York: Loeb Classical Library, 1916), 382–383. R. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), uses these terms to categorize the various non-Christian responses to Christianity in this period (xi). Hains, Communings, 384. Peregrinus’s youth in Armenia is described in 9; his time among the Christians, in 11–15; his career as a Cynic, 16–36. Per. 11, 13. Loeb translation. For private people as opposed to those prominent in the city, see Thuecydides 1.124; 3.10; as opposed to the king (βασιλεύς), see Hdt. 7.3; the ruler (ἄρχων—Lys. 5.3; Plato, Pit. 259b); the judge (δικαστής—Antipho. 6.24); and the citizen (πολιτευόμενος— Dem. 10.70). For ἰδιῶται as non-doctors, see Thuecydides 2.48; as non-poets, Plato Phdr. 258d; Symp 178b; as non-rhetors, Isocrates 4.11; as non- athletes, Aristotle EN 1116b, as non-soldiers, Xenophon Eq. mag. 8.1; Th. 6.72; and as non-philosophers, Aristotle, Pol. 1266a31. Demosthenes 4.35. Cat. 13.9. Vit. Auct. 27.52; Herm. 81.2. Vit. Auct. 10.3; Salt. 8.13. Nigr. 24.1: ἀμαθεῖς—Ind. 29.15. Dom. 2.6; Lex. 24.16. The ἰδιῶται are non-doctors in Abdic. 13.3; non-philosophers in Fug. 4.5. Pise. 34.25; Fug. 21.1; Herm. 67.2.

2. Attitudes toward the Illiterate

59

29 Cont. 4.8. 30 Par. 44.6. 31 The ἰδιῶται are less than perceptive in Pseudol. 13.12; they are easily deceived in Alex. 38.21. 32 For ἠλίθιοι, see Alex. 9; for references to παχέσι καὶ ἀπαιδεύτοις ἀνθρώποις, Alex. 17.2; and ἁπάντες τούς έγκεφάλους καὶ τὰς καρδίας ἄνθρωποι appear in Alex. 15. 33 Alex. 30. 34 For a helpful description of scribal literacy in Jewish antiquity, see especially chapter 3 of C. Keith’s, Jesus’ Literacy: Scribal Culture and the Teacher from Galilee (Bloomsbury : T&T Clark, 2011); also chapters 1 and 4 of Keith’s Jesus against the Scribal Elite: The Origins of the Conflict (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014). 35 Alex. 17; 25. 36 Alex. 25.1. The followers of Epicurus appear in 25.2. 37 Alex. 25.10. 38 On Lucian’s Christians in Peregrinus, see C. P. Jones, Culture and Society in Lucian (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), 122. See also S. Benko, Pagan Rome and the Early Christians (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 30–53. 39 The Christians’ dogmatic conservatism also caught Galen’s eye. In the midst of a case for dialectic against dogmatism, he writes, “One might more easily teach novelties to the followers of Moses and Christ than to the physicians and philosophers who cling fast to their schools. So in the end I decided that I should avoid unnecessary talk by having nothing to do with them at all, which is what I do at present and what I shall continue to do in the future” (De puls. 3.3; R. Walzer, Galen on Jews and Christians [London: Oxford University Press, 1949],10–16). 40 The breadth of Galen’s interests would not have been typical of ancient physicians, of course. H. I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity (trans. G. Lamb, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1956), writes: “The physician was . . . a specialist, a technician, and though in Hippocrates and Galen we find the true and interesting and thoroughly modern idea that a subject like medicine, if it is properly studied to its depths, can become a perfect and entirely self-sufficient manifestation of the highest culture . . . nevertheless, this was not the generally accepted view in Hellenistic times. The pure technician was not normally regarded as a man of culture” (194). 41 It is difficult to divide Galen’s allusions to Christians from those to Jews, as he is not precise in his language. R. Walzer, Galen on Jews and Christians (London: Oxford University Press, 1949), lists six references to Jews and Christians (10–16). Of these, two pertain solely to Moses. Reference 1 specifically links Moses to “the tribe of the Jews.” Reference 2, on the other hand, treats only “Moses,” and “Moses’ way of treating Nature.” Both of these seem, at first glance, to pertain strictly to the Jews. However, references 3, 4, and 5 include both Jews and Christians under the name of “the followers/school (διατριβή) of Moses and Christ.” It is possible, then, that Galen means to attribute to both Jews and Christians the tendency to require no proofs (Ref 1) and the view that God’s will is independent of reason (Ref 2). Only Reference 6 speaks exclusively of “the people called Christians.” 42 Walzer, 19. 43 De puls. 3.3. 44 De puls. 2.4. 45 De puls. 3.3. 46 Walzer, 15.

60

Illiterate Apostles

47 Walzer, 15. 48 Walzer, 15. 49 The peaceable Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus wrote his only polemical treatise, later titled by Porphyry Against the Gnostics, because some of his students had been tempted to abandon his school. 50 C.C. 1.27.15-19. 51 C.C. 1.27. “ὁμολογεῖ γὰρ καὶ μετρίους καὶ ἐπιεικεῖς καὶ συνετούς τινας καὶ ἐπ’ ἀλληγορίαν ἑτοίμους εἶναι ἐν αὐτοῖς.” Incidentally, for Celsus the proper education fits one to employ the literary technique of allegory. 52 Contra Celsum 3.44.3-11. φέρων φησὶ τοιαυτα ύπ’ αὐτῶν προστάσσεσθαι μηδεὶς προσίτω πεπαιδευμένος, μηδεὶς σόφος, μηδεὶς φρόνιμος κακά yap ταῦτα νομίξεται παρ’ ἡμῖν άλλ᾽ εἰ τις ἀμαθής, εἲ τις ἀνόητος, εἲ τις ἀπαίδευτος, εἲ τις νήπιος, θαρρών ἤκετο. Τούτους γὰρ ἀξίους εἶναι τοῦ ἀφετέρου θεοῦ αὐτόθεν όμολογοῦντες, δήλοί είσιν ὁτι μόνους τοὺς ἠλιθίους καὶ ἀγεvvεῖς καἰ ἀναισθήτους καὶ ἀνδράποδα καὶ γύναια καὶ παιδάρια πείθειν έθέλουσί τε καί δύνανται. 53 In Celsus’s portrayal, Christians exclude the potentially-wary in a manner quite similar to that of Lucian’s Alexander, whom we last saw weeding Epicureans and Christians from his audience. 54 C.C. 3.44–57. 55 C.C. 3.44. 56 Origen refers to the wisdom tradition of the Hebrew Bible in C.C. 3.45, to the teaching of the Gospels, Paul’s letters, and Acts in 3.47, and to current Christian practice in 3.50. 57 See C.C. 3.47–48. 58 C.C. 3.54.1. 59 C.C. 3.51.2. 60 I cite the Octavius from Bernhard Kytzler’s Teubner edition of the Latin text (Leipzig: Teubner, 1982). The English translation is G. W. Clarke’s, The Octavius of Marcus Minucius Felix (New York: Newman Press, 1974). 61 Oct. 3.1. 62 Oct. 4.4. 63 Oct. 5.2-4. I have altered the translation to be gender-inclusive. 64 Oct. 5.5. 65 Oct. 12.7. 66 Oct. 13.1-5. 67 Oct. 20.1. 68 Oct. 16.5-6. 69 Justin’s two apologies are variously dated within the sixth decade of the second century. The parameters are set by the address; by Justin’s statement in 1.46.1 that he writes one hundred fifty years after the birth of Jesus under Quirinius; and by a reference to the recent Egyptian prefect “Felix,” identified through the papyri as one Manutius Felix, who held office as early as 148 and was replaced in August of 154. See R. Grant, The Greek Apologists of the Second Century (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1988), 52–53. As for Athenagoras, the overlapping reigns of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, the two addressees, fix a date between 176 and 180 CE. If, as Eusebius suggests (HE 5.1.Iff.), the persecutions in Gaul prompted Athenagoras to write, then we may move the date post quem to 177; however, internal evidence for this connection is not abundant (see 3.1). For discussions on dating the Plea, see

2. Attitudes toward the Illiterate

70 71 72 73 74 75 76

77 78 79 80

81 82

83

84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91

61

W. R. Schoedel’s “Introduction” to his own translation in Athenagoras: Legatio and De Resurrectione, Oxford Early Christian Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), xi–xii; L. W. Barnard, Athenagoras: A Study in Second Century Christian Apologetic (Paris: Beauchesne, 1972), 19–22. Leg. 11. 2 Apol. 10. G. W. Clarke, The Octavius of Marcus Minucius Felix, 183–184, n. 38. 1 Apol. 39.3; 60.11; 2 Apol. 10. 1 Apol. 30–53. 1 Apol. 4.2. ἀπὸ γὰρ ᾽Ιερουσαλήμ ἄνδρες δικαδύο τὸν ἀριθμόν ἐξῆθον εἰς τὸν κόσμον, καὶ οὗτοι ἰδιῶται, λαλεῖν μὴ δυνάμενοι, διὰ δὲ θεοῦ δυνάμεως ἐμήνυσαν ἀντὶ γέvει ἀνθρώτων ώς ἀπεστάλησαν ὑπὸ τοῦ Χριστοῦ διδάξαι ττάντας τὸν τοῦ θεοῦ λόγοι. (1 Apol. 39.3) 1 Apol. 60.1. 1 Apol. 60.11 (my translation). 1 Apol. 66.3; 67.3. The classic study of ethnic diversity in Roman religion is G. La Piana’s article, “Foreign Groups in Rome during the First Centuries of the Empire,” Harvard Theological Review 20 (1927): 183–403. La Piana’s work is given its Christian data and context by P. Lampe, Die stadtrömischen Christen in der ersten beiden Jahrhunderten (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1987). For examples, see E. Benz, “Christus und Sokrates in der alten Kirche,” ZNW 43 (1950/51): 195–224. Quotations of the Legatio are from W. R. Schoedel’s Athenagoras volume in the Oxford Early Christian Texts series. Schoedel uses photographs of the tenth-century Arethas codex (O. Von Gebhardt, Der Arethascodex Paris Gr. 451 (Texte und Untersuchungen, i.3; Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1883). See Athenagoras, Leg. 3. On the nuanced organization of the Legatio, see A. J. Malherbe, “The Structure of Athenagoras, Supplicatio pro Christianis,” Vigiliae Christianae 23 (1969): 1–20. Malherbe shows that the organization is more complex than this simple statement suggests, with theological themes being laid out in an orderly fashion within the simpler framework laid by the charges. The Christians’ prohibition of sacrifice is treated in Leg. 13.1–4; the refusal to venerate images in the longer section spanning from Leg. 15.1 to 30.6. Leg. 11.3. On the philosophical use of παρρησία as a remedy to vice and error, along with the expectation that good rulers will welcome it, see my Chapter 4. For εὐσεβεία as measure and philanthropy, see 12.1; for Athenagoras’s attempt to de-emphasize syllogisms and sacrifice, see Leg. 11.3 and 13.1, respectively. Leg. 11.2.1. Mt. 5:44f; Lk. 6:28. Leg. 11.3. Leg. 12.3. Leg. 11.3. As we have seen, Galen admits that “the people called Christians . . . sometimes act in the same way as those who practice philosophy. For their contempt of death and of its sequel is patent to us every day” (Walzer 15). However, while he differentiates the Christians from philosophers in this passage, he does not single out their lack of education as an issue.

62

Illiterate Apostles

92 In Chapter 3 we will develop this relationship and demonstrate its link to other characterizations of the uneducated in Greco-Roman texts. 93 C.C. 1.27. 94 Per. 13. 95 Walzer, 15. 96 Oct. 16.5.

Chapter 3 T H E C H R I ST IA N S A N D T H E S C HO O L S

Introduction Human beings are groupish.1 We draw lines between our people and the others, and within that boundary-forming process, distinction and exclusion play an integral part. In order to distinguish its “we” from a separate “they,” a group naturally develops criteria that characterize its members and define them over against outside others. These criteria that define groups may be inherited, as are genetic pedigree, skin color, and place of birth; or they may be voluntary or earned distinctions, like accrual of wealth, common experiences of initiation, or specific kinds of training. Very often a group defines itself by a number of criteria taken from both of these two classes. For example, in American culture, the Ivy League elite of the mid-twentieth century shared the voluntary experience of undergraduate education in a prestigious Northeastern college. That distinction depended, in turn, on their being male and, most often, from moneyed families— two inherited qualifications. The intersection of these two sets forms the group “Ivy leaguers.” Many examples could be named that illustrate this phenomenon of group borders. Protagoras, the sophist who gives his name to Plato’s dialogue, undertakes two distinct rhetorical projects in his central speech on whether virtue comes by nature or nurture. First, he hopes to distinguish all humans from the other beasts of the world. Second, he wants additionally to distinguish the Greek people from all other human groups. His choice of methods in carrying out these projects is instructive. He explains human superiority to the animals by virtue of a myth, by recounting the legendary philanthropy of Prometheus;2 he traces Greek superiority to rational argument. In the Protagoras’s version of the Prometheus myth, the gods have commissioned Epimethius and Prometheus to create and equip mortal creatures. Epimethius assumes his task enthusiastically, taking pains to leave no species indefensible, either against other creatures, or against the atmospheric threats posed by weather and natural disasters. Small creatures receive wings, larger creatures need none, all creatures receive adequate coating against the elements. However, in his witless zeal, Epimethius exhausts his resources before he equips the human species, leaving them “naked, unshod, un-bedded, unarmed.”3 Provision for human

64

Illiterate Apostles

survival consequently falls to Prometheus, who secures it by stealing from Athena and Hephaestus two divine possessions: fire and wisdom in the arts (ή ἔντεχνος σοφία).4 Subsequently, this divine portion distinguishes humans as the only creatures who worship the gods (θεοὺς ἐνόμισε) and provide their own livelihood. In its communal element, this livelihood involves the power of speech (ἔπειτα φωνὴν καὶ ὀνόματα ταχύ διηρθρώσατο τῇ τέχνῃ).5 Thus, it is the irony of the myth that, left by mistake without the more brute means of self-preservation, humans fortuitously inherit a measure of divinity to secure their survival. Despite being the result of a frantic, last ditch effort, then, this divine part ultimately sets human creatures apart from all the other beasts. When he turns to the task of distinguishing one group of humans over against another, Protagoras abandons myth (μύθος) in favor of reasoned argument (λόγος).6 He is under no apparent necessity to do this. The city of Athens is symbolized, even within this dialogue, by the wise owl, and etiological myths that distinguish one human society from another abound in cultures, ancient and modern. However, Protagoras reflects an engrained cultural value when he explains Greek superiority on other grounds. As evidence for his case that virtue is not teachable, Socrates has cited as examples Eurybatus and Phryondas, the sons of great Greek men, who have nonetheless turned out morally wanting. To counter Socrates, Protagoras enumerates the various elements of Greek education, from earliest childhood onward: the inculcation of morality by nurse, tutor, and parent; the moral instruction of primary school teachers; the lessons of the poets; and the city’s instruction in and enforcement of civic laws. These, he claims, place Greek morality so far above the practices of the uncultured barbarians, as to make Socrates’s case ludicrous. He concludes, Often the son of a good [flute] player would turn out a bad one, and often of a bad, a good. But at any rate, all would be capable players as compared to ordinary persons (ἰδιῶται) who had no inkling of the art. Likewise in the present case you must regard anyone who appears to you the most unjust person ever reared among human laws and society as a just person and a craftsman of justice, if he had to stand comparison with people who lacked education (οἷς μή παιδεία έστί) and law courts and laws and any constant compulsion to the pursuit of virtue, but were a kind of wild folk . . . Sure enough, if you found yourself among such people . . . you would be very glad to meet with Eurybatus and Phryondas, and would bewail yourself with longing for the wickedness of the people here.7

The Greek tradition of education separates the Hellenes from all other tribes. Because they participate in παιδεία, reasons Protagoras, the worst people from among the Greeks far excel the normal barbarians in morality and civility. If Prometheus gave all humans a portion of the divine, the Greeks have distinguished themselves from all other peoples by the education and culture they have forged by means of that portion. Outside voices who criticize the early Christians for being uneducated share the attitude of Protagoras, in some measure. They privilege a characteristic,

3. The Christians and the Schools

65

self-defining element of their group, namely, the shared experience of education, and then reiterate the border that sections them off from others by denigrating those who lack that privileged element. This is illustrated by the number of words within the lexicon of illiteracy that feature a privative prefix—Greek alpha, Latin in. The Christians are ἀπαίδευτοι, ἀγράμματοι, ἀμαθεῖς, ἀνόητοι, inlitterati, imprudentes, and indocti. Along these same lines, the discussion of the term ἰδιώτης in Chapter 2 demonstrated that this term, the label most often used to describe uneducated Christians, usually identifies an opposite to some in group. The term denotes the lack of some training, so that the ἰδιῶται comprise a kind of “ungroup.” Therefore, as barbarians to Protagoras’s Greeks, so were the uneducated to the educated within Greco-Roman society. That class defines Christians, and the uneducated in general, out of their group because of a (to the critics) culpable privation: they lack certain kinds of training. A brief survey of Greco-Roman education will help elucidate what specific training the Christians lacked that made them the objects of Pagan criticism. Different levels and branches of formal education impart different kinds of training, of course, and it will be useful to remind ourselves, for a moment here, of the four specific expectations about the uneducated Christians these critics name or imply.8 Because of the way they understood their own membership in the educated class, learned onlookers naturally assumed that the uneducated Christians would be, ●

● ●

●

untrained to assess arguments, leaving them unable to telling truth from falsehood (Lucian, Galen, Celsus, and Caecilius); ill-equipped to make rhetorically sound speeches (Justin and Celsus); immoral, because not trained in virtue (Justin and Athenagoras defy this claim, Galen notes the unexpected virtue that Christians who lack philosophical sophistication nonetheless attain); and woefully lacking equipment for the sort of philosophical pursuits to which they had pretense (Lucian, Celsus, Caecilius, Galen).

As we navigate together the sequential stages of Greco-Roman education, these presuppositions will find their proper place in the process, helping us understand the critics’ expectations more precisely. A narrative device will help to concretize the Christians’ situation. Rather than simply outlining the educational stages, which has been done well by many already,9 it will be useful to ask what education it would take to remedy the specific shortcomings their critics expect of the Christians. At what stage would one learn to discern arguments, give lovely speeches, attain moral virtue, and become properly philosophical? To answer this question, we will follow the progress of an individual Christian child through the stages of Quintilian’s idealized school. In the grand egalitarian tradition of Musonius Rufus, we hope that this fortunate early Christian student might be a female, so we shall call her Sophia.10 And now we follow Sophia’s educational progress and chart, at each stage, her acceptability by the canons of the educated.

66

Illiterate Apostles

The task of laying out the normal course of ancient education raises the question whether or not we can speak of “ancient education” as a monolith. Does the essential structure of ancient education change across place and time, so that Sophia’s experience would differ drastically from Puteoli to the Peloponnese to Pergamum to Persia? Would it matter if we placed her in the third century BCE as opposed to the third CE? On first glance, temporal and regional variation would seem quite likely. Even the twenty-first-century West, where nations have ministries and departments of education and established standards, features wide disparities in the quality and sometimes the methods of education. (Consider the different experiences of a Montessori student, compared to one who learns in a classical charter school.) No encompassing commission oversaw or enforced standards and practices for Greco-Roman education. The highest level of organization was the local city government, and, even then, neither the funding nor the methods of education were normally a government concern.11 One might then expect the conduct of educational methods and classroom procedures to vary as languages and accents do across the landscape and timeline of Greece and Rome. Despite this private and local emphasis, however, Greco-Roman educational methods and structures remained remarkably uniform across territories and throughout the Hellenistic and Early Roman periods. Learning to read Greek in Philo’s Alexandria, Sophia would have pronounced the same chants and scrawled the same exercises as if she made her start in Chrysostom’s Antioch, several tribal systems and four centuries apart.12 The same uniformity pertains as well for the literary education of the grammar schools, if one allows the addition of new authors and works to the standard canon over time. This similarity of practice across distance and time likely stems from the tendency of teachers to imitate their own mentors, but, whatever the cause, both the literary record and archaeological discoveries continue to bear it out.

Primary Education: Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic In a text we have already seen,13 In Book 10 of his History Diodorus Siculus pens one of the most glowing evaluations of literacy we have from antiquity. The text merits another look at this point, because it implies a considerable handicap for the illiterate. In recounting a literacy initiative under Charondas of Catana, Diodorus writes, The lawgiver rated reading and writing (γραμματικήν) above every other kind of learning, and with right good reason; for it is by means of them that most of the affairs of life and such as are most useful are concluded, like votes, letters, covenants, laws, and all other things which make the greatest contribution to orderly life. Who, indeed, could compose a worthy laudation of the knowledge of letters  . . . Consequently, while it is true that nature is the cause of life, the cause of the good life is the education (παιδεία) which is based upon reading and writing (έκ τῶν γραμμάτων).14

3. The Christians and the Schools

67

Those who could neither read nor write would have been unable, naturally, to take advantage of these and other basic privileges, and Diodorus names this concern for the illiterate members of his society (ἀγράμματοι) as the motive behind Charondas’s law.15 We do not know if Diodorus’s historical account is accurate and, even if it is, how successful the law was. We do know that Diodorus and his kind counted literacy a boon to a polis and giant step up in any individual life. Greek and Roman children like Sophia who did learn to read and write normally received this training from a γραμματίστης/litterator in a school.16 This rule had its exceptions. The elder Cato and the Emperor Augustus himself personally tended to every aspect of their sons’ and grandsons’ education, so we know that some taught their children in the home. In fact, Quintilian’s extensive discussion of home schooling indicates that not a few Roman families chose this option.17 However, the vast majority of those who could read and write in antiquity would have learned their letters in a school. Beginning around age seven,18 then, Sophia would learn to chant and write,19 first the letters of the alphabet, then every possible phonetic syllable, and then individual words. Strangely enough, the first words were often the most difficult, as Greek and Roman educators preferred beginning with the exotic tongue twister. One-syllable words like λύγξ, κλώψ, and κνάξ gave way to longer, more complex pronunciations like κναξζβίχ and φλεγμοδρώφ, and finally to nonsensical “sentences” that used all the sounds, like, “βέδυ ζάψ χθώμ πλήκτρου σφίγξ.”20 Quintilian thought “they should be formed of a number of syllables that go ill together and should be harsh and rugged in sound.”21 Sophia’s first days of school would thus be spent pronouncing and writing Greek and/or Latin letters, syllables, and words. From those very first days in school, Sophia will learn to imitate her teacher’s sounds and script. The pedagogical practice of creating models for students to copy was pervasive in antiquity, as John Chrysostom’s fourth-century sermon illustration suggests: “The teachers write letters of great beauty for the children, in order that they may imitate them, even if at an inferior level.”22 Forty-eight of the school exercises that survive from the Egyptian desert evidence this practice. They range from repetitions of a single letter, to full alphabets, syllabaries that stress the practice of individual syllables, words and lists of words. Students performed all of these rudimentary exercises before they began writing sentences. Sophia would move next to copying maxims and aphorisms.23 Shortly after these preliminary exercises in phonetics and morphology, Sophia’s teacher would launch first lessons in grammar. While building her vocabulary, Sophia would place her verbs, nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and prepositions in separate categories. She would also learn to decline each noun and conjugate each verb. This last process proceeded quite pedantically, with the student writing a full phrase through the whole case and verbal system and then beginning with the next phrase. This painstaking, step-by-step course of study would eventually reach its more exciting next level of achievement in the reading, writing, and pronunciation of sentences. It is not clear how long Sophia has worked by now, but she can finally read an isolated Greek and/or Latin sentence.

68

Illiterate Apostles

The first connection between education and morality appears even as early as these first sentences children learned in elementary school. When Sophia progressed from words to phrases and from phrases to sentences, her teacher would make her read, write, chant, and memorize a string of sentences.24 Instructors chose some of these memorable strings for their salty intrigue, so the one-liners of Diogenes provided hearty fare of this sort. But the teachers’ goals extended beyond simple memory. Knowing that these memorized exercises would form the students, both rhetorically and morally, teachers often chose significant sentences from a poet or other worthy forbear. They favored Cato, for example, for Latin sayings, while Menander and Euripides offered ready Greek models. Menander alone could supply a line for most every purpose, so he is the most oft-quoted of them all, on a range of topics, from the worthiness of the student’s endeavor itself (“Her education one can never lose”) to the prudence of truthtelling (“No liar undetected is for long”).25 When they touch on morality, these maxims reveal simple rules for attitude and conduct that nonetheless touch some of the very practical themes of Hellenistic moral philosophy. The value of good friends and the curse of bad ones, the glory of temperance and the evil of pleasureseeking, praise for industry and blame for sloth, and truth’s beauty to falsehood’s ugliness: these themes would have reverberated in Sophia’s mind and ears as she learned to pronounce and write Greek and Latin sentences. The next step took Sophia from reading sentences to reading paragraphs, and it was as difficult as it was important. The ancient convention of writing texts continuously (scriptio continua), with no spacing or punctuation, made graduating from sentence to paragraph a more formidable feat for ancient than for modern students. In the Christian text, The Shepherd of Hermas, a woman approaches Hermas after his second vision and hands him a little book. When he is instructed to carry the message to other people, Hermas sits in a field in order to copy the text. He finds that task difficult, however, because he cannot recognize the syllables (οὔχ ηὔρισκον…τάς συλλαβάς).26 It seems that Hermas struggles here with the continuous line of letters.27 In fact, even once she has attained relative ease with her reading, Sophia will continue to prepare for her recitations by marking spaces and punctuation on her page—as we would doubtless do, if faced with the task of reading out Hamlet’s soliloquy in such imposing form: “. . . OTTOBETHATISTHEQUESTIONWHETHERI . . .” I mentioned recitations. Scholars have long recognized that nearly all reading in antiquity would have been oral.28 Silent reading was very rare, and this fact has at least two implications for the classroom. First, this elucidates the realities of a Greco-Roman schoolhouse. Martial describes the cacophony of young voices chanting the various sounds, syllables, sentences, and paragraphs from their lessons29—a clatter that would have driven many a teacher to emphasize the written lesson! Indeed, most class time would have been devoted either to writing or to delivering recitations, either in unison or child-by-child. A second implication is more significant. From the earliest stages, Sophia’s reading would have included a strong performative element. The teacher would summon her and each of her classmates to recite a prepared piece. In the first

3. The Christians and the Schools

69

stages, the teacher would read through the text first, providing a model for Sophia to follow. Later, when the piece had been learned, she would simply perform it for her instructor, while he evaluated her and each student on elocution, expression and understanding of the text, and fluidity. A series of incrementally more difficult recitations of continuous paragraphs of Greek and/or Latin texts lead to the end of the primary school period. Writing instruction followed the same path as reading instruction. Beginning with the letters of the alphabet and moving on through to the composition of exercises, teachers carefully monitored school children in the progress of their penmanship. In the earliest stages, they would follow their teacher’s formation of one letter at a time on a wax tablet, writing each carefully according to pattern. In the beginning, the teacher may even have guided the child’s hand. This would soon progress toward syllables, words, and sentences as the oral pronunciation did. The sentences would be written, then pronounced, then recited, covering the three elementary procedures. Concurrently with all these language lessons, Sophia would learn simple arithmetic in elementary school. Of course, counting came first. This would have been done in Latin, at least, with hand signals. Quintilian claims to spot the indoctus by spotting what has become an ageless comic bit: a disparity between the number pronounced and the number gestured. After counting, the student would learn addition and subtraction, perhaps multiplication and division.30 The centrality of language learning in the schools is attested by the fact that all calculations of any complexity—even addition and subtraction—seem to have been reserved for later educational stages. It is surprisingly difficult to say when primary school would have ended for Sophia. The pressing issue of this first stage is clearly reading fluency. Students generally began their next stage, secondary school, sometime around their twelfth year.31 However, ancient educational theorists rarely mention grade levels, forms, or any time-based sequence of promotions, rendering the impression that teachers gauged progress exclusively by mastery.32 It seems that students progressed at their own pace and “graduated” each level when all its lessons had been learned. We know, for example, that Cicero’s nephew began to study under the famous grammarian Tyrannio in Rome at age ten.33 Thus, Sophia would have passed some fellow students and been passed by others, but should arrive at the end of primary school able to read and write Greek and/or Latin paragraphs at a basic level. The stage she has matriculated could very properly be called “elementary school,” as it provided the basic skills on which the other educational experiences would be built. Let’s take stock. If our Sophia were to leave school at this point, with only a primary education to her credit, how would she rate with Lucian, Galen, Celsus, Caecilius, and the other observers and critics of early Christianity? She would surely qualify for a certain category of the literate, and would exceed the skill of 80 to 90 percent of the Greco-Roman populace. However, the ability to read and write by itself did not satisfy the Christians’ critics. In fact, of the many texts we surveyed in Chapter 2, Sophia has altered her status relative to only one: Justin’s

70

Illiterate Apostles

voluntary admission that “some among us do not even know the letters of the alphabet.”34 Able to pronounce and form her letters, she has by no means become an accomplished orator or logician, and, while she has begun to memorize moral aphorisms, her moral equipment would hardly be considered adequate. She has achieved a mere, “A stitch in time saves nine . . . Early to bed, early to rise” morality. Therefore, on the value scale that informs the critics of early Christian illiteracy, her stint with the Ύραμματίστης has a strictly preparatory value. In order to satisfy the critics, she must progress beyond mere literacy and therefore she ventures off to study literature with the γραμματικός/grammaticus.

Secondary Education: Learning the Poets In his diatribe, “The Ignorant Book Collector,” Lucian launches a biting harangue against a rich, uneducated (ἀπαίδευτος) collector of fine tomes. The author disparages here a class of people who apparently unnerved the learned:  the partially educated pretender. Lucian’s ire produces an articulate definition of the line between primary and secondary school preparation. What good, you strange person, will it do you to own [these handsome volumes], when you do not understand their beauty and will never make use of it one whit more than a blind man would enjoy beauty in lovely boys? To be sure you look at your books with your eyes open and quite as much as you like, and you read some of them aloud with great fluency (ἀναγιγνώσκεις ἔνια πάνυ ἐπιτρέχων), keeping your eyes in advance of your lips; but I do not consider that enough, unless you know the merits and defects of each passage in their contents, unless you understand what every sentence means, how to construe the words, what expressions have been accurately turned by the writer in accordance with the canon of good use, and what are false, illegitimate, and counterfeit.35

While he reads quite fluently and may even perform oral readings beautifully, this anonymous collector nonetheless remains uneducated (ἀπαίδευτος). What then does he lack? He has yet to receive literary training: the grammatical skills that enable one to evaluate literature, the reading skills that facilitate interpretation, and a sense for proper poesy. To attain those, our book-collector would have to have completed grammar school. If Sophia hopes to escape similar criticism, she must continue her studies there. “Once the student has learned to read and write without difficulty (sribendi legendique erit facultatem),” says Quintilian, “it is the turn for the grammaticus.”36 Under his tutelage, Sophia will ideally complete her general education, or ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία.37 In this secondary phase, she begins the sustained engagement with the poets that so defined ancient literary education. Along the way, she will polish her reading and recitation skills; however, the teacher’s main task will be to impart a more advanced grammar and a facility at literary interpretation, which he will accomplish by repeated visits to the canonical poets.38 In Quintilian’s view, this

3. The Christians and the Schools

71

initial engagement has a twofold purpose: “the art of speaking correctly and the interpretation of the poets.”39 Sophia will begin, of course, with Homer in Greek; in Latin, with Vergil.40 Homer, and especially the Homer of the Iliad, is central from the early Hellenistic period onward and dwarfs all other authors in importance.41 The bulk of papyrus fragments and the great volume of casual quotations and citations in Greek and Latin literature attest its unmatched status. Caecilius Epirota, who began teaching in Rome sometime after 26 BC, seems to have been the first to lecture on the Aeneid.42 Vergil’s subsequent ascent moved him quickly to Latin primacy, so that little more than a century after its composition, the Aeneid unseated Ennius at the top of the Latin poetic canon. As to the centrality of these texts in the curriculum, Quintilian understates comically, “There is plenty of time for [appreciating Homer and Vergil] since the student will read them more than once.”43 Already in primary school, Sophia may have memorized passages from the Iliad and the Aeneid. Now she will study them in earnest. How did the grammarian treat these central texts? The first-order business was a grammatical reading. Dionysius Thrax testifies to this priority when he divides the discipline. Having defined grammar (γραμματική) as “the practical knowledge of the ways of poets and prose writers,”44 he divides the attainment of such knowledge into six parts: reading with correct pronunciation; explanation of poetic figures of speech; explanation of rare words and of the subject matter; etymology; analogy (regular grammatical forms); and criticism of poetry.45 This progress toward knowledge required assiduous attention to the grammatical details. The custom of the later Latin grammarian, Priscian, provides a window to normal classroom practice. In a school like his, Sophia would read the first line of each of Vergil’s twelve books as follows: First, she would treat the poetic elements, scanning the line, locating and counting the caesuras, and determining the number of feet and their rationale. Next, she would turn her attention to classification, asking how many words are in the line and how many are nouns, verbs, or other parts of speech. Finally, she would study each word individually in succession.46 This assiduous attention to grammatical detail dominated the grammarian’s reading.47 Occasional notes on content are largely confined to background mythological information, the historia that was the grammarian’s forte. This whole grammatical reading, on one level, functioned to illustrate: “In line-by-line, wordby-word progress through the text, the poet’s language was explained and used as a tool to confirm the grammarian’s rules.”48 Thus, the grammarian constantly focused on meticulous details concerning the words. The grammarian’s archenemy was a much more obvious and public foe than an omitted caesura. In the Greco-Roman world, as in every society, Sophia’s speech patterns would have revealed her class. Pronunciation and usage would evidence social place, so Quintilian’s ideal parents even chose their child’s nurse with an ear for her diction. No twanging toddlers for him! Ausonius exhorts his schoolboy grandson to read out his poets “with a scholar’s accent”(doctis accentibus).49 In a text we have already seen, Sextus Empiricus notes the recognizable difference between the speech of the learned (φιλολόγοι) and that of the uneducated

72

Illiterate Apostles

(ἰδιῶται).50 Clearly, Greek and Latin pronunciation had their equivalents to English dropped aitches. As for usage, Quintilian defines what is proper as “the agreed practice of the educated” (consensus eruditorum).51 The uneducated could scrape against cultured ears with a variety of abuses, including barbarisms and solecisms. The grammarian painstakingly labored to ensure, by the end of their association, that he had rid Sophia of any such gaucheness and deposited her on the proper side of this very public dividing line. To remedy deficiencies in Sophia’s oral performance, the grammarian forced his student to recite prepared texts. Each morning, Sophia will have begun class by speaking out a passage that she had memorized from the poets.52 The grammaticus may already have recited the text for her individually, demonstrating by way of example where she should breathe or pause, where to raise or lower her pitch, speed or slow her pace, raise or lower her volume. Tastes varied, and Quintilian’s sober caution against histrionics probably indicates that other teachers inculcated dramatic extremes. After each had heard the teacher’s reading, Sophia and her fellow students would copy and rehearse the text for themselves, marking punctuation and emphases in their own texts.53 At the completion of this preparation, she would normally have memorized her passage for the next day’s in-class recitation.54 Because speech is such public evidence of education, and the students wore this aspect of their training on their sleeves, so to speak, the grammarian’s reputation rode on it. He might therefore motivate his students by incentives positive or negative. Some sweetened the pot by holding competitions and giving prizes, while others punished error with the switch. This defining grammar school exercise was intended to inculcate proper pronunciation and diction. Along with the interpretation and speaking skills that Quintilian defined as the proper vocation of the grammarian, grammar school involved a handful of other attainments, as well. Foremost among these were the development of Sophia’s writing skills and the refinement of her moral sense. The former would offer a temporary and perhaps welcome diversion from the central concentration on the poets. Under the grammarian, Sophia will have written her first essay. This undoubtedly felt new and aroused some mix of nervousness and excitement. In all her primary school assignments, she had merely repeated and imitated models, copying the teacher’s hand and voice and memorizing aphorisms. Instructors reserved what we might call creative writing for the secondary stage and a series of increasingly more complex composition exercises called the progumnasmata. Quintilian outlines the standard beginning. First, Sophia will paraphrase one of Aesop’s fables, seeking to represent the same plot and moral in her own prose narrative. From this starting point, she would progress to invention by narrating an imagined scene from the stock of mythological annals. In her third assignment, Sophia will record a famous saying or anecdote, or a chreia of Cato, perhaps, in Latin; of Socrates or Protagoras in Greek. The trick of this simple sounding task lay in restating each quotation or story so that the

3. The Christians and the Schools

73

worthy’s name appears in each of the grammatical cases. Therefore, she must alter “Marcus Porcius Cato used to say, ‘The roots of learning are bitter but the fruits sweet,’ ” in order to accommodate the genitive case. In this manner, the student would eventually attribute the saying to several Catos (in the Latin plural) or to two Pythagorases (in the Greek dual). The last of the grammar school progumnasmata was an unattributed maxim called a gnome or sententia. These four short essay assignments ushered the student gradually toward the more complicated declamations that remained throughout most of antiquity the preserve of the rhetorical schools.55 Clearly, Sophia and her fellow students spent the bulk of their grammar school class time, not discussing the tales and lessons of the texts, but performing minute analytical operations on the grammar. Yet students mostly remembered other benefits from their time with the grammaticus. Some remember best their fascination with the poets’ plots. Horace recalls, “Twas mine at Rome in boyhood to be taught/What woes Achilles’ wrath to Greece had brought.”56 Others focus on the moral advance. When Quintilian introduces this stage in Sophia’s preparation, he highlights this purpose, waxing eloquent about “the sublimity of [Homer and Vergil’s] heroic verse,” their “greatness of . . . theme,” and their “loftiest sentiments.” In “How the Young Person Should Study Poetry,” Plutarch outlines how a teacher might incline students toward morality by highlighting in the poets what is useful (τὸ χρήσιμον) and salutary (τὸ σωτήριον).57 Scholars echo Quintilian and Plutarch. In his classic history of Greco-Roman education, H. I. Marrou writes, “The grammarian’s object was ultimately moral.”58 Stanley Bonner agrees:  “[At the secondary level], the purpose was to read the great poets  . . . for the inspiring and elevating effect which their subjects, their thoughts and their expression had upon the young mind.”59 There seems, then, to be a disjuncture between the daily procedure of the classroom, on the one hand, which lays the utmost stress on grammar and pronunciation, and the perception of educated people about its purpose, on the other. It is difficult to square this extreme curricular emphasis on grammatical and rhetorical techniques with this strong perception, shared by ancients and scholars alike, that the grammar school’s true subject was morality.60 How far have we progressed? Sophia, the secondary school graduate, will surely have become more pleasing to the eyes of her critics. She here ascends, in one sense, from the class of the uneducated to that of the educated. She now reads Homer and his canonical successors fluidly. She also understands the intricacies of their language and can quote large sections of them on demand, and so possesses, not only a raw literacy, but a cultural literacy that includes her in ingroup allusions and jokes about the school experience and about the poets. Finally, she can compose her own simple thematic essays in various styles. All these endowments place her in a decided minority in the vast caste system of the Roman Empire. She has graduated what one historian has called, “the single most important institution, outside the family, through which the governing classes of the empire perpetuated and extended themselves.”61 Sophia has made a giant step forward. However, for all the grandeur of her

74

Illiterate Apostles

achievement, in Quintilian’s words, she has merely completed “those studies in which a child must be instructed, while still too young to proceed to greater things.”62 Like primary education, her literary training has been preparatory. Quintilian fears the trivializing of secondary education, not because it is the terminus of education, but because it prepares students for the next educational stage. He fears that, “unless the foundations (fundamenta) of oratory are well and truly laid by the teaching of literature, the superstructure (superstruxeris) will collapse.”63 Grammar is the foundation, a higher education in rhetoric, the superstructure. When we apply the observations and criticisms of Lucian, Galen, Celsus, and Caecilius to Sophia’s new status, it becomes clear that these distinctions are a matter of degrees. Sophia’s monitored recitations will have improved significantly her pronunciation and reading. She no longer drops her aitches, and she has begun to cultivate that recognizable Oxford accent. She will even have begun to compose what amount to pre-rhetorical essays. In some sense, then, she will be regarded as facile with words, and thus above Celsus’s low assessment of the Christians’ general level of ineloquence.64 However, she has yet to enter the rhetorical school and begin formal instruction, so she would most likely still lack the desired rhetorical polish. She has also made great advances in the general understanding of Greek and Roman culture through her prolonged engagement with Homer, Vergil, and the other canonical poets. Her choice of words and occasional learned allusions broadcast her new status. However, none of that preparation will have acquainted her specifically or intentionally with the logical assessment of arguments or with cosmology. Galen would still comment of her, that she “cannot follow arguments consecutively made” and Caecilius would still scoff if she were to pronounce on the nature of the universe. Morally, Sophia has taken a step upward. Her education to this point will have left its stamp on her moral sense, surely, with memorized proverbs and maxims. Yet she has not learned morality at a level that would be likely to satisfy the Christians’ critics. Her teacher’s occasional comment on the poets’ moral lessons are certainly one legacy of secondary school. In fact, Protagoras’s assumption that παιδεία itself imparts virtue would have been widely shared in antiquity. However, the sustained engagement with moral reasoning and askesis—the commitment that Galen attributes to “genuine philosophers”—lies yet before her in the philosophical school. It is startling, then, in an empire full of people who could not recognize or write letters at all, that after Sophia has completed the significant preparations of primary and secondary school, she still has not satisfied her critics. She did not satisfy them by learning to read. Then, in what may have been the most politically and culturally significant social institution of the Greco-Roman world, the grammar school, Sophia may actually have made very little headway toward addressing the specific complaints of her critics. For all her work, she is not yet an orator, a logician, a cosmologist, or a moralist. These four distinctions have their own schools, and so we now turn to Greco-Roman higher education.

3. The Christians and the Schools

75

Higher Education: Speaking, Thinking, and Living Well If Sophia wishes to continue her education beyond secondary school, three different doors open to her. She may take up an apprenticeship under a physician toward a career in the medical schools; she may enroll in one of the numerous schools of rhetoric that dot the urban centers of the ancient Mediterranean region; or she may join one of the philosophical schools, either in a place or with a specific teacher. With medical schools we may dispense quickly. The Christians were clearly never criticized for not knowing the humors of the body or being unversed in the proper treatments of fever, and Galen’s assessment of the Christians arises not specifically from his medical training, but from his broad philosophical understanding. But, more importantly, not medicine but rhetoric and philosophy were the “educated” fields. Henri Marrou characterizes the elite value system of the Greco-Roman period as follows: The thing that really showed whether a person was cultivated or not was not whether he had studied science or medicine—things that only interested a narrow range of specialists—but whether he had received either of the two rival and allied forms of advanced education which were still the most widespread and characteristic: the philosophical and the rhetorical.65

To gain full membership into the ranks of the educated, then, Sophia must next enter one of these two venerable branches of study. Rhetorical Schools If she wishes to enter public life as an advocate in the courts, Sophia will find herself drawn to a school of rhetoric. There she would learn principles and practice speaking so that she might exempt herself from the critics who claim that the Christians lack eloquence. Though we might wish to linger in the pagan preaching classes of antiquity, for our purposes, it will suffice briefly to summarize the methods of the rhetorical schools. The professional orator will teach Sophia how to play a part. “Pretending to be someone else,” writes D.  A. Russell, “and composing imaginary speeches in character, is an essential part of most literary activity . . . Where public speech is important (as in the Greco-Roman world), it is important to train people in its skills. What better way than by inventing situations and giving one’s pupils parts to play?”66 Sophia’s study will involve both theory and practice, and the teacher will balance the two, even in the early days. Her first weeks will feel like review, as she returns to the progumnasmata to which she had grown accustomed in her grammar school days. These formal exercises expose her to the outline of genres ranging from the fable to the discussion of law. The handbooks of Hermogenes, Theon of Alexander, and Aphthonius all list these types, with some variation between them. The lists include fables, chreiai, short narrative stories, aphorisms, commonplaces, confirmations/refutations, eulogies, comparisons, thesis, and legal discussions.67

76

Illiterate Apostles

In each case, the student’s goal will be to master the form, sometimes to an almost comic degree of specificity. Theon lists for his students all the possible elements of a proper eulogy in a document that opens satirical possibilities. He directs students to use his exhaustive catalogue of exterior, bodily, and spiritual virtues, sorting the inventory for all attributes appropriate to the particular deceased.68 The rhetorical school intends to produce a speaker who is at home in all the various settings that might call for public oration. The formalism of these teaching methods seems not to have squelched enthusiasm. Rhetoric was highly prized in Hellenistic and Roman culture, and this quest for renown and honor often produced a great deal of excitement for the task. Good orators seem to have generated a considerable zest for their work and this must have been transmitted to their students. Indeed, even teachers remained practicing students in order to keep their skills sharp. Philostratus tells the story of Polemon, a great orator of the Second Sophistic. When his health declined and he lay dying, Polemon ordered his caretakers to carry him alive to his tomb—even to place him inside and close the tomb before he expired. In a dramatic and solemn narrative, Philostratus reports that the sophist surprised his mourners with a final cry from within: “Give me back a body and I will declaim again!”69 And no wonder they prized their craft. It was their ticket to prestige, power, and money. Well-trained orators could watch professional and social doors open before their very eyes. Philosophical Schools Whether based on Plato’s necessary connection between knowledge and virtue or on the rigorous diatribal scrimmages of Epictetus, education, and particularly philosophical education, is regarded by the learned classes throughout antiquity as the prerequisite to virtue. Evidence is abundant, beginning with the very definitions of education. We have seen already that, for Plato, it is “ή προς ἀρετὴν ἐκ παιδὼν παιδεία”—training toward virtue from childhood;70 and for Dio Chrysostom’s Socrates, roughly the same: learning “what one must know to be a good and noble person.”71 We may detect the assumption that virtue requires education in our authors’ specific claims about the uneducated. Plutarch compares the schoolboy to the ignorant on the threshold of adulthood. The one has prepared, through years of disciplined training, to transfer his obedience from the strict guardians of his youth to an internal moral governor that will preside over his new freedom; the other, the uneducated, confuses freedom with anarchy and yields to his newly unchained desires.72 This distinction continues through adult life, of course. Through their training, the educated can steel themselves against the specific temptations that most beset them—the quick-tempered against anger, the amorous against eros. Not so for those who have not trained. Plutarch again:  “On the contrary, the uneducated (ἀπαίδευτοι) gather fuel to kindle their passions, casting themselves headlong into those in which they are weakest and least sure of themselves.”73 Chilon’s

3. The Christians and the Schools

77

epitome rings true in our literature: “The educated (πεπαιδευμένοι) differ from the uneducated (ἀπαίδευτοι) as a trained horse from one that is wild and untrained.”74 The quest to become good in antiquity ultimately led one to the door of the philosophical school. Having entered this tutelage to learn morality, Sophia will also receive there her first exposure to logic and cosmology in the philosophical school. She will choose to join either the Platonists, Peripatetics, the Stoics, the Epicureans, or the Cynics. Or perhaps she will sample various schools before landing on her favorite. She may attend one of the established schools in Athens or elsewhere; she may live in community with the Epicureans or Neo-Pythagoreans; or she may choose to follow an itinerant Cynic. Whatever the case, she will attach herself to a teacher or teachers whose idiosyncrasies will play themselves out within the bounds of one of these larger traditions. Sophia’s critics hail from the schools on the classic list: Caecilius is a Skeptic, Celsus, probably not the known Epicurean Origen imagined but some other philosophical sort.75 Among the plentiful other critics of the Christians, for example, Porphyry and Plotinus are Neoplatonists, and Fronto a Stoic. By far the most popular options during the earliest Christian period were the Stoic and Cynic philosophers, who appealed to an earthy Roman pragmatism. Under Rome in these two most popular schools, ethics formed the undisputed center of most philosophical curricula. If Socrates turned the gaze of philosophy from the heavens to the live-a-day earth, Roman Stoics and Cynics placed blinkers on that gaze that practically eclipsed the heavens and focused attention squarely on the lived moral life. This disciplined attention to ethics often produced no new insights about the way things are (metaphysics) or how human being knows that (epistemology). In fact, by modern definitions of the endeavor, it may seem odd to give this education the name “philosophy.” Concerning one of the revered “philosophers” of the early Empire, B. L. Hijmans, Jr. has suggested, “It seems . . . a legitimate question to ask whether he was a philosopher at all. To which question the obvious answer seems to be ‘No.’ For Epictetus was apparently a man who accepted unquestioningly, a certain set of beliefs, a certain set of dogmas, which he tried to transmit to his pupils to the best of his ability, but to which he did not add anything, that is, ‘nothing of value’—by which one means ‘nothing new’.”76 This author is correct, however, to quickly point out that, “the pupils of Epictetus would have answered in the affirmative”—those students would surely have counted him and themselves philosophers—and that Arrian characterized his collection of Epictetus’s lectures as “the speeches of the philosophers” (oἱ τῶν φιλοσόφων λόγοι).77 Most early imperial philosophical education, and certainly the most popular forms, therefore, turned the student’s attention specifically, if not exclusively, to morality and ethics. We know by now that this emphasis was not altogether new to the entering student of philosophy. Sophia’s elementary and secondary school teachers had already made her memorize moral aphorisms and censored for her the more bawdy comedies.78 However, this emphasis on morality reaches an entirely new pitch of intensity in the philosophical schools, especially in the Stoic–Cynic

78

Illiterate Apostles

strains that dominated popular philosophy during the early Empire.79 Diogenes Laertius writes of the Cynics, “They are content then, like Ariston of Chios, to do away with the subjects of Logic (ὁ λογικός) and Physics (ὁ ψυσικός) and to devote their whole attention to ethics (μόνῳ δὲ προσέχειν τῷ ἠθικῷ).” This emphasis pushed to the margin “ordinary subjects of instruction” (ἐγκύκλια μαθήματα).80 While Logic continued to have a place, even in Roman Stoicism, popular and influential Stoic teachers like Musonius Rufus and Epictetus81 seem to have had the same strong ethical emphasis as the Cynics, judging from the samples of their lectures that have survived through their pupils’ notes. In these teachers’ classrooms, Sophia would have received intensive training that included moral exercises (ἄσκησις) and close attention to the lives and deeds of a few noble exemplars (παραδείγματα/exempla). Teachers used these two pedagogical devices to inculcate in their students the virtue that became for both Stoics and Cynics in this period the chief purpose (τέλος) of philosophy.82 Because his practices are among the most accessible to us and because he taught in the most relevant period, for our purposes, let us imagine the normal slate of lessons that Sophia would learn in the school of Epictetus.

Exercise83 Epictetus would have informed Sophia early and often that the chief goal of her study is to become a “good and excellent person” (καλήν καί ἀγαθήν), by which he meant a person who acts justly and seeks the good.84 In order to reach this end, she will have to devote herself to intensive moral exercises of various kinds. Ἄσκησις denotes concerted practice, and could be used to describe the process by which one learns music.85 Among philosophers, though, Ἄσκησις involved methods of strict moral self-education, and it is in this sense that it became the ancestor of the English terms “ascetic” and “asceticism.”86 By it, Sophia would be trained toward self-mastery, by gradually edging out inferior impulses. One popular form of this exercise, for example, would lighten the impact of one’s own misfortune (and therefore self-pity) by the discipline of focusing attention on the extreme suffering of another.87 The goal was to overpower or remove the impulses, whether one thought them innate or learned, in order to live rationally and well toward the good. The form of Sophia’s ἄσκησις must fit the desired goal—in this case the particular Epictetan definition of “good and excellent”—and root out the undesired evils. In Discourse 3.2, Epictetus lays out his program for ascetically training the soul away from three kinds of errors: ●

●

The first are the passions (τὰ πάθη), which are characterized as desires and aversions (αἱ ὀρέξεις καὶ αἱ έκκλίσεις), like jealousy and envy. A second pair, choice and refusal (αἱ ὁρμαὶ καὶ ἀφορμαί), falls into the category of dereliction of duty (καθήκον) and includes roles one plays (or should not play) in family and society.

3. The Christians and the Schools ●

79

The third and final pair, error and rashness of judgment (ἡ ἀνεξατατησία καὶ ἀνεικαιότητα), treats intellectual mistakes, like logical fallacies.88

After he lays out this three-part organization of ἄσκησις, Epictetus immediately reiterates the importance of the first two categories over the third, maintaining that only the very accomplished should worry themselves with the headier maladies. We can picture Epictetus casting a judgmental eye on competitors who opened shops in Rome, and worrying that “philosophers nowadays pass by the first and second field of study (τόπος), and concentrate upon the third.”89 We may hear offstage Athenagoras’s characterization of the philosophers to whom his Christian bumpkins were superior: “those crafters of syllogisms.” The exercises of Epictetus’s school are clearly aimed primarily at orienting his students to deal rightly with the passions. Thus, Sophia will spend only a small part of her time on logical problems and syllogisms in Epictetus’s school.90 Sophia’s daily classroom ἄσκησις will help her to live well, properly understand the passions, and give her duties their proper importance—that is, to preserve her own moral purpose (προαίρεσις) or governing principle (τὸν ἰδίον ήγεμόνικον). By focusing on the most important matters, Sophia will, over time, learn to screen out trivial things. In Discourse 3.3., Epictetus teaches that anything not pertaining to Sophia’s own moral purpose does not merit her consideration. The diatribe describes vividly Epictetus’s classroom practice: Go out of the house at early dawn, and no matter whom you see or whom you hear, examine him and then answer as you would to a question.

Epictetus: What did you see? A handsome man or a handsome woman? Apply your rule (κανόνα). Is it [i.e., handsomeness] outside the province of the moral purpose or inside (ἀπροαίρετον ἡ προαιρετικόν)? Student: Outside. Epictetus: Away with it! [Then, to another student Epictetus would say,] What did you see? A man in grief over the death of his child? Apply your rule. Death lies outside the province of the moral purpose. Out of the way with it . . . If we had kept doing this and had exercised ourselves (ἠσκούμεθα) from dawn till dark with this principle in mind—by the gods, something would have been achieved! But as it is, we are caught gaping straightway at every external impression that comes along, and we wake up only during the lecture, if indeed we do so even then . . . Let people but transfer their judgments to matters that lie within the province of their moral purpose, and I guarantee that they will be steadfast, whatever be the state of things about them.91

Here, Epictetus guides Sophia and her classmates through a scrimmage of sorts: moral principles practiced in a dry run of their very tempting daily lives,

80

Illiterate Apostles

to be applied after they leave class. This technique was surely not idiosyncratic to Epictetus. Such assiduous dress rehearsals constituted one of the philosopher’s roads to virtue.

Imitation Ancient pedagogues unashamedly advocated imitation. From the time a child first learned to write the alphabet rightly, straight through to the highest levels of the rhetorical and philosophical schools, Sophia’s teachers will have provided her with an unending series of models and exemplars, past and present, including the teacher himself.92 This practice began very early in the history of Greek education and the Romans naturally adopted it as well. Theorists debated the relative effectiveness of broad and general dogmas, specific precepts, and enacted models.93 Seneca, for example, preferred to use exempla and praecepta as complements to one another.94 Ultimately, however, he preferred example, as he makes clear in this excerpt from Epistle 6, in which he compares the value of the two methods. The living voice and the intimacy of a common life will help you more than the written word. You must go to the scene of action, first, because men put more faith in their eyes than in their ears, and second, because the way is long if one follows precepts (praecepta), but short and helpful, if one follows patterns (exempla). Cleanthes could not have been the express image of Zeno, if he had merely heard his lectures; he shared in his life, saw into his hidden purposes, and watched him to see whether he lived according to his own rules. Plato, Aristotle, and the whole throng of sages . . . derived more benefit from the character (ex moribus) than from the words (ex verbis) of Socrates. It was not the classroom of Epicurus, but living together under the same roof, that made great men of Metrodorus, Hermarchus, and Polyaenus.95

Whether within a friendship or in a less intimate teacher–student relationship, philosophers and others who sought to live well would have strongly encouraged Sophia toward imitation as a central part of ethical instruction. While the living example was clearly thought to assist a student’s moral progress, Roman philosophers also call often upon illustrious examples from the past. Although Seneca advocates living exempla in the quotation above, the ancient worthies are sprinkled liberally throughout his letters as well. For this practice of incorporating ancient models, some supplied the classic rationale that in their impoverished generation, such exemplars were few and inferior to the noble characters of glorious bygone times. However they explained it, though, teachers might cite any past person or people by way of illustrating his point. We learn a lot about the common pedagogy in philosophical schools from one specific lecture of Epictetus. During the class session that is loosely recorded in Discourse 1.2, he first demonstrates that his students can courageously endure bodily harm using the example of the Spartan youth who withstood scourgings

3. The Christians and the Schools

81

before the altar of Artemis (1.2); then he shows that his students should live to distinguish themselves from the crowd by telling the stories of Florus before Nero (12–18) and Helvidius Priscus before Caesar (19–24); he advocates honoring one’s own proper character through the story of an anonymous athlete who preferred a dignified death over castration (25–29); and finally, to encourage his students to labor assiduously at strengthening their wills, he produces the ultimate example of Socrates’s superior self-control (33, 36).96 The call to imitate exemplary figures became a central piece in the rhetoric of exhortation during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and teachers became very fond of summoning figures on whom they could pin their moral instructions. The last illustration above represents an important development in the educational use of ethical models. Over time, philosophical teachers constructed a pantheon of exemplars (παραδείγματα/exempla) who could be counted on to embody more than the occasional good act and to provide a steady stream of useful verbiage. These were the noble philosophers whose good reputations endured and grew throughout antiquity, even beyond the halls of the schools. Their names appear again and again in hortatory letters and literature, where authors import anecdotes from their lives to illustrate a precept or dogma. Preeminent in this pantheon of Cynic and Stoic teachers were Diogenes and Socrates. In the four books of Arrian’s Discourses, Epictetus illustrates or fortifies arguments using Diogenes’s example twenty-five times,97 and over sixty times he summons the memory of Socrates.98 It is clear that Sophia and her classmates walked constantly in the presence of these noble ghosts as they learned in Epictetus’s school. We can understand better the force of these examples by observing the specific way in which Epictetus uses them. As one might guess, his most extensive employment of Diogenes appears with his presentation of the ideal Cynic (Περὶ Κυνισμού) in Discourse 3.22. In those 109 lines, Diogenes appears nine times. Often Epictetus simply wishes to set a lofty standard. As a test of a Cynic’s worth, for example, one might ask, “Is he a man worthy (ἄξιος) to carry the staff of Diogenes?”99 Other times, he illustrates specific attitudes and behaviors, as when he decries the habit of some exhibitionist Cynics, who purposely look the part of their extreme poverty. He contrasts this showy habit with the moderate counterexample of Diogenes:  “Diogenes  . . . used to go about with a radiant complexion . . . But a Cynic who excites pity is regarded as a beggar.”100 A few lines later, Epictetus claims that the ideal Cynic “ought to possess great natural charm and readiness of wit. Otherwise he becomes mere snivel and nothing else—so as to be able to meet readily and aptly whatever befalls.” In order to illustrate what he means, Epictetus quotes Diogenes’s pithy reply to an inquirer who asks, “Are you the Diogenes who does not believe in the existence of the gods?” The great Cynic responds, “And how can that be? You I regard as hated by the gods!”101 Epictetus weaves these examples naturally into the fabric of his lectures, both to illustrate and to undergird his instruction. Clearly the central exemplar for Epictetus is Socrates.102 Indeed, Sophia will hardly pass a day in his class without hearing something about the Athenian gadfly. If she begins to fancy herself eloquent and to estimate her worth by the

82

Illiterate Apostles

size of her audiences, Epictetus will redirect her attention to what is important by quoting Socrates. You have been reading [the literature about Socrates] just as you would musichall songs, haven’t you? Because, if you had read them in the right way . . . this is the sort of thing rather that would have caught your eye: “Anytus and Meletus can kill me, but they cannot hurt me”; and: “I have always been the kind of man to pay attention to none of my own affairs, but only to the argument which strikes me as best upon reflection  . . . Nor would it be seemly for me, O men of Athens, at my time of life to appear before you like some lad, and weave a cunning discourse.”103

Of course, like the farmers and the cowhands in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma, the philosophers and the orators “can’t be friends.” Epictetus embellishes the last quotation by calling such rhetorical skill “a dainty thing” (κομψόν) and a “small art” (τέχνιον). Again, if she begins worrying about trivial matters like office space, he will say, “Do you suppose that, if Socrates had yearned to spend his leisure in the Lyceum or the Academy . . . he would have gone forth cheerfully on the military expeditions in which he served? Would he not have wailed and groaned . . .?”104 For practically any error to which Sophia might be vulnerable, Socrates will occur to Epictetus as a counterexample. The moral teaching of his school will have been dominated by this imitation language and constant recital of sayings. Now it becomes clearer on what basis the uneducated Christians might be morally suspect. Whatever moral training students got in primary and secondary schools is now stepped up to a new, much more intensive level of engagement, so that only once she has entered the philosophical schools will Sophia truly satisfy her critics’ demand for moral excellence. There she will learn the rigorous selfdiscipline and imitative habits of the Cynic and Stoic schools. By giving her the equipment of morality, through exercise and exemplars, Epictetus or another teacher will prepare her to live well.

The Peril of the Pretender Pagan criticism and the apologists’ response raised three important questions that have become easier to answer as the realities and perceptions of Greco-Roman education have become clearer. The three questions are as follows: 1. What level of education would the Christians need to attain, in order to satisfy their critics? 2. Why, in an empire full of illiterates, are the Christians singled out for criticism? 3. Why do Justin and Athenagoras specifically feature the morality of the Christians in connection with their illiteracy?

3. The Christians and the Schools

83

As we would expect, the questions and their answers are quite closely related to one another. Each is essential to understanding the strange social exchange involved in the illiteracy criticism. The first question involves the critics’ demands and is the easiest to answer. In order to dodge all her critics’ arrows, Sophia will have to enter the highest levels of Greco-Roman education. These opponents do not simply demand that Christians should learn to read, or even to know the poets. We have now seen that, with their demand for polished speech, trained judgment, and practiced morality, the educated Pagans criticized the early Christians for not being among the very most educated members of their society. These critics raise the bar so high that they seem to condemn the Christians for not being a part of the educational one percent. This raises the question why the Christians were criticized for their illiteracy in the first place. These critics would certainly have looked down upon the illiterate, generally. Among the Christians, this number would include, perhaps, the old women of Athenagoras and those innocent of any studies who are described by Minucius Felix. Certainly Justin’s “altogether uneducated” Christians, who could not even form the letters of the Greek alphabet, belong in this group. Like Euripides’s illiterate herdsman, if faced with something as simple as a printed name, they could only describe the shapes of the letters, styling the Greek theta “a circle with a navel”;105 like the numerous patrons of public scribes who appear in the Egyptian papyri, these illiterate Christians could not compose or even sign their names to legal contracts; like the man who unwittingly asked Aristides how to spell Aristides, they could not easily register their yea or nay on the voter’s ostrakon. If there was to be criticism of uneducated Christians, we would expect the very least educated to receive attention. That makes the disregard of the educated toward this class initially surprising, in this light. The educated most often mention illiteracy only in detached comparisons and, outside the papyri, ancient references to specific illiterate persons are rare. Illiterates as such get no direct notice from the critics. Garden variety illiterates dodge the critique of the educated, because they pose no threat. They are innocuous, so the educated classes may let them rest unnoticed and unopposed, occasionally pulling them into conversation as a class, to elucidate a less obvious claim. Epictetus illustrates in his customary diatribal fashion, with this address to a student: It is absurd for you to say, “Advise me.” What advice am I to give you? No, say rather, “Enable my mind to adapt itself to whatever comes.” Since the other expression is just as if an illiterate (ἀγράμματος) should say, “Tell me what to write when some name is set me to write (γράφω).” For if I  say, “Write Dio,” and then his teacher comes along and sets him not the name “Dio,” but “Theo,” what will happen? What will he write? But if you have practiced writing, you are able to prepare yourself for everything that is dictated to you; if you have not practiced, what advice can I offer you?106

84

Illiterate Apostles

Epictetus banks here on the common, shared knowledge that illiterates cannot write. Here, as in many other texts and authors, the illiterate can be counted on as the given and known—a steady, sturdy reference point reliable enough to assist persuasion on the proposed and less-agreed-upon second point. “As the illiterate is to reading or writing, so X is to Y.”107 The illiterate is dependable. The semi-educated offered no such assurance. In fact, they violated the established categories of class. They were pretenders to the inherited place of the educated elite. Lucian’s book-collector, if I may return to him, provides a suitable example of this threat. Like Juvenal’s Trimalchio, he is among the nouveau riche, who drew such merciless ridicule from the established classes.108 This does not help his case. He is already a pretender of sorts, crashing the party of the inherited wealthy. Now Lucian reveals his second offense: he seeks to be numbered among the educated. “You expect to get a reputation for learning (ἐν παιδείςι . . . εἶναι τις δόξειν) by zealously buying up the finest books.”109 This book-collector threatens to trespass on Lucian’s territory. The named offense is “impersonating the educated.” Lucian likens this man’s masquerade to the ridiculous prospect of Thersites wearing Achilles’s armor.110 “If that man, Thersites, should get the armour of Achilles, do you suppose that he would thereby at once become both handsome and strong; that he would leap the river, redden its stream with Trojan gore, and kill Hector . . . when he cannot even carry the ‘ash tree’ on his shoulders?”111 Such behavior would make Thersites a laughingstock (γέλωτα). Likewise, claims Lucian, the bookcollector is dressing up as the educated, but his disguise is thin and detectable. Do you not see that the same thing happens in your case, when the roll that you hold in your hands is very beautiful, with a slip-cover of purple vellum and a gilt knob, but in reading it you barbarize its language, spoil its beauty and warp its meaning? Men of learning laugh at you (ὑπὸ τῶν πεπαιδευμένων καταγελώμενος), while the toadies who live with you praise you—and they themselves for the most part turn to one another and laugh.112

An “uneducated” man postures as the educated and draws Lucian’s sharp wit to the height of its powers. What is his offense? As they peer down from antiquity’s balcony, the educated reserve their sharpest tongue, not for those on the ground below, but for those perched somewhere on the ladder. The uneducated book-collector who incites such vituperation from Lucian reads Greek texts fluidly and well, “keeping his eyes ahead of his tongue.” He hears the echoes of his primary school teacher’s voice, but his wrists have yet to feel the grammarian’s ruler. Seneca describes inlitterati who occupy this same middle ground, not among the rudes who have not begun the educational ascent, but still not among the educated who have read Proust: they read, but they do not read the right books in the right way. It is in this crowd of the semi-educated that we find the Christian priests in Palestine whom Peregrinus easily deceives. Books so obviously fascinate them that their clever visitor immediately divines a straight path to their trust and

3. The Christians and the Schools

85

hastily writes a few. Yet for all their “eyes-ahead-of-tongue” reading, these too are uneducated people (ίδιώται). They, like the others, have climbed enough of paideia’s ladder to draw attention, but not yet enough to satisfy their critical educated observer. For their efforts, they receive an even sharper criticism than their utterly illiterate fellows. The answer to our second main question now lies close at hand. Educated pagans criticized Christians for their lack of education because they touched a nerve. The Christians come mostly, as Origen avers and Justin exaggerates, from the uneducated classes. Most of them are women, children, manual laborers, the illiterate poor. Certainly some of them will have learned to read, and a very few are able to allegorize (Origen) or bear the name φιλολόος (Justin). However, the bulk would be from that class that Xenophon and Epictetus and Philo and Plutarch and Lucian can always count on to remain where they belong, doing what is expected of them. Had they carried out their lives in the expected anonymity of the illiterate these Christians would have gone unnoticed as well. However, these Christian semi-literates have become unsteady and therefore conspicuous. How have they done this? They have upset the accepted order by aspiring to do things that are well beyond their education and class. Their offense is of the same genus, but a different species than that of Lucian’s uneducated collector. Rather than roaming the markets to buy all the best books, they have pronounced on cosmology (Caecilius) and made truth-claims (Celsus), entered the realm of arguments (Galen), and made public speeches (Celsus, Justin). They have even claimed to live philosophically (Lucian, Galen, Celsus, Caecilius, Justin, Athenagoras). Yet most of them have not even received a grammar school diploma, much less the instruction of a rhetor or philosopher. These Christian illiterates have touched a nerve by their pretense, and they have drawn the same response as Lucian gave to the ignorant collector: “Come now, do you maintain that without instruction you know as much as we?” (2.15).

The Angle of the Apologists This social dynamic explains, not only the pagan attack, but also the Christian reply to it, and so addresses the apologists’ strange habit of going out of their way to trumpet Christian illiteracy—the substance of our third question. The Christian authors replied to the illiteracy criticism with a substitution of sorts. By way of illustration, let us look again at the uneducated book-collector. What recourse has Lucian’s prey? In order to refute his critic’s charges, our pitiable book-collector must either claim that good reading does not require a grammar school education, or claim that he has a grammar school education. The Christian rhetorical strategy reflects a similar range of options. The Christians must either deny that education is a necessary prerequisite to the virtuous things they do, or claim that they are, themselves, educated. We have seen that, without exception, the apologists discard the second option. They all admit that most Christians are uneducated. This leaves them with the burden of demonstrating that these

86

Illiterate Apostles

ignorant, uneducated Christians can indeed accomplish feats that the educated have assumed to be beyond their pay grade. “We have not studied algebra,” they confess, “but we can all solve the quadratic equation.” The particular province of the educated classes on which the Christians choose to trespass is the age-old connection between education and virtue. We have seen in this chapter that Greco-Roman teachers intended to form their students’ morality at each of education’s stages. Moral aphorisms are among the first sentences primary school children write. Despite the heavy grammatical emphasis of the secondary schools, alums understand their progress during that stage in moral terms. Both by the rigid discipline of the school experience and by the “lofty sentiments” of the poets they read, graduates of the grammar school were understood, by themselves and by others, to have entered the ranks of the moral through this gate. Philosophical schools further groomed this developing moral sense. Through metaphysical and epistemological reasoning, through the disciplined exercises of askesis, and through sustained attention to the noble deeds of revered exempla, the philosophically educated student advanced yet further on the path to virtue. The proper outcome of all this moral education was the virtues themselves. The classical list—temperance, wisdom/prudence, courage, and justice—persisted through antiquity, with different emphases in each era. During the first century of the Common Era, social and political realities naturally shaped the understanding of those virtues. One prominent force was the recent inception of empire and the perceived threat of tyranny that it ushered in. When individual philosophers are being exiled and, later, the whole lot of them forcibly expelled from Rome, courage morphs form—or at least extends its reach—from a soldier’s bravery to an antityrant’s steely resolve. Thus, in the moral context of the first two Common-Era centuries, the height of virtue became the principled and courageous opposition to a tyrant. In this moral context, the apologists who answered the illiteracy charge spotted an opportunity. Their illiterate fellow Christians were admittedly not rhetorically polished. Nor did they excel in mathematics or medicine, syllogisms or allegory. They did, however, exhibit the stubborn courage that so ruled the philosophical day. It is this strength that Justin and Athenagoras so opportunistically exploit. “We are not educated,” they confess, “but we do have courage.” In the symbolic world of the early empire, this very philosophical second statement contradicts the educational claim of the first. Yet, unlike Lucian’s collector, the apologists can offer good evidence for their claim. Some Christians have stood their ground before dangerous opposition. Athenagoras mentions ἰδιῶται who, “love, rather than hate their enemies, bless rather than curse those who reproach them, pray for those who plot against their lives.” Some have even died standing that ground. Although altogether uneducated, Justin’s Christians have “scorned glory and fear and death.” Such heroics happen to be the virtue of choice in the first- and secondcentury philosophical schools. These heroes have not matriculated the University of Epictetus or the tutelage of Seneca, but in spite of all this, the apologists have the audacity to claim it for uneducated fellow Christians. They do so with the hope of

3. The Christians and the Schools

87

substituting an end for a means. “We haven’t gone to school,” they reply, “but we are virtuous.”

Notes 1 For a fascinating explanation of this groupish instinct, see chapter 9 of Jonathan Haidt’s brilliant book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Pantheon, 2012). Our instinct to team up appears in evolutionary history when two creatures discover that when they work together they survive against one, and a group survives against two. Early humans who divided labor—one guarding the food store while the other forages—had a natural advantage over even the most heroic individual who had to carry his or her supplies everywhere or lose them. 2 The legendary philanthropy of Prometheus appears first in Prometheus Bound, where Aeschylus has the accused and imprisoned semi-god defend himself against the high gods’ charge of treason by listing his considerable benefactions to humanity. Among these gifts is education. “Aye, and numbers, too, chiefest of sciences, I invented for them, and the combining of letters (γραμμάτων τε σννθέσεις), creative mother of the Muses’ arts, wherewith to hold all things in memory” (459–61). With his mention of the story in Protagoras 322A.1, Plato’s Protagoras may refer either to Aeschylus’s play or to a similar oral tradition. 3 Protagoras 321C.8. 4 Protagoras 321D.1. 5 Protagoras 322Α.3. 6 Protagoras 324D.8 7 Protagoras 327C–E. 8 See the Conclusion to Chapter 2. 9 For a broad sweep of education in antiquity, see H. I. Marrou’s classic A History of Education in Antiquity, trans. G. Lamb (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1956); also helpful in this regard is J. Bowen, A History of Western Education, I: The Ancient World (London, 1972). For a more philosophical treatment, see W. Jaeger’s classic, Paideia: The Ιdeals of Greek Culture, trans. G. Highet, 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946). On education in classical Greece, see F. Beck, Greek Education, 450–350 B. C. (London: Methuen, 1964). A case study may be found in J. Lynch, Aristotle’s School: A Study of a Greek Educational Institution (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1972). A sturdy profile of Hellenistic education is provided by M. P. Nilsson, Die hellenistische Schule, Munich, 1955. The most thorough recent treatments of Roman education are S.F. Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1977) and R. Cribiore’s, Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); still very useful is A. Gwynn, Roman Education from Cicero to Quintilian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1926). Some studies address specific stages in Greek, Hellenistic, or Roman education. For a close look at the primary stage, see R. Cribiore, Writing, Teachers and Students in GrecoRoman Egypt (Dissertation, Columbia University, 1993). For a splendid look at the secondary school level, and particularly its teachers, see R. A. Kaster, Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity (Berkeley : University

88

10

11

12

13 14

15 16 17

18

19

Illiterate Apostles of California Press, 1988). On post-secondary education in Greece and Rome, see M. L. Clarke, Higher Education in the Ancient World (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971). This technique is not original to me. Martha Nussbaum was not the first either, but she has recently put it to artful use with her Nikidion (also female) in The Therapy of Desire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). Girls were far less likely to attend school than boys in Rome, but we do have evidence of female students. See Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL 9758, 9759). City-wide systems would have been more common among the Greeks. Upon his first exposure to Rome, Polybius was surprised to find that there was no intricate organization, no staffed gymnasium—nothing of the familiar organizational system of the Greek cities. See Cicero, De. Rep. 4.3.3. On the uniformity of practice across time and space in antiquity, see Marrou, History, “Teaching is not exactly a happy hunting-ground for innovators—things are inclined to go on long after their original purpose has disappeared into the mists of oblivion” (196). M. L. Clarke, Higher Education in the Ancient World (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971), attests the endurance of ancient educational methods when he writes, “So far as education is concerned, the ancient world might well be said to have lasted until 1453 in Byzantium, and there is at least a case for maintaining that it lasted until then, or even later, in the West. Indeed, in some respects it lasted almost to the present day. There must be men alive whose fathers had an education not very different from that of the Roman Empire, who read at school little more than Homer, Virgil and Horace, and who learned their geometry from Euclid” (vii). See Chapter 1, “Primary Education.” Hist. 12.13.1-3. Despite his use of γραμματική, Diodorus seems, as the Loeb translator suggests, to have in mind basic literacy and not a literary education. This is indicated by two clues in the text. First, not one in the list of affairs that lie open to those who possess γραμματική requires knowledge of Homer or any other poet (see below). Second, the separation of γραμματική from παιδεία is clear when Diodorus writes that “the cause of the good life is the education which is based on reading and writing (ἐκ τῶν γραμμάτων συγκειμένην παιδεία—12.13.3).” The learning of letters is here an originating point, prior to παιδεία, from which παιδεία springs. Hist. 12.13.3. On the specific titles used for teachers in Greco-Roman Egypt, see Cribiore, Writing, 1.129–43. Inst. Or. 1.2.1-31. Kaster, Guardians of Language, maintains that this custom was pervasive enough that the primary schools would have been reserved for members of οἱ πολλοί. On his reading, commoners would have entered their children in elementary schools, while the educated sent their children straight to grammar school after teaching them elementary subjects in the home. While instructive for its challenge to the commonly held view, Kaster’s position probably overstates the case. While seven was the usual age at which a boy or girl began school, question of readiness was widely debated. The proper year ranged from the 7th in Aristotle (Pol. 7.1336A.23-24; B.35-37) to the third in Chrysippus (so Quintilian, Inst. Or. 1.1.16) with various worthies placing it between the two. See Marrou, History, 142–143. The question whether oral or written alphabets, syllables, etc. would have been first has recently been asked in a fresh way by Cribiore, Writing. It has generally been assumed that oral learning would have driven written learning in primary schools. Cribiore has examined the exercise books, papyri, and ostraca of Greco-Roman Egypt

3. The Christians and the Schools

20

21 22

23

24

25

26 27 28

29 30

31

32 33 34 35

89

and concludes that students often learned to write letters before they knew how to speak them. Against historians’ assumptions, which she attributes to their acceptance of ancient testimonia about education, she concludes, “Often students were exposed to writing, at least in the form of copying from a model, before acquiring a proper reading ability” (280). The list of single-syllable words is from the school papyri in PGuir. Joug., 27–30 and PBouriant, 1.1–12; the multisyllabic words are from Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 5.8.357; and the strange sentence is found in Wessely, Studien 2.45.2. See Marrou, History, 152–153. Inst. Or. 1.1.37. καὶ γὰρ oἱ διδάσκαλοι τοῖς παιςὶ τὰ yράμματα μετὰ πολλο τοῦ κάλλους γράφουσι, ἵνα κἂν πρὸς τὸ καταδεέστερον ἔλθωσι τῆς μιμήσεως. MPG 59.385.56. Cited by Cribiore, Writing, 1.129. For earlier literary references to this practice, see Quintilian, Inst. Or. 1.1.27; Seneca, Ep. 94.51. Cribiore, Writing, lists thirty such exercise sheets that involve the repetition of letters (11.292–99); twenty-six alphabets (11.299–306); thirteen syllabaries (11.306–11); twenty-six words or lists of words (11.311–19); thirty-eight writing and copying exercises (II.319–30); and forty-six maxims, sayings, or other short quotations (II.331–44). Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome, writes, “There was a strong inclination among teachers at all times in antiquity to ensure that the earliest lessons in both reading and writing should have not only a practical but also a moral value” (172). S. Jaekel, Menandri Sententiae (Leipzig: Teubner, 1964), pp. 33ff. Cribiore, Writing, lists maxims on pages 11.331–44. Of them, not even the majority have a moral purpose. For example, several praise luck over wisdom. Her #136 has a young handwriting Iliad 6.147,148: #144 is a maxim from Antiphanes. The Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 2.4. See Cribiore, Writing, 1.100. For a bibliography on silent versus oral reading in antiquity, see Saint Augustin et la Fin de la Culture antique (Paris, 1949), 89, n. 3. For a more recent discussion, see B. Knox, “Silent Reading in Antiquity,” GRBS 9 (1968): 421–435. Ep. 12.57. It is difficult, in some cases, to group the writing tablets according to level. For example, a Hellenistic school papyrus that dates from the third century BCE, includes both elementary procedures and more advanced calculations (P.S.1. 763). It is, therefore, likely not an elementary school artifact. A slate in Coptic from late antiquity, that almost certainly is elementary, includes only simple addition problems (Preisigke, S.B. 6215). However, the notion that some schools would have stressed arithmetic more than others is hardly implausible. In the Vita Persi, Persius is said to have begun secondary school at age twelve, and this corresponds to the accounts of Oribasius, Synopsis ad Eustathium 5.14 (Corpus Medicorum Grecorum 6.3, p. 158) and Ovid, Met., whose Perdix begins his lessons with Daedalus at age twelve (8.241–3). However, the age of twelve was not canonically defined. One exception is Sparta, where grade levels seem to have been observed. See A. Bilheimer, “Age-classes in Spartan Education,” ΤΑΡΑ 78 (1947): 99–104. Q.F. 2.4.2. 1 Apol. 60. “The Ignorant Book Collector,” 2.3-7.

90

Illiterate Apostles

36 Inst. Or 1.4.1. In antiquity, “The best source of information about the ancient grammar school is Quintilian’s Institutio.” So writes Clarke, Higher Education in the Ancient World. There are many good and thorough scholarly discussions of secondary education. The general works of Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, and Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome, treat this stage in detail. For studies devoted entirely to matters concerning the secondary school, see H. Julien, Les Professeurs de litterature dans I’ancienne Rome (Paris, 1885); Kaster, Guardians of Language. 37 Quintilian, Inst. Or. 1.10.1. 38 The expanse of Quintilian’s syllabus could hardly have been typical. His insistence on a comprehensive, classical curriculum—including music, geometry, acting, gymnastics, astronomy, and philosophy in secondary school (Inst. Or. 1.4.4; 1.10.2– 12.il)—does not faithfully reflect the realities of Greco-Roman education. Nor could most grammatici have obeyed Quintilian’s injunction that careful study ought to extend beyond the canon to other poets and to “every kind of writer (omne scriptorum genus—Inst. Or. 1.4.4).” 39 “. . . recte loquendi scientiam et poetarum enarrationem.” (Inst. Or. 1.4.2-3) 40 Quintilian, Inst. Or. 1.8.5. For the primacy of Homer and Vergil in the schools, see also Horace, Epp. 2.2.41-44; Petronius, Sat. 5; Pliny, Epp. 2.14.2. Discussion of these texts may be found in Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome, 212–214. 41 See W. J. Verdenius, Homer, the Educator of the Greeks (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1970). 42 Suetonius, Gr. 16. 43 Inst. Or. 1.8.5. 44 Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math. 1.250. 45 Dionysius Thrax 79 = Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math. 1.248. 46 Gr. Lat. 3.459–515 (Keil). 47 The literary commentaries of grammarians further attest to this interest, with their close attention to rare place names and extensive explanatory notes on grammatical constructions. 48 Kaster, Guardians of Language, 12. Kaster’s fascinating book refutes a condemning mass of scholarship that has stressed the pedantic and world-ignoring nature of grammatical study in antiquity. Far from being isolated from society, grammatical instruction was “shaped as much by social as by intellectual considerations, and the grammarian himself was embedded in a social system where what mattered were wealth, distinction, and eloquence amid a population vastly poor, anonymous, and illiterate . . .” (13–14). 49 18.22.47-50. 50 Math. 233–235. 51 Inst Or 1.6.45. 52 Callim., Epigr. 48. 53 This common practice is documented in a number of tablets from Egypt. See Cribiore, Writing, 1.81–99. 54 It is unclear whether and when memorization was required, although it is likely that the Greek and early Hellenistic practice of rote learning for recitations continued in the schools through our period. Three authors who span eight hundred years can only be illustrative. Plato, Leg., maintains that “any properly educated young person should be brought up on [the poets] and saturated with them . . . being required to learn whole poets by heart” (7.811 A). Cicero attributes to the Greek legacy the Roman practice of his day, “We, taught of course by Greece, read and learn [the poets] by

3. The Christians and the Schools

55

56 57 58 59 60

61

62 63 64 65 66 67

68

69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76

91

heart from boyhood and think this a liberal education” (Tusc. 5.27). Augustine, De Anima et eius Origine, mentions a friend who could reportedly recite Vergil from back to front (4.7.9). The upper dividing line is difficult to draw here. Marrou, History, identifies the tendency for tasks and curricula gradually to move down the chain of schools from the more advanced to the elementary stages (172), and indeed it appears that more and more of the orator’s exercises become the grammarian’s over the course of antiquity. Ep. 2.2.41-42 Romae nutriri mihi contigit atque doceri/iratus Graiis quantum nocuisset Achilles. For other recollections of boyhood learning, see Cicero Q.F. 3.5–6.4. Inst. Or. 14F.3 History, 169. Education, 213. This disjunction between devoted attention to grammatical detail, on the one hand, and moral formation, on the other, brings to mind Simone Weil. The great twentiethcentury philosopher and spiritual writer wrote a lovely reflection, “Reflections On the Right Use of School Studies with View to the Love of God” (at www. hagiasophiaclassical.com) in which she claims that schoolboy Latin bodes well, both for the student’s ability to concentrate in prayer, and for the sort of decentering that builds a moral sense. Perhaps the ancient moralists saw a measure of this benefit, as well. Kaster, Guardians of Language, 14. The quotation continues in terms reminiscent of my language in the beginning of this chapter: “Offering those [governing] classes the one thing that approached a common experience, it only increased in importance as other, competing institutions . . . withered away, while its position was not seriously challenged by the rise of Christianity” (14). Inst. Or. 1.12.19. Inst. Or. 1.4.5. Origen, C.C. 1.27. Marrou, History, 194 (exclusive language altered). Russell, Greek Declamation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1. On the difficulty of defining the division of labor between the grammar school teacher and the rhetor, see Marrou, History, 172–173. In Marrou’s judgment, “only the first five stages . . . seem to have formed a normal part of secondary-school education” (173). See, for example, Theon’s form of the eulogy in Rhet. Gr. 2.109. Three different headings treat exterior, bodily, and spiritual virtues. Under each is listed possible claims, which are to be employed if they are appropriate to the deceased. The form reads like a check list. Cicero’s list in de Oratore 2.342 is slightly more subtle. Philostratus, V.S. 1.25. Leg. 643.E.l. Or. 13.27. Mor. 88.D.7. Mor. 31.C.7. Diogenes Laertius, Vit. 1.69.4. See the discussion of this issue in H. Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), xxiv–xxvi. B. L. Hijmans, Jr., “ΑΣΚΗΣΙΣ: Notes on Epictetus’ Educational System” (Te Assen Bij: VanGorcum, 1959), 16–17. For a similar question about the Cynics in general,

92

77 78 79

80 81

82 83

84 85 86

87 88 89 90 91

92

Illiterate Apostles see Diogenes Laertius, Vit.: “We will go on to append the doctrines which they held in common—if, that is, we decide that Cynicism is really a philosophy (ἡ φιλοσοφία), and not, as some maintain, just a way of life (ἔνστασις βίου—6. 103).” In these ancient voices, we hear the echo of Galen’s differentiation between schools who train their students to follow arguments and make judgments, and those that don’t. Hijmans, Jr., “ΑΣΚΗΣΙΣ,” 17. Arrian ranks Epictetus among the philosophers in his “Letter to Lucius Gellius,” 6. See the discussions earlier in the present chapter. For the similarities between Cynicism and Stoicism, note that Epictetus the Stoic writes a treatise on the ideal Cynic (3.22). See also Diogenes Laertius, Vit.: “For indeed there is a certain close relationship (κοινωνία) between the two schools (αἵρέσεις—6.104).” Cynics had the reputation of being less studious than Stoics, and hence Cynicism is called a “short cut to virtue” (σύντομον έττ’ άρετην οδόν—6.104). If the Cynics held this view from early on, some Stoics joined them later. Hijmans, Jr., “ΑΣΚΗΣΙΣ,” has written of Epictetus, “On the face of it, there is no difference at all between this late Stoic and the early Cynics” (34). Diogenes Laertius, Vit. 6.103. Musonius Rufus was widely revered, even among the Christians, and must have been quite influential. Justin lists him as the only pagan figure after Christ who partakes in the λόγος. The influence of his pupil, Epictetus, is more difficult to trace. The non-Stoic Herodes Atticus cites Epictetus as his authority in punishing a student, according to the report of Aulus Gellius (N.A. 1.2). As for his influence within Stoicism, Gellius elsewhere tells the story of a scared young Stoic who finds consolation in a quotation from Epictetus during a storm at sea (N.A. 19.1). In his Heracles, Antisthenes names “Life according to Virtue” (τὸ κατ’ ἀρετὴν ζῆν) as the chief end to be sought (τέλος). See Diogenes Laertius 6.104. Three books have been most helpful to me in reconstructing the practices of Epictetus: P. Rabbow, Seelenfuhrung, Methodik der Exercitien in derAntike (Munich: Kosel, 1954); Hijmans, Jr., ΑΣΚΗΣΙΣ; and Nussbaum, Therapy of Desire. Also helpful is Th. Colardeau, Etude sur Epictete (Paris: Libraire Thorin & Fils, 1903), 115–148. See Diss. 3.2.1, 11; 3.3. See Musonius Rufus’s lecture (Luz 2). In one fragment, Democritus refers to ἄσκησις as “the learning of things which are necessary” (μάθησις ὧν χρή —B 85). For the history of the term, see H. Dressier, The Usage Άσκέω and its Cognates in Greek Documents to 100 A.D. (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1947). Cicero, Tusc. 3.33. This method was used by both Democritus and Epicurus, though in slightly different forms. Cf. Hijmans, Jr., ΑΣΚΗΣΙΣ, 57. Diss. 3.2-3. Diss. 3.2.6. On this aspect of instruction in the school of Epictetus, see Th. Colardeau, Etude sur Epictete, 149–70. Diss. 3.3.14-19. The Greek is inclusive here (τις.,.μαθέτω), aside from the masculine αὐτόν. I have used plural English pronouns to help us imagine Epictetus teaching Sophia. On women in philosophy, see the discussion of Musonius Rufus in Chapter 5. For the role of example in rhetorical education, see B. J. Price, “Paradeigma and Exemplum in Ancient Rhetorical Theory,” Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1975. H. Kornhardt, Exemplum: Eine bedeutungsgeschichtliche Studie

3. The Christians and the Schools

93

94 95

96

97

98

99 100 101 102

103

93

(Gottingen: Robert Noske, 1936) traces both the widespread usage of example and the theory by which the practice was upheld. B. Fiore, The Function of Example in the Socratic and Pastoral Epistles (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1986) illustrates the use of this method in rhetorical education (26–44), kingship literature (45–77), official correspondence (79–84), and philosophical education (84–163) in order to establish a context for the use of example in the letters of Paul (164–190) and the Pastoral Epistles (191–232). The issue lies within the larger debate regarding effective philosophical teaching. Aristo the Stoic, for example, valued the larger dogma over the specific precept, because the latter “does not sink into the mind” (non descendat in pectus). The statement is from Seneca’s allusion to Aristo in Ep. 94.2.1 (= SVF 358). In Ep. 94, Seneca argues, against Aristo, that precepts used correctly are an effective aid to the moral life. Seneca, Ep. 94.42; 95.65. Ep. 6.5–6. Fiore, Personal Example, refers to Seneca’s preference of exempla over praecepta as “a common view,” (93–94) citing Livy 7.32.12; Velleius Paterculus 2.126.4; and Pliny, Pan. 65.6. Each of these authors, while preferring example, nonetheless maintains the supportive role of precepts. Epictetus, Diss. For the Spartan youth, 2; for Florus before Nero 12–18; for Helvidius Priscus before Caesar, 19–24; for the anonymous athlete, 25–29; and for Socrates’s self-control, 33, 36. Diss. 1.24.6.1, 9.2; 2.3.1.1; 2.13.24.3; 2.16.35.3; 2.19.14.2; 3.2.11.2; 3.22.24.1, 57.5, 63.5, 64.1, 80.3, 88.2, 91.1,2; 3.24.40.3, 64.1; 3.26.23.6; 4.1.30.1; 4.1.114.2, 152.3, 156.3; 4.7.28.2; 4.9.6.4; 4.11.22.1. See also Ench. 15.1.9. Diss. 1.2.33.3, 36.1; 1.9.1.3, 22.1; 1.12.3.1, 24.1; 1.17.12.3; 1.19.6.2; 1.25.31.2; 1.26.18.1; 1.29.16.1, 16.2, 16.3; 1.29.17.1, 17.3, 17.5; 1.29.65.1; 2.1.15.1, 32.1; 2.2.8.1, 15.1, 19.1; 2.4.9.1; 2.5.18.1; 2.6.26.2; 2.12.5.1, 14.1; 2.13.24.1; 2.16.35.2; 2.18.22.1; 2.26.6.1; 3.1.19.1, 21.2, 42.1; 3.5.14.1, 17.1; 3.7.34.2; 3.12.15.2; 3.14.9.2; 3.16.5.4; 3.18.4.2; 3.21.19.1; 3.22.26.3; 3.23.22.1, 25.4, 32.4; 3.24.38.4, 40.2, 60.2, 99.5; 3.26.23.4; 4.1.123.1, 159.4, 164.1, 169.2; 4.4.21.2, 21.3, 22.3; 4.5.2.2, 33.1; 4.7.29.1; 4.8.22.1; 4.9.6.4; 4.11.19.1, 21.2. See also Ench. 5.1.3; 32.3.2; 33.12.3; 46.1.5; 51.3.1, 3.4. Diss. 3.22.57.5. See also 3.22.63.5, 80.3. Diss. 3.22.88.2. Diss. 3.22.91.1–2. See Diogenes Laertius, Vit. 6.42. For a full discussion of the prominence Socrates enjoyed in the schools, see A. A. Long, “Socrates in Hellenistic Philosophy,” Classical Quarterly NS 38 (1988): 150– 171. Long notes that the Peripatetics and Epicureans did not participate in this admiration, but the evidence of their dissent is earlier than our period. For the centrality of Socrates to Cynic and Stoic philosophy, see K. Doring, Exemplum Socratis: Studien zur Sokratenachwirkung in der kynischstoischen Popularphilosophie der frühen Kaiserzeit und im friihen Christentum (Hermes Einzelschriften 42, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1979), especially ch. 1. Döring examines Epictetus’s use of Socrates (ch. 3) and concludes that for Epictetus, “The life of Socrates was . . . the utterly exemplary life (“Das Leben des Sokrates war fur ihn das schlechthin exemplarische Leben . . .” – 45).” Diss. 3.23.21.1—22.1, 25.3-5. The first quotation is a condensed version of Plato’s Apol. 30.C, which has been identified as a defiant slogan of early imperial philosophy by T. Bauermeister, “ ‘Anytos und Meletos konnen mich zwar toten,

94

104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112

Illiterate Apostles schaden jedoch konnen sie mer nicht’: Platon, Apologie des Sokrates 30c/d bei Plutarch, Epiktet, Justin Martyr und Clemens Alexandrinus,” in Platonismus und Christentum: Festschrift fiir Heinrich Dorrie, ed. H. D. Blume and F. Mann (Jahrbuch fur Antike und Christentum, Munster Westfalen: Aschendorfsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1983), 192–207. The second quotation is a slightly modified form of Plato, Crito 46B. The last quotation is from Plato, Apol. 17C. 4.4.19.1-22.3 T.G.F. 477 = Athenaeus, Deipn. 10.454B. The circle with a navel is from a variation of the scene, attributed to Agathon’s Telephus (T.G.F. 764 = Deipn. 10.454C). Diss. 2.2.21-24. Xenophon, Mem. 20.2–4; Philo, Prob. 51.1–2; Plutarch, Delph. Or. 405A.1–2; On Chance 100A.I- 2. Juvenal, Satires 4.15. Lucian, “The Ignorant Book Collector,” 1.2. Homer, Iliad 2. Lucian, “The Ignorant Book Collector,” 7.6-9. Lucian, “The Ignorant Book Collector,” 7.16-20.

Part 2 A F IRST- C ENTURY C HRISTIAN  R EPLY

Introduction to Part 2 Simon, the son of John, and John, the son of Zebedee, were probably illiterate and undoubtedly uneducated—at least by the standards of educated Greeks and Romans. Indeed, the search for two Homer-toting fishermen from first-century Galilee would have been a long and frustrating one. We can therefore almost surely trust the historical veracity of Luke’s characterization of them as “ἀγράμματοι καί ἰδιῶται.” On the other hand, Pilate probably had dark hair, Paul apparently had physical deformities, and Lydia’s nose was likely aquiline, yet Luke supplies none of these details. These omissions clarify the nature of selective narrative and begin to define Luke as an author: for his story, he has strategically chosen elements from a relatively full storehouse of options. He had a range of literary sources, particularly for the life of Jesus (Lk. 1:1), including our Gospel of Mark; but presumably also for the earliest history of the church, as well. Oral tradition would have yielded another cache of stories and information. Luke selected from this broad range of material and, with the poetic license of an ancient author, constructed a narrative with a purpose. For this reason, the good reader must assume that a detail like the illiteracy of the apostles has not landed in Acts 4:13 haphazardly, but rather serves a distinct function within that purposeful narrative.1 For Luke’s social circles, illiteracy must have been a negative detail. With the possible exception of the Epistle to the Hebrews, Luke-Acts features the most refined Greek style of the New Testament. He also knows literate traditions, as evidenced by his quotations of and allusions to classical pagan authors in Acts.2 All of this helps us to place him among the privileged on the educational hierarchy of antiquity. In fact, Luke may have run in precisely the rarefied social circles that would have produced the criticisms we treated in Part 1. This is a disputed question. If he did not, however, as an educated Greek, he would at least have been familiar with the attitudes common to those circles. Thus, when Luke characterizes Peter and John as illiterate and uneducated, he is not merely identifying hair color or nose shape. Unlike these rather trivial attributes, the lack of education has moral implications. By summoning, in the terms ἀγράμματοι καί ἰδιῶται, all the negative expectations associated with the uneducated, he effectively risks denigrating

96

Illiterate Apostles

these characters in the eyes of his peers. To understate, this runs counter to Luke’s custom as an author. Negative details about the Christians are rare in Luke-Acts. The so-called Lukan Tendenz includes a propensity to airbrush the photograph, covering blemishes and adding a flattering frame. This editorial pattern is most available to us in the Gospel, since in it we can observe Luke’s systematic revision of Mark. Not only awkward Greek prose,3 but narrative doublets and the embarrassing shortcomings of main characters4 all disappear in Luke’s telling. In dealing with Acts, we rarely have a parallel text by which to form a profile of Luke as editor or narrator. In one of the few cases where we can actually compare Acts with another early Christian account of the same event—namely, with reference to the Jerusalem Council reported in Acts 15 and Galatians 2—Luke’s story differs considerably from Paul’s. What is more, Luke’s spin on the event fits well the revision pattern that is seen in his use of Mark. In Acts 15, a major controversy between the Jerusalem church and the Pauline missionary group ends in a consensus and peaceable resolution, contrary to Paul’s own continuing concern in Gal. 1:2 about an abiding rift. As we shall notice in much greater detail below, this tendency to ameliorate is one of Luke’s most distinctive traits as an author. Once all of Luke’s improvements on text and subject are placed in line and reveal an editorial tendency, the next step is to identify a purpose within his narrative strategy. It has long been recognized that Luke’s particular omissions and additions, and even some of his major themes, suggest an apologetic strategy.5 Scholars disagree as to the specific source of the attacks against which he defends. Some have suggested that Luke is lobbying Roman authorities to accept Christianity as a legal religion, as it has Judaism.6 This reading would, as an example, explain Luke’s portrayal of Christianity as a continuation of Judaism in these terms: If the Christians are the rightful heirs of Jewish tradition, why are they not at least granted the same legal status as the Jews? While some elements of the text do lend themselves to this interpretation, C. K. Barrett is no doubt correct in his common-sense skepticism: “No Roman official would ever have filtered out so much of what to him would be theological and ecclesiastical rubbish in order to reach so tiny a train of relevant apology.”7 Others have isolated elements in the text that seem to answer the social criticisms that appear in the second- and thirdcentury apologies.8 As an example, Abraham Malherbe noted that this sort of issue may be in view in Acts 26. Pagan neighbors commonly criticized the Christians for doing their business secretly, behind closed doors. Luke is probably addressing this sort of critique, when he has Paul claim in Acts 26 that the Christians have done their business, “not in a corner,” but openly before the world.9 Such texts, it is thought, answer not official but private contentions. More importantly for our purposes, whatever scope or specific audience the various interpreters might name, a strong majority recognize an apologetic theme within Luke’s two-volume work. Within an apologetic text, negative details would tend to undermine that purpose and so are rare enough to gain a new level and kind of significance. Amid the steady and intentional flow of positive details, these exceptions stand out and require explanation.

A First-Century Christian Reply

97

Why does this author, with his educational level, his tendency to flatter his subject, and his apologetic purpose, characterize two of his marquee players as illiterate and uneducated? This puzzle is similar to the question why two secondcentury Christian apologists, Athenagoras and Justin, so readily volunteer the low education level of their Christian brothers and sisters in their own apologies for Christianity. Clearly the investigations in Part 1 of this study recommend the hypothesis that a criticism lies in the background. Additionally, the patterns that have emerged in the exchange between the critics and defenders of early Christian illiteracy prompt an expectation that the apologist would not mention what is ostensibly a defect, without offering some kind of compensation.10 Significantly, we have observed that none of the several authors who address this criticism attempt to refute its accuracy.11 Origen and Minucius Felix explicitly record the criticism. Justin and Athenagoras defend against it without stating it. One by one, they either confess to or sidestep the claim that most Christians were uneducated, because it was patently true. Additionally, we have noticed a common strategy emerge among these apologists. Unable to refute the fact of low education levels for most Christians, they attack its perceived implication. For Origen, this means challenging the assumption that the fact that Christianity has low-brow adherents implies that the Christian gospel is faulty or inferior. Minucius Felix denies the notion that only the well-born and educated can discern and proclaim truth. Athenagoras defies his critics to show a necessary correlation between education and moral virtue, by juxtaposing his courageous ἰδιῶται to very educated people who are self-serving. Justin similarly compares his brave and martyred ἰδιῶται favorably to the followers of Socrates. In exchange for their admission of general Christian illiteracy, these two earliest apologists offer Christian virtue of a sort that would be entirely unexpected from the uneducated. The common threads in the apologists’ rhetoric suggest an intriguing hypothesis:  Luke characterizes Peter and John as illiterate and uneducated, not only because they were, but in order to answer critics of early Christian illiteracy. He represents the unwashed Christian masses in these two characters, but he compensates their lack of education by having them achieve a level of philosophical virtue that would be both admired by and surprising to the educated people of his time. This broad outline gathers the shared elements from the strategies and patterns that have become evident, but its success is by no means secure on this basis. One might contend that Luke, like Justin and Athenagoras, never explicitly states the illiteracy criticism. A second dissenter might urge caution because of the fact that, formally, Luke-Acts is not even an apology. Finally, by most accounts Luke wrote near the end of the first century of the Common Era, over fifty years before the earliest of these other authors, so he clearly could not have used them as models or even been influenced by them. With these caveats, however, I  will offer the hypothesis, with the expectation that it will be judged by the standard criterion of good exegesis: Does the reading successfully explain the constituent elements and specific placement of the passage it claims to interpret? While historical

98

Illiterate Apostles

implications about the commencement of the illiteracy criticism or Luke’s relationship to the apologists may be interesting, my onus is to add value to the history of exegesis on this passage. Two kinds of exegetical benefits should result from this treatment of the texts. First, by supplying the linguistic and social context for the language of Acts 4, I hope to elucidate the narrative connection between several elements in Luke’s story. To be specific, I will demonstrate the close thematic relationship between several isolated phenomena that previous readers have identified separately in chapters 2–5 of Acts. These include the very philosophical community of goods in the Jerusalem church (2:44-47; 4:32-36), the popularity of the apostles and their consequent exemption from punishment by the Sanhedrin (4:13-22), two clear allusions to Socrates (4:19-22; 5:29), and the rarely noted parallel between the portrayal of the apostles in Acts 4:1-12 and the depiction of Jesus in Luke 20. These various observations have been made separately, but, to my knowledge, no one has satisfactorily connected all the dots; yet the rich texture of the narrative will be far better appreciated if we grasp their interrelationship. A  second benefit for exegesis will be the clarification of Luke’s apologetic habit. Exegesis asks not only “What?” but also “Why?” As I  have suggested, it is not sufficient simply to explain the characterization of Peter and John as uneducated folk by recourse to its probable historical accuracy. This demonstration of how Luke has inserted Christian illiteracy within a coherent literary narrative for the purpose of answering a social criticism should deepen our sense of the formidable task this author undertook by mentioning this specific detail. Acts 4 describes the initial confrontation between the Jerusalem Christians and the Jewish authorities. While Peter and John have observed many such encounters between Jesus and his detractors in Galilee and Jerusalem, here, for the first time, they face opposition to their own work. After gathering in the upper room and organizing their number (Acts 1), they have taken the message of Jesus to the streets, both in Peter’s extended Pentecost sermon (Acts 2) and in the miraculous healing of a paralytic man in the temple court (Acts 3). Now the members of the Sanhedrin call them in to answer the charge that they have been preaching the resurrection. Peter’s aggressive response could scarcely be called a defense: he redefines the charge, claiming that he and John are on trial for the healing; then he attributes that miracle to Jesus, accuses his accusers by assigning them guilt for the crucifixion, and shows himself guilty of the first charge by reiterating the resurrection; finally, he produces Psalm 118 from the Septuagint to establish Jesus’s primacy. The confrontational tone of Peter’s speech leaves the reader expecting some form of retaliation from the powerful Sanhedrin. No retaliation appears immediately, however. Instead, Luke describes the Sanhedrin’s thoughts in a moment’s pause during the brief calm after Peter’s storm: Then, as they observed the audacity (παρρησία) of Peter and John and yet realized (καταλαβόμενοι) that they were illiterate men (ἀγράμματοι) and not appropriately educated for this behavior (καί ἰδιῶται), they began to marvel (ἐθαύμαζον) and to recognize that the two had been with Jesus; and seeing the

A First-Century Christian Reply

99

man who had been healed standing with them, the Sanhedrin could offer no refutation. (4:13-14)

The Sanhedrin is surprised to see illiterate audacity. I have translated the Greek participle, καταλαβόμενοι by adding the English word “yet” because it is concessive: in the Sanhedrin’s estimation, it is in spite of Peter’s illiteracy and lack of education that he speaks with audacity. Thus, the item Luke hopes to offer in exchange for the apostles’ and the Christians’ illiteracy is apparently this Greek term παρρησία. Within the project dictated by my hypothesis, this is good news and bad news. On the one hand, the structure of the sentence and the surprise of the Sanhedrin fit the “yes, but  . . .” rhetorical pattern that we have observed in the apologists. The author has supplied the Sanhedrin with two observations. First, they observe (θεωρέω) that Peter and John speak with audacity—that they possess παρρησία. Second, they realize (καταλαμβάνω) that Peter and John are illiterate and uneducated fellows—that they should not be able to possess παρρησία. When the Sanhedrin members see illiterate παρρησία, therefore, it shocks them (θαυμάζω). On a strictly formal reading, the hypothesis seems to be faring quite well. On the level of common sense, however, the hypothesis enjoys no such success, as audacity seems neither to require education nor to be particularly virtuous. In fact, ignorance and audacity often seem to be a ready tandem; and, in the context laid by Justin and Athenagoras—a context of Sermon-on-the-Mount ethics and martyrdoms—audacity seems a rather poor excuse for a virtue. Common sense requires some new data before it will accept the hypothesis. The crux of the rhetorical trade is clearly this term παρρησία. In order to confirm our hypothesis, it must meet at least three criteria:  first, as an element within a complex story, it must adequately serve the narrative in which it lies; second, it must be a virtue in the broad sense that it represents a quality that would have been admired or valued by educated persons; and third, it must normally lie outside the capabilities of the uneducated in the estimation of that same educated crowd. First, then, before its function within the author’s larger project is ascertained, the proper definition of παρρησία must make good sense within its socially defined narrative world. In the present literary context, this requirement has several aspects. First, παρρησία must be defined so that it actually describes the speech that it characterizes, Peter’s aggressive defense before the Sanhedrin. So we must describe the expectations of Luke’s audience about the kind of speech that παρρησία describes. Second, a proper understanding of παρρησία must account for the Sanhedrin’s surprise at the uneducated apostles’ speech. Peter’s speech violates the Sanhedrin’s normal expectations. The general usage of the term must be consulted in order to help us understand the unexpected nature of the speech παρρησία describes within the symbolic world in which those expectations exist. Finally, a full understanding of the term παρρησία should help to explain the events that occur in the aftermath of Peter’s speech. Despite their unmistakable political power within the city of Jerusalem—after all, in Luke’s narrative world, this is the lot that

100

Illiterate Apostles

had the clout to put Jesus on trial before Pilate—the members of the Sanhedrin are ultimately frustrated in their desire to refute (ἀντειπεῖν—4:14) and to punish the rather lowly apostles (τί ποιήσωμεν τοῖς ἀνρώποις τούτοις—4:16). What is it about the social dynamic described by παρρησία that explains this inability? I shall reconstruct the social and political associations surrounding the term παρρησία in Chapter 4. In order to meet the second criterion, παρρησία must be a momentous moral achievement. There are plenty of feats that would be beyond the uneducated that are not necessarily noble. To fit the hypothesis, Peter’s παρρησία must please the educated. The trade would be fair had Luke substituted for παρρησία any of the classic virtues—σωφρωσύνη (temperance), δικαιοσύνη (justice), or ἀνδρεία (courage). We therefore must ask whether παρρησία can shoulder this burden. Why might this author expect his audience to credit Peter and John with a noble excellence on the basis of their audacity? Finally, according to the hypothetical formula, παρρησία must be normally unattainable by the uneducated. Luke might have met this requirement in one of two ways. He could have prompted the Sanhedrin’s surprise by attributing eloquence, since Peter has just performed a speech. Polished rhetoric would require a specific sort of higher education, as we have seen,12 and so would be very surprising from the tongue of an untrained fisherman. Luke could have had the Sanhedrin observe the eloquence of Peter and John. He has not. Alternatively, Peter and John might have surprised the Jewish leaders by being erudite, since Peter has just produced a scriptural quotation. Ready allusions to Homer and Vergil are the earmark of the educated, so a subtle and apt quotation from a biblical poet would seem to fit the same bill. In fact, another early Christian author chose this strategy. Jesus is described as untrained but erudite in the Fourth Gospel, when the Jewish leaders marvel (θαυμάζω) that Jesus “knows letters (γράμματα οἶδεν), though he has never studied (μή μεμαθηκώς in John 7.15).”13 Luke does not choose this reason for surprise, either. These options were open to Luke. In fact, elsewhere in Acts, he attributes eloquence to Apollos, whose speech is elegant (ἀνὴρ λόγιος—18:24) and erudition to Paul, whose vast reading (πολλὰ γράμματα) threatens, in the opinion of the governor Festus, to drive him mad (26:24). However, Luke chooses neither tactic. In over two thousand occurrences in the Greek literature of antiquity, the term παρρησία never denotes either eloquence or erudition. Nonetheless, we would expect this special brand of audacity to be normally beyond the abilities of the unschooled. I shall treat the philosophical excellence of παρρησία and the expectation that it should describe an endowment of the educated in Chapter 5. With our three criteria in view, we turn our attention to the Greek word παρρησία.

Notes 1 I do not mean here to summon the ghosts of Cleanth Brooks and Roland Barthes and open authorial intent debate. Whether the meaning of our sentence lies in

A First-Century Christian Reply

2

3

4

5

6

7

8 9 10 11 12 13

101

the unreachable mind of the author, the text as a liberated entity, the subjectivity of the reader, or some mysterious interplay between the three, the same question holds: where is this sentence going. All three of the pagan allusions and quotations, in Acts 26.13, when he refers to “kicking against the goads,” Luke’s Paul quotes Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1624; in Acts 17.28, Paul’s “In whom we live and move and have our being” comes from the sixthcentury BCE poet Epimenedes’ Cretica; and in Paul’s quotation, “we are his offspring” (also Acts 17.28), he quotes the Stoic Aratus, Phainomena 5. J. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke (New York: Doubleday, 1981), writes, “One need only consider Luke’s wording and reformulation of the Marcan material to become aware of his concern to improve its Greek style. Luke’s reformulation is usually the improvement of as much of the Marcan wording as his sense of good Greek demanded” (107). On pages 106–107, Fitzmyer lists nine categories of grammatical changes to categorize this systematic alteration. E.g. Luke includes the confession of Peter from Mk 8:27-30 and Jesus’s stipulation that the Messiah must suffer from Mk 8:31-33, but excises Peter’s opposition to the passion prediction and Jesus’s subsequent rebuke of Peter. For references to the history of apologetic readings of Acts, see A. J. Malherbe, “ ‘Not in a Corner’: Early Christian Apologetic in Acts 26.26,” in Paul and the Popular Philosophers (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 147–150. E.g. J. Weiss, Über die Absicht und den literarischen Character der Apostelgeschichte (Marburg: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1897); H. J. Cadbury, The Making of Luke-Acts (London: SPCK, 1927), 299ff; and H. J. Cadbury, The Purpose of Acts (London: SPCK, 1936). Luke the Historian in Recent Study (London: Epworth Press, 1961), 63. Barrett concludes that, “So far as Acts was an apology, it was an apology addressed to the church.” For a discussion of internal versus external apologetic, along with other issues of definition surrounding apologetics, see K. Cukrowski, Pagan Polemic and Lucan Apologetic, Dissertation (Yale University, 1994), 31–34. For a list of such charges, see the introduction to Part 1 of the present work. Malherbe, “Not in a Corner”, 147–164. For a complete discussion of the critics and apologists who address the issue of low Christian education levels, see Chapter 2 of the present work. The relevant texts are discussed extensively in Chapter 2 of the present work. See Chapter 3 of the present work. I am not by any means suggesting that Luke knew the Fourth Gospel; rather that he might have chosen the same line of argument as its author did. For an in-depth interpretation of John 7.15 and a discussion of how it relates to Acts 4.13 and the issue of Jesus’ literacy, see the excellent work of C. Keith in his books, Jesus’ Literacy: Scribal Culture and the Teacher from Galilee (London: T&T Clark, 2011) and Jesus against the Scribal Elite: The Origins of the Conflict (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014).

Chapter 4 T H E S O C IA L D Y NA M IC S O F Π Α ΡΡΗ Σ ΙΑ

Introduction During the early years of the Roman Empire, the classical virtue of courage was transmuted by the joint force of several social and political contingencies into a defiant anti-tyrannical attitude. By that process, a stance of absolutized opposition to misdirected power was exalted to dwell in the rare air of the virtues. This redefinition of the good arose in response to the blatant excesses to which some rulers extended their absolute power, beginning with the Hellenistic monarchs and continuing into the reigns of first- and second-century Roman emperors. Its specific form was determined by a nostalgic idealization of the old Roman Republic coupled with certain Stoic and Cynic philosophical emphases that characterized the period. Its influence ranged widely within the cultures of the first two Common Era centuries in the areas controlled by Rome, affecting phenomena as diverse as graffiti, histories, satires, and school curricula. Its rallying cry of defiance issued from both senators and saints and was uttered in a defiant language that rode along with it to virtue status. In Latin, this courageous voice was called libertas.1 Greeks used the term παρρησία. If courage took the form of defiance, how did παρρησία join it? The exaltation was neither abrupt nor complete. In fact, like the English term “defiance,” παρρησία could be used to describe ill-intended behavior as well as good throughout antiquity. Disparate speech events are captured by the term παρρησία, and by no means are they all virtuous ones—even in the period when παρρησία is most revered. Thus, the employment of the term to describe good or virtuous behavior remained always a special usage. The social and amoral aspects of παρρησία must be sketched before we can properly follow the term’s climb up the moral hierarchy. If our task in the present chapter and the next is to write the rags-to-riches biography of παρρησία, we begin with the rags of παρρησία’s normal social place.

Παρρησία Defined When separated into its component parts, the Greek noun παρρησία combines the collective pronoun πας and the verb ῥέω, yielding the English “I say everything.”

104

Illiterate Apostles

With few exceptions, the term’s multiple definitions and usages remain within the bounds of this etymological derivation. Παρρησία describes speech that is noticeably free, notable for stretching the borders of propriety, whether that threatened excess be positive or negative. Therefore, “free speech” suffices as a general definition, but only with the proviso that the term draws its force from its position on the border of propriety. The American Civil Liberties Union does not defend polite dinner conversation, and this term does not describe it. Παρρησία is speech that turns heads, and we shall see that the definitions of παρρησία draw their specificity from the particular border of the appropriate on which each lies. This general character of παρρησία as “free speech” or even “speech that turns heads” naturally manifests itself in several specific usages charted by lexicographers. Liddell and Scott give “outspokenness, frankness, freedom of speech” as their front-row definitions and “license of tongue” as their pejorative flip side. The third and fourth definitions, “freedom of action” and “liberality,” trace the relatively rare range of the term beyond its etymological attachment to speech events. It maintains an exclusive attachment to speech, however, in its cognate forms. The verb παρρησιάζομαι describes only speaking freely, and a παρρησιαστής is “an outspoken person.”2 Because of their classical orientation, Liddell and Scott omit the later Hellenistic and early Roman definition, “courage, confidence, boldness, fearlessness,” given third place by Bauer.3 Lexically, then, this speech (or action) that turns heads may take the form of (1) general outspokenness, (2) political freedom of speech, (3) frankness, (4) license of tongue, (5) licentious living, (6) lavishness, or (7)  boldness. This wide range of meanings clarifies the contingent nature of παρρησία’s morality: the speech receives its moral value from the worthiness of its employment. Three noble usages of παρρησία have attracted close attention from historians:  the famed free speech of the Athenian democracy, the constructive criticism that characterizes a philosophical friendship, and bold speech before a superior.4 The first two normalize what might elsewhere be excessive, by domesticating παρρησία in the service of city and friend. In the first case, the civic health was ideally thought to rest on the willingness of citizens to speak their minds in service of the polis. Thus, a criticism that would exceed the bounds of normal and comfortable social interaction is encouraged and becomes standard fare within the general assembly of Athens—at least in theory. Similarly, a rather biting form of rebuke, that might provoke resentment outside the roped-off space of a friendship, not only survives but is welcomed and even requested (at least by the virtuous) within that space—again, ideally. In short, the Athenian constitution and the informal contract of friendship authorize certain forms of critical speech that lie near or beyond the border of normal and acceptable communication. The third member of παρρησία’s noble triumvirate, bold criticism, joins the political critique of democratic παρρησία with the personal critique common to philosophical friendships, but directs them to an audience whose receptivity cannot be assumed. Therefore, the would-be speaker must overcome, not only the awkwardness of criticizing a fellow citizen or friend, but the greater natural fear of violent

4. The Social Dynamics of Παρρησία

105

retaliation. The defiant speaker carries παρρησία outside the defined safe space and may receive considerable moral accolades for the effort, if not always the extension of his or her natural life.5 It should help, at this point, to illustrate these definitions. Fortuitously, Josephus represents four of our seven definitions, and all three of the nobler sort, in the single story of the soldier Tiro, told in Antiquities 16. In the course of his reign over Palestine, Herod the Great has increasingly insulated himself from criticism by exerting an ever-tighter hold on the tongues of his subjects. After silencing everyone from the commoner on the street to his most trusted aids, Herod has hushed all who might keep him from error by threatening violent reprisal to any dissenters. Even Andromachus and Gemellus, Herod’s closest friends and advisors, have fallen silent under the king’s repressive force. Rid of every moderating influence, Herod is free to devise one atrocity after another—even to plot the execution of his own sons. Amid these darkest days of Herod’s repressive regime, a light of hope suddenly flickers in the unlikely person of the courageous soldier, Tiro. No revolutionary uprising, Tiro’s opposition takes the form of political critique. Beginning in the public square, Tiro disregards the danger of flouting Herod’s decree and launches a series of forceful harangues against the king and his criminal reign. Buoyed by public support and against all odds, Tiro requests and receives an audience with Herod himself. In the king’s inner chamber, Tiro details his complaints and the king’s abuses. He then summons Herod to return to his former good sense and abandon his nefarious plot to murder his sons. Although Herod is initially receptive to Tiro’s words, just when success seems imminent the king reaches the boundary of his patience and expels Tiro from his chamber into the murderous hands of royal henchmen. The three noble usages of παρρησία are well-represented here. Within this single narrative, he uses that term to denote at one time or another: (1) the political free speech of the Palestinian public, which Herod here restricts (16.241.4); (2) the corrective frankness of friends and counselors, which Herod has silenced (16.243.10), and (3)  the danger-defying boldness of the soldier Tiro (16.379.1380.1). By using the term παρρησία so liberally, Josephus illustrates its semantic versatility. By his narrator’s praise of Tiro, he also hints at the moral grid on which its nobler employment may usefully be plotted. Josephus seems, then, to simplify matters by supporting those who would focus exclusively on παρρησία’s nobler usages. Things are not always as they seem, however, as vice can go by this same name. Here, as elsewhere, Josephus unflinchingly applies the term παρρησία to the sinister and self-serving. Herod’s licentious behavior in this episode—even the plot to kill his own sons—is described using the word παρρησία (16.245.2). If Tiro is honored, Herod is demonized, and both by their παρρησία.6 The court intrigues describing the self-aggrandizement of Herod (15.362.2), Antipater (16.81.3), Meriamme (15.238.3), and Silas (19.324.1) also go by the name of παρρησία, as, finally, do the hateful words of Alexander and Aristobulus in Jewish Wars 1.447.1. For Josephus, then, παρρησία covers a broad and ironic moral range from the

106

Illiterate Apostles

licentious speech and behavior of Herod to the courage and boldness with which brave Tiro rebukes that behavior. These examples of ill-motivated παρρησία represent scores of fascinating texts from a variety of ancient authors, in which ignoble or, at best, neutral outbursts are described by the term παρρησία. They have sadly been interesting only to lexicographers, however, as the scholarly literature on παρρησία invariably gravitates toward Athenian democracy, the conversations of friends, and the boldness of underdogs—the noble triumvirate we identified earlier. To these favorite subjects of scholars we shall obviously return in due time, and even now they must be considered. However, it will help us to understand the nuances of the term παρρησία if we lay aside moral considerations for a while in favor of a strictly sociological depiction of the exchanges the word describes. By casting our net a bit wider in our biography of παρρησία than others have in theirs, we will expand our comprehension of the term’s range and logic. Because they represent more mundane occurrences, these un- and sometimes anti-virtuous usages offer privileged access to the social dynamic of παρρησία. By noting the various characters who speak freely or shrink from speaking, who receive criticism or squelch critics, we may hope to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the term and of the exchanges it describes. A comment about method may be helpful at this point. One cannot overstate the importance of literary and social context in defining any cultural symbol. In its most extreme implication, this crucial consideration could dictate an approach to word study that would proceed chronologically and attend to a single author at a time. Past work with παρρησία has honored context by separating out the three classic usages of the term by their social context in democracy, friendship, and tyranny, and then treated them chronologically to witness development. Obviously, given my choice of biography as a guiding metaphor for this project, I grant the merit of this procedure. However, it seems to me that insight awaits one who temporarily relaxes these distinctions in order to observe the social dynamic that the myriad usages of παρρησία share. It may be objected that this approach falsely reads the considerably various literatures of antiquity as a single seamless text. I hope this is not the case. A single word can be used quite differently by two different authors, and παρρησία is no exception. Perhaps, though, by stressing the overlap in those two meanings rather than their distinctions, we may access the social function of this word on which those two authors, not to mention the long list of others who use it, would agree.

The Character of Παρρησία as Speech Earlier, we defined παρρησία in a very colloquial fashion as “speech that turns heads.” We are now prepared to ask what draws attention to it. What about the character of παρρησία separates it from normal, everyday speech? The social dynamic involved in free, frank, bold, or excessive speech revolves around

4. The Social Dynamics of Παρρησία

107

παρρησία’s character as a difficult word—a connection that keeps it at the borders of the acceptable. It may be difficult for various reasons. Amid the fictional crisis of one of his last speeches, Isocrates proposes that the Spartans make the excruciating choice to send their elders, women, and children away to insure their safety. He admits that what he is saying is very difficult to hear (χαλεπός), but insists on speaking freely nonetheless (παρρησιάζεσ0αι).7 Isocrates’s use of the verbal form παρρησιάζομαι to describe his suggestion illustrates the undesirable quality of the term: παρρησία describes something the audience would not normally choose to hear. It is not a “path of least resistance” sort of word. Accordingly, the term most often denotes some form of criticism or dissent, whether personal or political. Diodorus Siculus illustrates this kind of παρρησία in his account of the Macedonian conquest of Athens. When he has taken the city, Philip marches his troops in the customary, humiliating parade through streets lined by the captive people. Out of the dreary Athenian silence, the orator Demades steps forward and launches a stinging Homeric rebuke: “O King, when Fortune has cast you in the role of Agamemnon, are you not ashamed to act the part of Thersites?” Demades’s words strike a chord of deep sympathy with Philip, who consequently alters his practice and marvels at the man who spoke so frankly (τὸν ἄνδρα τὸν χρησάμενον τῇ παρρησίᾳ).8 Diodorus captures Philip’s initial surprise with the term θαυμάζω:  while Philip ultimately welcomes the critique, such biting words from the mouth of a captured citizen prompt him to marvel.9 Again here, παρρησία is speech that turns heads. Some light may be shed on the nature of παρρησία’s criticism by the verbal company it keeps. Foremost among the term’s rhetorical partners are truth (ἀλήθεια) and freedom (ἐλευθερία).10 As truth freely spoken, the term is uniformly differentiated from praise, be it commendation (ἔπαινος), the proper complement to a corrective παρρησία, or flattery (κολακεία), its diametrical opposite.11 Παρρησία is often used interchangeably with terms for rebuke and correction like ἐπιπλήσσω, ἐπιτιμάω, νουθετέω, and occasionally even the more extreme λοιδορέω. In the story above, Diodorus imagines Demades’s frank criticism as a “well-aimed shaft of rebuke (έπιπλήξις).” The connection with έπιπλήσσω reappears at a later, less charitable juncture of Philip’s life, when he forbids even his friends to exercise παρρησία or to rebuke (έπιπλήσσω) his folly.12 As for rebuke (ἐπιτιμάω), Isocrates urges Nicocles to grant παρρησία to “those who criticize your mistakes (οἱ τοῖς ἁμαρτανομένοις έπιτιμώντες).”13 Dio Chrysostom praises the citizens of Prusa, because they gladly receive παρρησία and admonition (νουθετέω),14 and the world knew Dio’s Cynic hero Diogenes best for his harsh verbal tirades (λοιδορέω), used in this same critical vein.15 Synonyms and antonyms thus attest παρρησία’s affinity to other words for criticism. Not all criticism is good criticism. A generous supply of παρρησία’s other usages fall in line with the caustic associations frank criticism summons, yet without the good intentions of the correction vocabulary we just listed. When the villainous Cariolanus, a would-be praetor, vents his anger at losing a Roman election; when Gaius Titius lounges about the forum, speaking out excessively and shamelessly; and when several traitors brazenly defend themselves before Tiberius—all of

108

Illiterate Apostles

this unsavory behavior, Cassius Dio names παρρησία.16 Isocrates will have none of either a “loose-tongued vilification of the gods” (ἡ εἰς τοὺς θεοὺς παρρησίας) or an excessive freedom (παρρησία) that is mistaken for equality under law (ἰσονομίαν).17 These ill-intended outbursts line up next to the more noble criticism described above on one issue: both kinds of speech are difficult. Isocrates explains the reason. “[I]t is instinctive with most persons when admonished (νουθετέω), not to look to the benefits (ὠφελεία) they receive but, on the contrary, to listen to what is said with the greater displeasure in proportion to the rigour with which their critic passes their faults (ἁμαρτίαι) in review.”18 These authors consider it a commonplace of human nature that, whether from enemy or friend, criticism is difficult to swallow. With few exceptions, παρρησία describes this kind of hard speech. The social consequences of this quality are quite predictable, as we shall now see.

Παρρησία and Social Status Once when the Persian king Darius commissioned his guards to extol the virtues of wine, one of them is said to have exclaimed: “Sir, when I estimate the strength of wine, I find that it surpasses all things in the following way . . . It stirs up the mind of the slave to the παρρησία of the free person, while the παρρησία of the poor becomes like that of the rich.”19 This text points a guiding finger toward the issue of social status. Given παρρησία’s identity as speech that is difficult to hear, it is not surprising that general social expectations assign it to the powerful, rather than the lowly. The powerful have various means at hand to harm the weak, whether socially or physically; therefore, all assume that they will speak their minds without hesitation and without fear of retaliation. Ancient authors are surprised when this expectation is reversed. Cassius Dio reveals the general principle when he writes that Cariolanus, mentioned above for his angry tirade before the Roman people, “employed more παρρησία than was attempted by others whose deeds entitled them to the same rank (οἱ ὅμοιοι) as himself.”20 By their decision to speak unfavorably, status inferiors risk falling in harm’s way, whether in the form of general disapproval of their pretentious behavior, of beneficence withdrawn, or of retaliation enacted. Status superiors, on the other hand, risk little when they hold forth, since they exercise considerably more control over their own social destiny. Given the expectation that rich and free will speak more liberally than poor and slave, it is initially surprising that, in the overwhelming majority of texts that record παρρησία, it is the status inferiors who speak. The term almost never describes speech that descends the social hierarchy. Why does the term παρρησία not describe the harsh words of status superiors? The answer lies in the headturning nature of παρρησία as we saw above. Speech turns heads precisely when it is unexpected. Like banal chatter about the weather and the roads at a barbershop, the ready harangue of the powerful is common fare, lying well within the circle of normal social discourse. Thus, Josephus’s Persian guard would probably not have

4. The Social Dynamics of Παρρησία

109

characterized the speech of the rich and free as παρρησία, if he were speaking of them in isolation. He only does so in a context of comparison that has its end in the alcohol-assisted and uncharacteristic free speech of the poor and enslaved. Παρρησία is speech that is freer than normal, and the social expectations behind the term normal will always play an important part in the designation. The social polarities illustrated in the range of παρρησία texts comprise a veritable index to the Greek and Roman hierarchies of status. We have already observed three of these oppositions. Tiro’s criticism of Herod represents an extreme case in which a citizen (albeit a soldier) speaks out against a despot. Demades’s criticism of Philip turned heads (θαυμάζω) on this same basis. Even more widely attested is the status disparity between slave and free, poor and rich that is evident in the Persian guard’s encomium on wine. In fact, the Pseudo-Plutarchian author of On the Education of Children, can assert that someone has no παρρησία at all, simply by saying that she or he cannot even speak freely to a slave (14.B.1). Other texts reflect speech that crosses the status gap between female and male, son and father, young and old, soldier and general. Onlookers are awestruck (θαυμάζω) when Plutarch’s heroine, Theste, criticizes Dionysus (μετά παρρησίας εἴπεv), the tyrant of fourth-century Syracuse; and this general expectation that women will not speak freely toward men pervades our literature. When Judah (one of the offending sons) assures his father Jacob, patriarch of Israel, that his lost son Joseph will be safe, Josephus characterizes his speech as παρρησία; Cassius betrays a narrator’s surprise that the young Hanno (τις νεός) speaks freely to the people of Carthage; and Caesar uncustomarily and virtuously welcomes the παρρησία of his soldiers.21 In each of these texts, the author indicates the rungs on a culturally defined status ladder precisely by describing the speech of the lesser member as παρρησία. Terms like θαυμάζω record especial surprise, but the term παρρησία by itself marks the speech off as socially peculiar. Exceptions to these normalized mores of social discourse prove both the rule and its culturally defined nature. When our Persian guard’s slave and poor man drink wine, they certainly do not eliminate the realities of status disparity. However, they do suspend the drinkers’ own perception of that distinction and of the social danger it occasions. Indeed, wine is universally acknowledged as “the most fertile seed of παρρησία” and it is not uncommon for characters to “wax audacious (βράσεις)” and be “filled with παρρησία when they are in their cups (τερί τάς μέθας).”22 While the drinker does not transform the rules about free speech and retaliation—mouthy drunks often incur the wrath of their more powerful target—certain culturally defined duty-free zones do. The normal codes of speech may be temporarily relaxed. In an ancient version of “upside down day,” the traditional Saturnalia celebration suspends customary social restrictions so that even slaves are free to speak and act with παρρησία. License for παρρησία is also allotted to certain professionals who are not among the elite in other status-related distinctions. Not surprisingly, mantic prophets are exempt from the normal rules because their vocation requires that they speak difficult words to all comers. Comic poets also enjoy asylum. Max Radin writes, “If there was παρρησία anywhere in Athens, it existed on the comic stage. There,

110

Illiterate Apostles

neither position nor reputation saved a man from bitter and violent abuse, and Athenians heard with patience not only attacks upon their polity but the mockery of their most cherished beliefs.”23 Centuries later, Plutarch would not even have the Old Comedy read at a dinner party, for fear that its seriousness (σπουδή) and παρρησία would dampen the mood.24 The legendary Amazon utopia called Hesperia presents the most striking exception to status-dictated παρρησία rules. There the reversed status relationship between genders reverses the direction of socially expected free speech. Consequently, “The men were prohibited from exercising παρρησία, by which they might become presumptuous and rise up against the women.”25 In light of the numerous texts that record παρρησία, these various suspensions and exceptions demonstrate the standard expectations that background their peculiarity: poor people, slaves, commoners, women, children, and students do not speak harshly to rich people, free persons, royalty, men, adults, and teachers. When they do, their speech becomes παρρησία. It is clear, then, that hard or critical speech from status inferiors is surprising in Greco-Roman culture, and one might guess from Tiro’s experience that danger has something to do with this. Other texts confirm the potential danger—social and physical—of παρρησία when people of low status exercise it. This danger becomes legendary under the Hellenistic tyrants. The same Dionysius of Syracuse whom Thesta opposed was renowned for killing his critics. In fact, he had once slain thirty leading men of Athens and, as a general policy, executed anyone “who spoke with παρρησία on behalf of the laws.”26 Teuta, queen of the Ardiaeans, reportedly killed two ambassadors from Republican Rome because they spoke too freely on a diplomatic mission.27 A certain Anilaeus executed a Jewish official who dared criticize his controversial marriage, as Herod executed John the Baptist for his similar opposition.28 Clearly, speaking freely before the wrong person could seal one’s doom, yet many crafty ancients spoke and survived unscathed. These various means by which the characters depicted in our texts issued their hard words and avoided retaliation makes fascinating reading, and to these tales we now turn.

Strategies for Safety These extreme examples of violent retaliation reveal the primary problem with speaking a hard word. When two people of unequal status communicate, the power imbalance inherent to the inequality makes criticism from below risky. The physical danger suggested by the examples above is by no means universal, now or in antiquity, but some form of social risk does pertain. Further, the threat naturally increases with the size of the disparity between the two parties. However, the fact remains that some who risked life and limb to speak were sometimes not obliged to forfeit them—even before the most horrible of tyrants. How in the world did they do that? In our texts, speakers use an array of social agreements, calculations, and tricks to defuse παρρησία’s potentially explosive words. For our purposes these may be conveniently divided into three main types.

4. The Social Dynamics of Παρρησία

111

Very generally, safety can be secured (1) by a mutual pact between speaker and audience, (2) by the voluntary tolerance of a virtuously receptive superior, or (3) by the social maneuverings of a wily inferior. These three categories neatly distribute the onus for peace: the first features a shared decision, the second a decision from the more powerful recipient, the third from the less powerful speaker. Democracy and Friendship Παρρησία ideally finds a safe home in democracy and friendship by the participants’ mutual consent. In the Athenian democracy, this contract was formal and constitutional and παρρησία was the privilege of every citizen; in philosophical friendship, the contract was struck informally by the two participants. Our observations about παρρησία and status provide a context in which the rhetoric of these two pacts is properly striking: both claim to simulate status equality. Thus, whether among Athenian citizens or between philosophical friends, a disparity in wealth, power, birth, or any other status indicator could be contractually canceled for the purpose of mutual contribution. In his praise for the Achaean league, Polybius illustrates the close connection that people customarily drew between δημοκρατία, ἰσηγορία, and παρρησία. In one sentence, Polybius asserts that “one could not find a political system and principle so favorable to equality (ἰσηγορία) and free speech (παρρησία), in a word, so sincerely democratic (δημοκρατίας ἀληθινής)” as the Achaean league. Indeed, because of its principled equality, Athens gained a reputation for allowing an unparalleled free speech.29 This contractual equality had its exceptions, of course. In Athens, aliens and slaves were expressly disallowed the free speech of their citizen neighbors. Euripides reflects both of these exceptions in his play, Ion, where the title character wishes for the παρρησία of the Athenian citizen. I go; yet to my fortune one things lacks: For, save I find her who gave life to me, My life is naught. If one prayer be vouchsafed, Of Athens’ daughters may my mother be, That by my mother may free speech (παρρησία) be mine. The alien (ξένος) who entereth a burg of pure blood, burgher though he be in name, Hath not free speech (παρρησία); he bears a bondman’s tongue (στόμα δοῦλον).30 It has long been recognized that the equality of the Athenians was not comprehensive, extending only to the citizens of the polis, and it is clear from texts like this that such was the case with παρρησία as well. However, freedom’s citizens could count on their right to say anything, whether ruler or ruled, whether rich or poor. Friendship occupied an important place in ancient philosophical discussion, and from early on it was thought to rely on the equality of the friends. Pythagoras

112

Illiterate Apostles

is credited with initiating the maxim “φιλία ἰσότης”—friendship is equality31—and people who thought seriously about friendship recognized the problems inherent to a companionship of two who did not share equal status. Their solutions to this problem resemble somewhat the simulated equality of democratic Athens. When two people of different status attempt friendship, Cicero expects problems from both sides of the divide. In his treatise On Friendship, he writes, “It is of the utmost importance in friendship that superior and inferior should stand on an equality (parem esse) . . . As, therefore, the superior should put himself on a level with his inferior, so the latter ought not to grieve that he is surpassed by the former in intellect, fortune, or position.”32 The danger that superiors may take advantage of their position is here matched by its converse, a grieved inferiority on the part of the persons with lower status. As a solution, Cicero simply calls both members to think as equals. Aristotle also takes inequality seriously in his discussion of friendship. In fact, he doubts that other relationships can endure the status disparity of their members. However, he is optimistic about philosophical friendship between two socially unequal people, because the true commodity of exchange is not money or honor but virtue. His single qualification for a true friendship is the relative equality of the two members in virtue. The endurance of the friendship is understandably contingent on this equality. Once two relative virtue-equals have joined as friends, only the extreme decline or improvement of one member can threaten the relationship.33 We have already noticed that Cicero and Aristotle share a clear understanding of the real problems that social inequality presents to friendship. While Cicero advises pretended equality, Aristotle substitutes moral virtue for social status in order to claim actual equality. Both authors emphasize the importance of equality. We are still not all the way home on this point. Establishing the importance of equality to friendship by no means demonstrates its importance to παρρησία. But Plutarch can help us. If we ask what this voluminous discussion of friendship has to do with παρρησία, Plutarch supplies a direct reply: “Παρρησία, by common report and belief, is the language of friendship (φωνή . . . τῆς φιλίας), like the call of some species of animal (ὥσπερ τίνος ζ), and lack of παρρησία is unfriendly and ignoble.”34 This lofty assertion about παρρησία rests on the purpose of philosophical friendship. Cicero claimed that virtue could not be attained without friendship. “Friendship,” says he, “was given to us by nature as the handmaid of virtue (virtutum  . . . adiutrix), not as a comrade of vice (non vitiorum comes); because virtue cannot attain her highest aims unattended, but only in union and fellowship with another.”35 The sheer bulk of the literature on friendship among ancient moral philosophers reflects a widespread agreement with the high value Plutarch and Cicero place on friendship.36 From theoretical issues, such as the metaphysical realities of friendship,37 to the very practical matters of properly choosing a true friend and spying out an imposter,38 the literature reveals a rich and wide-ranging discussion. The locus classicus of the topic is the discussion in Books 8 and 9 of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics. With his customary empirical thoroughness, Aristotle describes three distinct, commonly encountered kinds of friendship: (1) those based on pleasure,

4. The Social Dynamics of Παρρησία

113

(2) others based on utility, and (3) still others based on virtue.39 He speaks for a throng of writers when he characterizes true friendship as mutual beneficence. “In a friendship based on virtue, each party is eager to benefit the other, for this is characteristic of friendship . . . and the one who outdoes the other in beneficence will not have any complaint against his friend, since he gets what he desires, and what each man desires is the good.”40 To benefit a virtuous person, one must assist in her or his attainment of virtue. Thus, as a colleague in the virtue-quest, the friend’s job is to benefit the other by encouraging virtue and discouraging vice. The latter function enlists the friend in her friend’s ongoing war against vice, and it is in this war that παρρησία becomes important. The prominent place that Plutarch assigns παρρησία within friendship is not idiosyncratic, but widely accepted. This is borne out, not only by Plutarch’s claim that it is “common report and belief ” (και λεγομένην και δοκοῦσαν εἶναι), but also by other authors on friendship. From the friendly confines of the Epicurean garden to the personal relationships of Roman aristocrats, παρρησία was a hallmark of friendship for the virtuous. The exalted status of παρρησία derives from an exalted purpose within the ideal friendship. Because even the most accomplished seekers of virtue sometimes do not recognize their own faults,41 the true friend provides an invaluable pair of watchful and critical eyes, through which flaws previously ignored or overlooked may be spotted. It is here that παρρησία and κολακεία enter the friendship discussion. True friends are duty bound to report their findings— to bear the bad news for the good of the cause—and this requires frankness (παρρησία). The widespread use of medical analogies in the context of friendly admonition illustrates the ideal purpose of these character diagnoses. Like the good physician, the friend diagnoses an illness in the soul and informs his sick patient of it. Flattery and cajoling (κολακεία or Latin adulatione and blanditia) are the “bane of friendship” (in amicitiis pestem)42 precisely because, like a doctor who pronounces a diseased patient healthy, a flatterer gives the “patient” a false sense of security about her or his moral health. Understandably, the flatterer is uniformly demonized in friendship literature. Even an enemy is more useful. Antisthenes once suggested that for selfpreservation, virtue-seekers need either a good friend or an ardent enemy: “the first by παρρησία, and the second by reviling (λοιδορέω), turn them from error.”43 In friendship as in democracy, then, παρρησία maintains its characteristic critical edge. Whether aimed at flaws in the civic organization or at the moral failings of a friend, παρρησία is carried on safely not by any change in its character, but by the mutual agreement of its participants. In παρρησία’s other two safe havens, no such advance agreement pertains. The Receptive Audience As our texts portray it, speaking freely outside democracy and friendship is rather like walking through a minefield. Immediate destruction lies ever nearby, but it is not exactly clear where it is. Choosing an audience is like taking a step. Whether it

114

Illiterate Apostles

is strictly by the luck of the landing or by precise instrumentation and calculation, each safe step in a minefield promises a breathless relief. All the insight in the world cannot block out an element of randomness in the choosing. When Demades of Athens rebuked Philip during the Macedonian victory parade, Philip held all the guns. He had just captured the city, his captives stood disarmed, and his own victorious army surrounded him. What were the odds that the newly captured Demades would survive his outburst? Yet the orator chose well, and not only survived but received an appointment in Philip’s court. This same Philip would later execute five of his own closest friends to signal the end of critique season, prompting his other friends to quit all efforts at reforming him by rebuke.44 Was it simply Demades’s lucky day? The image of the minefield illustrates the important role of the audience in a παρρησία exchange. Here we enter a discussion that is heavily freighted with the moral baggage of the period. Among Greco-Roman moral philosophers, a refusal to hear frank criticism is a sure sign of vice and inferiority of soul. In historical works, on the other hand, repression of free speech is the clearest identifying mark of the tyrant. The veritable poster child for tyranny was the Hieronymous of Sicily. Hieronymous keeps company with flatterers (τῶν κολάκων), defiles women, puts to death friends who speak with παρρησία, confiscates estates, and denies his subjects the παρρησία to curb his excess. We have seen that the same ruler may be receptive one day and violently repressive the next. It is also clear that, as their receptiveness waxes and wanes, these rulers rise and fall in the estimation of the historians who record the undulations. While these moral judgments no doubt shape the narratives—killing friends who speak with παρρησία is quite a popular sport among the kings of Diodorus—our present interest is primarily in the social exchange and not in the morality of its participants. For whatever motives and with whatever virtue, some powerful people neither outlaw criticism nor punish their critics. It is before these people in their more receptive moments that παρρησία could be safe. The Tolerable Speaker In these status-unequal exchanges we are chronicling, sometimes, speakers can influence their audience in ways that level the social playing field. This could be accomplished by making oneself tolerable through the display of character, by some form of coercion, or by some combination of the two. The character of the speaker plays an important part in the exchanges παρρησία describes and in the system of expectations that surrounds them. In Book 11 of his rhetorical handbook, Quintilian illustrates this focus on the speaker by producing a familiar scene from the Iliad. “Often the same thing said may be a sign of freedom (liberum) in one person, madness (furiosum) in another, and pride (superbum) in a third. The speech against Agamemnon, when made by Thersites, provokes laughter. Give those words to Diomedes or someone of his stature, and they will seem to bear witness to a lofty spirit” (magnum animum).45 There are various means by which speakers qualify or disqualify themselves from παρρησία.

4. The Social Dynamics of Παρρησία

115

The standard privilege of the well-born naturally applies here, as in the case of the γενναίος, Antiphatas before the Achaeans.46 However, παρρησία may also be earned. Even the poor can win an enthusiastic hearing, if they earn it by their virtue (ἀπ᾽ ἀρετής);47 and even the shunned Egyptian traitor, stripped of παρρησία by his offense, may regain it by some compensating display of “manly courage (ἀνδρεῖος)”;48 and by their devoted labors soldiers may earn the right to speak their minds to superiors.49 Those whose characters do not win their παρρησία outright have recourse to various other means of gaining social leverage. Our texts feature a menu of methods. Some work and some fail, but all fall under the loose category of manipulation. Some of these forms of coercion can be quite delightful. When the tyrant, Dionysius of Syracuse took up poetry, he understandably had an ample supply of toadies and flatterers to laud his work. Once, however, as Diodorus Siculus tells it, Dionysius asked the poet Philoxenus to join him for dinner and requested the poet’s literary assessment. As the story goes, the extreme παρρησία of the poet’s response offended the tyrant, and he commanded his servants to drag Philoxenus off to the quarries. On the next day, however, when Philoxenus’ friends pleaded his case, Dionysius made up with him and again asked the poet to dinner. As the drinking advanced, again Dionysius boasted of the poetry he had written, recited some lines, and asked, “What do you think of the verses?” To this Philoxenus said not a word, but called Dionysius’ servants and ordered them to take him away to the quarries. Smiling at the ready wit of the words, Dionysius tolerated the παρρησία, since the joke (τὸ γέλωτος) took the edge off the censure. By the next time he was asked to dinner, Philoxenus had a solution to his dilemma:  he would, he said, both speak the truth and keep the favour of Dionysius. Nor did he fail to make his word good. For when the tyrant produced some lines that described harrowing events and asked, “How do the verses strike you?” he replied, “Pitiful!” (οἰκτρά), keeping his double promise by the ambiguity. Dionysius took the word “pitiful” to mean “harrowing and deeply moving,” successful effects of good poets, and therefore rated him as having approved them; the rest of the people, however, who caught the real meaning, conceived that the word “pitiful” was only employed to suggest failure.50

Philoxenus has used, first humor, then intentional ambiguity to both speak a hard truth and keep all his body parts together. Both methods have their share of advocates in antiquity. We have already noted the license Athenians gave to the comic poet. Philoxenus’s double use of the term οἰκτρά falls in line with a host of ploys by which speakers attempt to “pull one over” on an audience by judiciously veiling their intention.51 One might also hope to speak safely by timing hard words well. To designate this consideration, authors often use some form of the term καιρός, which denotes a proper or appointed time. The concept may be illustrated within the philosophical discussion of friendly παρρησία, where the teeth of danger have been removed.

116

Illiterate Apostles

Philodemus lists a section title that begins, “[That] we endeavor not to delay when the time [for παρρησία] is opportune ([ὅτι] ούδ’ εἰς καιρὸν εὐχρονίξειν έπιζη[τ] οΰμεν).”52 The “opportune time” here is the point at which the audience is most prepared to profit from the criticism. When it will not be profitable, παρρησία should, according to our authors, be withheld. Plutarch recounts a story about Demetrius of Phalerum, exiled and “living in obscurity and humble station near Thebes.” One day the illustrious Cynic Crates paid Demetrius a visit, but the despondent exile surprisingly winced at the sight of him. This is because Demetrius knew the Cynic reputation for biting criticism and fully expected “some cynical frankness and harsh language (παρρησία κυνικὴ καὶ λόγοι τραχεῖς).” However, Crates proved himself a true philosopher by rightly estimating the time. “[He] met [Demetrius] with all gentleness, and conversed with him concerning the subject of banishment . . . [urging him] not to be discouraged over himself and his present condition.” Plutarch summarizes with an aphorism: “The kindly words of friends for one in grief and admonitions when one plays the fool.”53 These examples illustrate the importance of timing, even when the audience is generally receptive to criticism. When the audience is unreceptive or hostile, safety becomes an added consideration and raises the stakes on timeliness, as we shall now see. When παρρησία fails to persuade an unreceptive audience, authors often attribute its failure and the consequent demise of its practitioner to poor timing. Here also καιρός is used, but this time with a verb describing misestimation, a particle of negation, or an alpha privative. This is true of Josephus’s now-familiar soldier Tiro in Antiquities 16, whose παρρησία failed because it exceeded the necessity of the moment (was ἄκαιρον) and whose death consequently followed shortly thereafter. Likewise, when a certain Charidemus took it upon himself to criticize Darius and the Persians, he began well. “[His] prospects had been high,” writes Diodorus Siculus, “but he missed their fulfillment because of his ill-timed frankness (παρρησία ἄκαιρον) and ended his life accordingly.”54 Even Philoxenus, whom we earlier saw narrowly escaping the wrath of Dionysius, got into his predicament in the first place because he spoke his criticism out of turn (ἄκαιρον παρρησία). Notice that this ill-timed παρρησία often appears well-intended, as in the case of the two Roman ambassadors who perished at the hands of Queen Teuta. “They made use of a proper παρρησία (καθηκούσα μέν),” Polybius explains, “but one that was not timed at all well (οὔδαμῶς δὲ πρὸς καιρόν).”55 In this dangerous context, good timing requires deft calculation. For some, this meant evaluating their own social leverage. Again, Josephus is a helpful source. Herod’s beloved Meriamme spoke freely because she counted on Herod’s romantic interest to supply her leverage—“she took full advantage of his enslavement to passion.” A summary comment capsulizes the disastrous affair. [Meriamme], being constantly courted by [Herod] because of his love (ἔρως), and expecting no harsh treatment from him, maintained an excessive παρρησία (ή παρρησία ἀσύμμετρος). And she saw fit to speak to Herod of all her feelings, and finally succeeded in incurring the enmity of the king’s mother and sister and

4. The Social Dynamics of Παρρησία

117

his own as well, though he was the one person from whom she had mistakenly expected to suffer no harm.56

Obviously Meriamme miscalculated, as she met an early death at the hands of executioners. Herod himself might have taught Meriamme a thing or two about calculating one’s clout, since Josephus makes him out to be a master at it. On three different occasions, Herod purposely timed his requests of Augustus when the emperor’s esteem for him reached a high point.57 While Meriamme and Herod attempt to exploit the esteem of the audience, this sort of timely speech might use any factor that predisposes the audience toward tolerance. For some, reading the signs expertly meant refraining from παρρησία altogether in certain circumstances. Discretion is the better part of valor for Meriamme’s sons, who fare quite a lot better than their mother in this regard. When Antipater falsely accuses them of disloyalty to their father, “though they were convinced by their consciences that they were innocent of such filial impiety, still they knew that it would be hard for them, as indeed it was, to defend themselves against the accusations brought by their father, since it was not at the moment seemly (ούδὲ . . . πρὸς τὸν καιρόν) for them to speak with παρρησία if they were thereby to convict him of error in his habitual and hasty use of force.”58 By their silent and obvious distress, the boys convince Augustus and their father that they are innocent of Antipater’s charges. Seeing the futile danger of speaking up orally against Caesar, Cassius Dio’s Cicero decides at one point to give his defense in writing instead. He later deliberates again concerning the wisdom of speaking his mind (παρρησιάζομαι), this time against the Roman triumvirate of Caesar, Lepidas, and Antony. “I deem it the business of an upright man equally to keep himself safe in his country’s interest, taking care that he may not perish uselessly, and at the same time not to fail in any duty of speech or of action, even if it be necessary to suffer some harm while saving his country.”59 To this text we shall return later. For now, it serves us by illustrating the attempt to properly estimate the right seasons for παρρησία. This foray into the social dynamics described by the term παρρησία has revealed several constants. Every society has a certain protocol, formal or informal, regarding both public and private speech. With few exceptions, the mores governing speech in Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman societies reflect the very socially stratified structure of those cultures. If we were to plot these expectations on a hierarchically arranged sociograph, the arrows reflecting appropriate address—particularly when the content of that address is critical or difficult—would almost always point either across or down the page, toward equals or inferiors. Slaves, the poor, women, and children lie near the bottom of the graph, and the audience to which they can safely speak their mind is small indeed. Speech that dares to ascend the hierarchy is immediately noticed and requires some kind of explanation. The various reasons given for these social exceptions reveal an intriguing social web that is not unfamiliar. The cultures of GrecoRoman antiquity handed out a very limited number of licenses to professionals like comic writers and mantic prophets; participants in a democracy and

118

Illiterate Apostles

philosophical friends suspend the normal hierarchical dictates contractually, observing a simulated equality that fosters free speech. Outside these mostly reliable exceptions, arrangements are much more tenuous and temporary, resting on personalities and the rise and fall of events and moods. These fragile and often short-lived exceptions may issue from the situation of the speaker, as in the case of the bereaved and those who have suffered some kind of injustice. If so, the freedom to break the normal rules dissolves when the affliction ends and, like Cinderella at the ball, speakers face dangerous consequences if they tarry after their midnight. Audience-based exceptions, like affection for the speaker, must be gauged carefully and endure only as long as the favor. The platform from which hard and free words are spoken in antiquity is a fragile one.

Acts 4 and the Social Dynamic Παρρησία It will now be helpful to apply these observations about παρρησία to the social exchange narrated in Acts 3–5. In chapter three, Peter and John heal a crippled man on their way into the temple (3:1-10) and so draw a large crowd of people, to whom Peter then preaches (3:11-25). Peter has barely finished his sermon when the priests, the temple guard, and the Sadducees arrest Peter and John, because they are “teaching the people and announcing the resurrection of the dead in Jesus” (4:2). After their night in jail, Peter and John appear before the chief priest and his family, along with the rulers and elders and scribes in Jerusalem. It is in this setting that Peter speaks: Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today upon a good deed for a crippled man, by what means this man has been cured, let it be known to all of you and to the entire people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by this name has the man stood up before you healthy. This stone, which has been rejected by you builders, is the one that has become the head of the corner. And there is salvation in no other, for there is not any other name under heaven that has been given among people by which we must be saved. (4:8-12)

It is upon hearing Peter so sternly chastise them that these very accusers pause to wonder at the apostles’ παρρησία (4:13). The members of the Sanhedrin can neither refute Peter (ἀντειπεῖν—4:14) nor punish Peter and John, because all Jerusalem knows of the healing (4:16) and the apostles have become quite popular (4:21). Therefore, the Judean leaders order them not to speak (4:18) and send them away with a slap on the wrist (4:21). Knowing the ways Greek authors use the term παρρησία, we approach Acts 4 with eyes open to several aspects of this παρρησία event. First, when authors use this term the context often includes stark status disparity. It is therefore no surprise that, when Peter and John appear before the most powerful Jewish authorities in Jerusalem, Luke calls their decision to deliver such a speech παρρησία. Second,

4. The Social Dynamics of Παρρησία

119

the content of παρρησία is normally difficult for the audience to hear. Peter’s brash accusations and assertions fit well within the profile. Third, when the weak berate the powerful, reprehension and ultimate retaliation are the common response of the ignoble tyrant. Naturally, then, the Sanhedrin—the very group who had instigated the trial that led to Jesus’s death—wishes to refute (4:14), to silence (4:17), and ultimately to punish the apostles (4:16, 21). And fourth, if the audacious status inferiors survive their παρρησία unscathed, authors usually account for their safety either by the receptiveness of their audience or to their own social leverage. The Sanhedrin members clearly do not thank Peter or promote him to their council. In fact, they are a quite unreceptive audience. However, the text mentions two social levers that are at the apostles’ disposal: they have just performed a sign (γνωστὸν σημεῖον), by healing the crippled man (4:14, 16), and that sign has merely added to a previously existing popularity they enjoy with the Jerusalem crowds (2:46-47). A closer look at each of these four social aspects of Luke’s narrative will prepare us to move on to its moral and philosophical layers. The first consideration is the status and power relationships between the characters. For our present purposes, the cast of Acts 4 may be reduced to four characters—three undifferentiated collective personalities and one individual.60 The Jewish leaders are treated as a monolith that, despite Luke’s list of its constituent parts (4:1,6,15) and report of internal discussion, acts as a unit. Peter and John should also be treated as a unit, despite Peter’s role as spokesperson, since response to them is always stated in terms of both apostles (4:1, 7, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21). Luke also refers, thirdly, to the people of Jerusalem collectively as ὁ λαός (4:1, 8, 10) and πάντες οί κατοικοῦντες ᾽Ιερουσαλήμ (4:16); our fourth character is that happy, walking and leaping formerly crippled man (4:9, 14). The Jewish leaders play the high-ranking and powerful tyrants in our story. It is not clear that Luke knew the historical realities surrounding the Jewish Sanhedrin in Jerusalem.61 For example, scholars debate whether that group would have the influence to hand Jesus on to Pilate. In any event, this narrative portrayal of the Sanhedrin and its members (rather than a historical one) should be our chief source for understanding their encounter with the apostles, as Luke hardly have assumed that his readers would have known Jerusalem politics. Luke’s audience may, on the other hand, have known Rome’s custom of ruling its provinces through an established local aristocracy.62 In that narrative world, the Sahnedrin members comprise the ruling urban aristocracy, residing in Jerusalem and doing their business in cooperation with the Roman procurator and his staff. The Sanhedrin plays a prominent role in Luke-Acts. The term συνέδρων appears fifteen times,63 fourteen of them in Acts, and the author further spotlights the group by casting its three main constituencies—the high priests, the elders, and the scribes—as persistent antagonists to Jesus and his followers. Primarily a judicial body, they conduct the trials of Jesus (Lk. 22:66-71), Stephen (Acts 6:8– 8:1), and Paul (Acts 22:30–23:10) as well as the two proceedings against Peter and John (Acts 4:5-22; 5:27-42). However, the function and power of Luke’s Sanhedrin extend beyond the courtroom, as that body either orders or carries out the arrest in three of these five cases (Lk. 22:54; Acts 4:1-3; 5:17-18). Further, while the

120

Illiterate Apostles

members’ evident subordination to Roman authority in Jesus’s trial indicates certain legal limits on their authority, their access to Pilate’s ear places them atop the Jewish status hierarchy in Luke’s narrative world. The apostles are, of course, the heroes of Acts 4. However, their place in society is much less distinguished than that of the Jewish leaders. In the course of Luke’s narrative, Peter and John have left careers as Capernaum fishermen (Lk. 5:1-11) to follow an itinerant teacher through remote Galilean villages and then, only very recently, into the city of Jerusalem. To be sure, they are very prominent within their own group, the Jerusalem church. Luke often names Peter and John (Lk. 5:10; 8:51; 9:28; Acts 1:13) as the chief apostles, and their importance to the advance of the gospel is significant for this author.64 Along with their status within the church, Peter and John have also attained a certain popular prestige stemming from their charisma. However, their place within the complex web of social relations that comprises the symbolic world of Luke’s reader will be much different. Their profession classifies them with the laborers; their provincial descent is from barbarians; their Galilean roots place them on the wrong side of the city/country division;65 and because they are rustics, their illiteracy will not be surprising.66 On the status ladder of Luke’s Jerusalem, then, the apostles stand several rungs below the Jewish leaders. In keeping with its character as παρρησία, the content of Peter’s speech is quite confrontational. The apostles have been incarcerated—appropriately, by the Sadducees (who famously do not believe in afterlife)—“because they were teaching the people and announcing the resurrection of the dead in Jesus” (4:1-2). First, then, Peter repeats the claim that initially got the two of them arrested in the first place, by reiterating that the Jesus in whose name the crippled man had been healed is the one “whom God raised from the dead” (4:10). Second, in the midst of this claim, Peter matter-of-factly but pointedly indicts his accusers for the murder of Jesus, referring to him as the one “whom you crucified.” Finally, by citing Psalm 118, Peter asserts that the Sanhedrin’s threats are in vain. After all is said and done, Jesus, who is “the stone that you builders rejected, has become the head of the corner.” Thus, in the course of three sentences, Peter veritably proves his own guilt under the stated charge, directly accuses those who have accused and will try him, and predicts the ultimate failure of their attempts to squelch Peter and his company. Not the classic ἀπολογία,67 Peter’s difficult and surprising speech is suitably labeled παρρησία.The Sanhedrin generally enjoys power in accordance with its status and so would be expected to overwhelm the lowly apostles in this regard. However, our second “character,” the general Jerusalem populace enters the story as an important third party that balances the power disparity. As high-ranking authorities, the members of the Sanhedrin wield their power aggressively. Their roles in the arrest and crucifixion of Jesus, the soon-to-be stoning of Stephen (Acts 8) , and the persecutions like the work for which Saul of Tarsus was commissioned (Acts 9) suggest both the possession of power and a propensity to use it violently. However, the actual power of the Sanhedrin is often curbed by the loyalties of the crowd (ὁ λαός).

4. The Social Dynamics of Παρρησία

121

The Sanhedrin’s violent tendencies are confirmed, not only by the three initiatives mentioned above, but also by Luke’s reference to other failed attempts. Several times in Luke-Acts, Jesus and/or the apostles evoke a murderous impulse from the chief priests or elders, but swords remain sheathed because of popular sympathies. We will look closely at that below. For now, it is worth noting how the steady stream of threats and reprisals would lead the reader to suppose that, given the opportunity, the Sanhedrin would return to its violent ways. The crowd’s support of Jesus and his followers is a determinative element of the plot, assuring the safety of Luke’s heroes. Although the entire narrative takes place behind the Sanhedrin’s closed doors, the powerful crowd plays an important offstage role in the drama of Acts 4. It is to the people (ὁ λαός) that Peter and John have been speaking when they are arrested (4:1) for that very act of teaching the people (ὁ λαός—4:2). The Sanhedrin has removed the apostles from their public and stored them away in a place from which they can make no direct popular appeal: they are placed in a secluded cell (τήρησις) overnight. However, the narrator reiterates the importance of this silent player beyond the wall by means of what sourcecritical commentators have often deemed a clumsy editorial insertion: “Many of those who had heard the word believed and the number of the males rose to about five thousand” (4:4). Our survey of παρρησία’s social dynamic has prepared us to see this note about the size of Peter and John’s following, not as clumsy but as altogether essential to the plot. In this brief summary, Luke foreshadows the power of the imprisoned apostles, for they control the omnipresent crowd. With this confidence, Peter launches his verbal attack, a speech in which he further distances his accusers from the crowd they fear. The Sanhedrin is the “you” that crucified Jesus. Peter describes this act both literally, in verse 10, and metaphorically, in verse 11. First, Jesus is the man “whom you crucified” (ὅν ύμεῖς έσταυρώσατε) and Luke adds the pronoun ὑμεῖς for emphasis. Next, Jesus is the stone that has become the head of the corner, only after having been rejected “by you builders” (ὑφ᾽ ὑμῶν τῶν οἰκοδόμων). Peter carefully distinguishes the “you” that he condemns from the “they” of the crowd in verse 10. “Let it be known,” says Peter of his message, “to all of you (πᾶσιν ὑμῖν) and to all the people of Israel (παντὶ τῷ λαῷ ᾽Ισραήλ).” What the narrator earlier suggested by emphasizing the apostles’ success in numerical terms (4:4), Peter now exploits by bringing into the closed room the specter of the throngs who are waiting outside (4:10). If Peter and John here co-opt the power of the people, how did they gain that allegiance in the first place? This story extends back into the Gospel of Luke. The term λαός appears more than eighty times in Luke-Acts, and just less than half of those appear in the Gospel. In Luke’s scheme of things, John the Baptist initially prepared a people (λαός—Lk. 1:17; 3:18, 21; 7:29) whom the Lord will visit with salvation (1:68, 77; 7:16) in Jesus. The good news and joy of the savior’s birth will extend to all people and peoples (πὰς λαός—2:10; πάντες λαοί—2:31). It is therefore not surprising when the people (ό λαός) come from near and far to see and hear Jesus (6:17). In fact, from early on, both the teaching (7:1) and the miracles (8:47) are done in the presence of the whole people (πλῆθος πολὺ τοῦ λαοῦ—6:17). Throughout his career in Galilee, then, Luke’s Jesus (and, by

122

Illiterate Apostles

extension, his disciples as well) have enjoyed the uninterrupted esteem of the masses. The frequency with which λαός occurs increases dramatically when Jesus arrives in Jerusalem in chapter nineteen, and his enormous popularity from the countryside of Galilee continues among those urban crowds. In fact, from the first mention of the people of Jerusalem in 19:47-48, Luke establishes a stark division between the leaders, who oppose Jesus, and the people, who embrace him. There, the chief priests, scribes, and the prominent leaders (πρῶτοι τοῦ λαοῦ) seek to destroy Jesus, but cannot because of his popularity: ὁ λαός of Jerusalem hang on his every word (19:48). The leaders even fear to defame the memory of John the Baptist, who is also popular with ὁ λαός (20:6). Jesus exploits this divide, bringing ὁ λαός (20:9) into his confidence by telling them the accusatory parable of the vineyard, which indicts their leaders. He later warns the ὁ λαός about the danger of the scribes (γραμματείς 20:45)and his own great popularity is evident in the throngs of people (πᾶς ὁ λαός—21:38) who gather to the temple early in the morning to hear him teach. All this popularity protects Jesus. Though they try, the leaders cannot lay hands on Jesus while he is with the ὁ λαός (20:19, 26; 22:2). The leaders apprehend Jesus in Gethsemane at night and with their own crowd (ὄχλος 22:47) rather than the general public. When the leaders finally bring a charge against Jesus before Pilate, its wording is not surprising, given the nature of their frustration:  “He stirs up the ὁ λαός” (23:5, 14)! Even during and after the crucifixion, Jesus’s popularity continues. A  great multitude (πολὺ πλῆθος τοῦ λαοῦ) follows him to the cross (23:27). Subsequently, the division between the people and their leaders is poignantly reiterated at the cross. The people (ό λαός) stand and watch Jesus while the rulers (oἱ ἄρχοντες) scoff at him (ἐξεμυκηρίζω—23:35). Even on the road to Emmaus, the naive disciples recall the distinction. They recount how “Jesus of Nazareth . . . was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people (ὁ λαός),” but also, “how our chief priests and rulers delivered [Jesus] up to be condemned to death, and crucified him” (24:19-20). This brief survey reveals the two strong themes of (1)  Jesus’s great popularity with ὁ λαός and (2)  the stark social division he has forged between ό λαός and the various rulers and leaders who oppose him. In view of Jesus’s enduring popularity, the widespread appeal of his followers is hardly surprising. In Acts, the apostles win the approval of the people from the start. Luke summarizes in 2:47 when he says that the apostles “enjoy the favor of the whole people” (ἔχοντες χάριν πρὸς ὅλον τὸν λαόν). A  few verses later, the people see the crippled man walking (3:9) and run en masse to hear the apostles. Peter accordingly addresses his sermon to the people (πρός τὸν λαόν—3:12). We have already seen that the people play a role before, during, and immediately after the trial of Peter and John before the Sanhedrin. Throughout the first half of Acts, the people of Jerusalem will continue to favor the church and scare the Sanhedrin, as again in 5:26, Peter and John will be spared the violence of their captors because “the temple guard . . . feared the people (τὸν λαόν)”. Like Jesus, then, the apostles not only enjoy the esteem of the crowd but also co-opt its power.

4. The Social Dynamics of Παρρησία

123

The extreme status and power imbalance between the Sanhedrin and the apostles has already been noted. Now it is time to define the Sanhedrin as an audience to difficult speech. In the terms of our discussion of παρρησία, that group is a hostile, tyrannical-looking power that by no means welcomes the “well-aimed shaft of rebuke.” Beginning during the life of Jesus, any direct criticism immediately piques their ire and normally provokes some attempt at violent reprisal. For example, in the allegorical Parable of the Vineyard (Lk. 20:9-18), Jesus recounts the various envoys from the vineyard owner to his land and the wretched treatment they receive at the hands of the tenant farmers, culminating in the vineyard-owner’s son, who the farmers plan to kill so they will inherit the land. Luke describes the Jewish leaders’ response as follows:  “The scribes and the chief priests sought to lay hands on him at that time, but they feared the people (τὸν λαόν),68 for they knew that he spoke this parable against them” (πρὸς αὐτούς—20:19). Clearly, the leaders are not those wise, philosophical sorts who would learn or profit by Peter’s critique, or even receive it indulgently. Again in Acts 4, the Sanhedrin is revealed to be an unreceptive audience. Given Peter’s accusation that they have crucified Jesus, their discomfort is understandable. However, they have options. ●

●

They might simply brush the fly away, as it were, releasing the apostles and leaving them to continue their innocuous work among the masses (the tactic Gamaliel will advocate in chapter five). After all, Peter and John’s accusation has been made behind closed doors, in chambers, so they have not been publicly defamed. As a second possibility, they might respond to Peter’s critique by altering their ways. They have opposed and ultimately rid themselves of Jesus. However, their victim is apparently vindicated now through the continuing power of his associates. They might, then, receive the criticism, as Philip from Demades, toward their own correction and betterment.

Clearly, the Sanhedrin opts for neither disinterested tolerance nor grateful acceptance of the critique. Rather, as they had with Jesus, they immediately seek to punish their critics. They set out to refute Peter (ἀντειπεῖν—4:14), consider denying the miraculous healing of the crippled man (ἀρνέομαι—4:16), and ultimately attempt to do away with their critics (4:17-18). Finally, when they find themselves politically unable to punish Peter and John, the council members threaten them and reluctantly release them (4:21). As they had with Jesus, as they will again with Peter and John (5:27-42), as they will once again with Stephen (6–7), the members of the Sanhedrin elect to reject the criticism and attempt to do violence to the apostles. Our familiarity with the παρρησία texts prepares us for what happens next. According to the normal pattern, if speakers hope to remain safe before such an audience, they must secure some form of leverage. Thus, the apostles’ hope of survival demands that they pull some social or personal lever against their opponents. This might have been an appeal to personal favor with their audience.

124

Illiterate Apostles

Meriamme unsuccessfully and Herod successfully counted on the esteem of their audience to secure their safe speech. Peter and John enjoy no such favor, as the context of their speech is not a personal relationship but a criminal trial. Philoxenus employed humor to disarm the rage of the tyrant Dionysius, but Peter’s speech is patently humorless. The apostles’ episode with the Jerusalem Sanhedrin looks something like that of brave Tiro, Josephus’s soldier in Herod’s court from Antiquities 16. Like Tiro, they address a powerful foe who has official control over their political environment; like Tiro, they enjoy widespread public favor and support; like Tiro, they speak directly and critically to their superior; and like Tiro, their criticism is a risky venture, delivered without any prior assurance of their safety. The single glaring difference between the two instances of παρρησία is their result: Tiro’s effort fails, and Herod ultimately executes him in its aftermath; Peter and John are released unharmed and continue to defy their superiors publicly. The stark difference in these results raises the question of what the apostles have done well to avoid Tiro’s fate. The answer to this question may be discovered in the brief characterization of Tiro’s failure. Tiro dared to disobey Herod’s decree against free speech and began publicly to air his critique of the king and his reign. Surprisingly, Tiro was granted an audience with Herod himself. Once they entered Herod’s chamber, he laid out his complaint, framed his critique as a benefit to Herod, and seemed to be doing quite well. Yet, at the height of its promise, Tiro’s effort suddenly turned tragic because of a simple failure in judgment: Tiro exceeds the appropriate measure of criticism dictated by the moment (ὑπερεξέπιπτε τοῦ καιροῦ). Tiro’s botched παρρησία is ultimately blamed on bad timing. The opposite is true of the apostles for two reasons. First, Herod’s power is much less conditional in Josephus’s narrative than is the Sanhedrin’s in Acts. He need not worry about angering the people because he controls a military guard, and so he may proceed on his whims without that nagging consideration. The power of the Sanhedrin, on the other hand, is quite tenuous in Luke’s narrative world, and their authority depends to some extent on the will of the people. We have seen how much they fear and defer to the crowd in crucial moments throughout Luke-Acts, as we have seen. The Sanhedrin members therefore must always act with an eye to popular opinion. This aspect of the Sanhedrin’s power paves the way for a second advantage of Peter and John over Tiro. Unlike Tiro, Peter properly estimates the demands and opportunities of the moment, and, consequently, the apostles’ favor with the people becomes an effective lever against the Sanhedrin’s force. Peter has timed his own criticism so that he speaks at the high-water mark of his, John’s, and the church’s popularity in Jerusalem. Already enjoying considerable esteem, he has just performed a wonder and delivered a sermon that merely increased his popularity, so that five thousand converts can be counted on his side. What is more, his accusers have shown themselves fearful of the public in the past and even now appear very cognizant of his enormous popularity. In his speech, Peter exploits this mutual awareness by alluding to the people of Israel and differentiating that large swing vote from the Judean leaders who are trying him. By properly

4. The Social Dynamics of Παρρησία

125

assessing the powerful leverage the crowds provide, Peter secures his own safety while delivering a caustic and baiting harangue. Peter and John have timed their παρρησία beautifully and have therefore escaped with life and limb.

Conclusion We have observed considerable overlap between the social dynamics of Luke’s narrative world and the mores concerning free or difficult speech in the GrecoRoman world. Indeed, the episode described in Acts 4 fits perfectly within the set of expectations imported by the term παρρησία. By their defiant behavior and confrontational speech, Peter and John have dared to challenge a group that possesses a social status and power far superior to their own. They speak as uneducated village laborers to an educated and well-positioned urban aristocracy. Additionally, they venture their harsh words without procuring, in advance, a license to speak. Their words are neither the civic corrections expected of citizens in a democratic assembly, nor the welcomed frank criticism common to the ideal philosophical friendship. Further, they do not possess any of the special exemptions occasionally afforded to comics and, especially within Israelite history, prophets. With no such advance assurance that their audience would listen peaceably, they might have sought out benevolent superiors with a habit of welcoming corrective criticism. However, their history with the Judean authorities during the life of Jesus patently demonstrates that they have not done this. To the contrary, these same Judean leaders have recently masterminded the crucifixion of the apostles’ leader on charges not dissimilar to those they themselves face. The apostles must therefore exploit the only leverage they have against the Sanhedrin’s power, namely, their exceeding favor with the people of Jerusalem. By accurately estimating their situation and manipulating the power balance in their favor, the apostles have survived their audacity without submitting to the Sanhedrin’s gag order. Peter’s conduct shows him to be a deft judge of his circumstances and a successful critic. It remains to be seen how this adept, calculating, even manipulative social maneuver could ever qualify as virtue, and why it would have been surprising from an uneducated man.

Notes 1 G. Scarpat, Parrhesia: Storia del termine e delle traditione in Latino (Brescia: Paideia, 1964) discusses libertas and other Latin translations of παρρησία, as well as the importation of παρρησία’s positive associations into Latin Christianity (109–143). 2 H. G. Liddell and R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon (rev. by H. S. Jones and R. McKenzie, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1843/1968), 1344. 3 W. Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, trans. W. F. Arndt and F. W. Gingrich (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1952/1957), 636.

126

Illiterate Apostles

4 See especially E. Peterson, “Zur Bedeutungsgeschichte von Παρρησία,” in ReinholdSeeberg Festschrift, vol 1, Zur Theorie des Christentums, ed. W. Koepp (Leipzig: D Werner Scholl, 1929), 283–297; H. Schlier, “Παρρησία, παρρησιάζομαι,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 5, ed. G. Kittel, trans. G. W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), 871–886; W. van Unnik, “The Christian’s Freedom of Speech in the New Testament,” BJRL 44 (1962): 466–488; S. B. Marrow, “Parrhesia and the New Testament,” CBQ 44 (1982): 431–446; Scarpat, Parrhesia. 5 The moral aspects of παρρησία are addressed in Chapter 5. 6 See also AJ 15.240.4; 16.244.2. 7 Archil. 7. 8 Diodorus Siculus 1.16.87.1-2. Incidentally, Demades receives not only the King’s admiration but also a place in his administration. See the narrative of 1.16.87. 9 We would be remiss not to notice here that Diodorus here uses precisely the same two words Luke uses in Acts 4. The crowd here marvel (θαυμάζω) at Demades’s daring criticism (θαυμάζω) of such a powerful man as Philip of Macedon, in the same way that the Sanhedrin in Acts 4:13 marvels (θαυμάζω) at the boldness (παρρησία) of an illiterate and uneducated fisherman. 10 The association of παρρησία with truth and freedom is best illustrated by Lucian’s corpus. See Nigr. 3.3.1; Dem. 11.6; Lex. 17.11; Pseudol. 1.12; Hst. Cnsc. 61.8; D. Mort. 20.9.22 and 21.3.14. The third member of Lucian’s exalted triumvirate, ἀλήθεια, accompanies παρρησία in Nigr. 15.3; J Conf. 5.4; Tim. 36.9; Cont. 13.1; Vit. Auct. 8.15; Pis 69; Mrc end 4.16; Alex. 47.18; Peregr. 18.16; Pseud. 4.20; Hst. Cnsc. 44.2; D. Mort. 21.4.8. 11 E.g., Dio Chrysostom Discourse 32.11. See especially Plutarch’s De adulatore et amico which, in the words of translator, F. C. Babbitt, “at the close, digresses into a disquisition on frank speech (παρρησία) that might easily have been made into a separate treatise” (Loeb 263). 12 Diodorus Siculus 3.28.2.1. 13 Ad Nic. 28.3. See also Plutarch, Phoc. 2.3.1 (Loeb 2.2.1). 14 Discourse 51.4.10. See also Plutarch, Praec. Ger. 818.B.5. 15 Dio Chrysostom, Discourse 51.4.10. See also Isocrates, de Big. 22.5. 16 Hist. Rom. 5.18.3 (Cariolanus); 35.100.1 (Gaius Titius); 58.15.1 (betrayers). 17 Busir. 40.3 (Loeb); Areop. 20.7. 18 Busir. 1.4. 19 Josephus, AJ 11.39.3. 20 Hist. Rom. 5.18.3. 21 For Theste’s opposition to Dionysius of Syracuse, see Plutarch, Dion 21.9.1; for Hanno’s speech before the Carthaginians, see Cassius Dio, HR 12.46.1; Josephus, AJ 2.116.2, records Judah’s reassurance to Jacob. 22 Plutarch, Table Talk VII 716.A.I. This phenomenon, which is obviously not confined to antiquity, is fascinating. Erving Goffman provides insight on wine’s bolstering effect in his book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City: Doubleday, 1959). Goffman analyzes social exchanges in terms of actor and audience. The successful “performance” hinges on the actor’s own belief in the “impression of reality” that he hopes to foster in his audience. Some performers “can be fully taken in by [their] own act; [they] can be sincerely convinced that the impression of reality which [they] stage is the real reality.” In these terms, the wine-drinkers relax normal self-consciousness and come to believe that they are, in reality, forceful and commanding. They believe not only what they are saying, but also that they are the kind who should say it.

4. The Social Dynamics of Παρρησία

127

23 “Freedom of Speech in Ancient Athens,” AJP 48 (1927): 217. Dio Chrysostom recalls this tradition in Discourse 33.9-10: “The Athenians, for example, being accustomed to hearing themselves abused, and, on my word, frequenting the theatre for the express purpose of hearing themselves abused (ὡς λοιδορηθησόμενοι), and, having established a contest with a prize for the most proficient in that sort of thing . . . used to listen to Aristophanes and Cratinus and Plato [the comic poet] and inflicted no punishment on them (οὐδὲν κακὸν ἐποίησαν).” In a harangue against Athens, Isocrates claims, “There exists no παρρησία except that which is enjoyed in this assembly (ἐνθάδε) by the most reckless orators (τοῖς άφρονεστάτοις), who care nothing for your welfare, and in the theatre by the comic poets (τοῖς κωμωδοδιδασκάλοις).” The sobering effect of these harangues is clear in Plutarch, who would not hear of ή κωμωδιών ἡ ἀρχαία being read at a drinking party, for fear that its seriousness (σπουδή) and παρρησία would dampen the mood (Table Talk VII 711.F.5). 24 Table Talk VII 711.F.5. 25 Diodorus Siculus, Hist. 1.3.53.2.6. 26 Diodorus Siculus, Hist. 1.14.5.7; 1.14.7.6.8; 1.14.66.5.5. 27 See Polybius 2.8.9.2 and the parallel account in Cassius Dio’s Hist. Rom. 12.49.1.6. 28 Josephus AJ 18.346.2. Of course, this passage brings to mind Herod’s imprisonment and execution of John the Baptist, which is traced to the prophet’s criticism of Herod in the NT gospels but not in Josephus. See Mk 6:17-29; Mt. 14:3-12; Lk. 3:19-20 (where the execution is not included) and Josephus AJ 18.116–119. While John’s criticism of Herod is not termed παρρησία by any of the evangelists or Josephus, it certainly parallels the speech we have encountered under that name. 29 See, for example, Plato, Gorg., where Socrates refers to Athens as the place “where there is more freedom of speech than anywhere in Greece” (οὐ τῆς ῾Ελλάδος πλείστη έστὶν ἐξουσία τοῦ λέγειν– 461Ε). 30 Ion 668–75. Regarding aliens, Euripides writes, “[Aliens] do not rule, are not trusted, and do not possess παρρησία.” ([φυγάδες] οὐκ ἄρχουσι, οὐ πιστεύονται, οὐ παρρησίαν ἔχουσιν [Teles 15,16].) See also Phoen. 391 ff. It is the lot of the slave (δούλου), Jocasta claims, not to say the things he thinks (μὴ λέγειν ἅ τις φρονεί)—a state which she equates with not possessing παρρησία (Phoen. 391–392). 31 Diogenes Laertius Vit. 8.10. See Aristotle, EN 9.8. 32 de Amicitia 19.69.1, 20.71.1-4. 33 ΕΝ 1165.B.14. 34 Plutarch, “How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend,” Moralia 51.C.8—D.3. 35 de Amicitia 22.83.3-7. 36 Cicero reflects the importance placed on friendship among philosophers when he names amicitia second to sapientia among the divine gifts to humanity (6.20.13). G. Bohenblust was the first to identify a friendship topos at the beginning of the twentieth century, in his study, “Beitrage zum Topos ΠΕΡΙ ΦΙΛΙΑΣ” (Berlin: Universitaets-Buchdruckerei von Gustav Schade [Otto Francke], 1905). Recent studies include, J. C. Fraisse, Philia: La Notion d’Amitie, Essai sur un probleme perdu et retrouve (Paris: Vrin, 1984) and G. Herman, Ritualized Friendship and the Greek City (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 37 Plato traces friendship to the single Form of the Good in Lysias 219B-220B and discusses the relationship between friendship and the forms in Phaedrus 245B-246D. 38 Plutarch, Quo modo. 39 EN 8.1156a7-l 157a2. Others have no such comprehensive design and are, therefore, not so inclusive. Cicero, for example, will not allow that proper amicitia can exist

128

40 41

42 43

44 45 46 47 48 49

50 51

52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

Illiterate Apostles outside the company of the good: “nisi in bonis amicitian esse non posse” (5.18.1). He later refers to vulgara and mediocra attachments (6.22.18), but generally reserves the term amicitia exclusively to describe the true friendships of the good. EN 8.2/1162b. The vulnerability of even the wise is generally assumed in the literature. One explicit reference to it is in Philodemus’s Περὶ παρρησίας, where even the teacher (σόφος) is sometimes (ποτέ) expected to speak frankly (παρρησιάζεσθαι omitted as understood) toward another (πρό[ς σ]όφος—Col 8.a.l-2) and gladly to receive frank criticism. Philodemus writes, “If therefore the σόφοι recognize one another, they will be gladly admonished by one another . . . as if by their own selves . . . (Col 8.b.6–9. Draft translation by J. Ware, SBL Hellenistic Moral Philosophy and Early Christianity Work Group, January 1993). de Amicitia 24.91.4. Cited by Plutarch (Enem. 89.b.l0), who despairs that the quality of friendships in his time has diminished to such a level that one must count on enemies alone to serve this critical function. Diodorus Siculus tells both stories, the first in 1.16.87.1.6; the second in 3.28.2.1.11. Quintilian, Inst Or 11.1.37. Polybius 33.16. Plutarch, Praec. Ger. 822.F.3. Diodorus Siculus 1.1.78.2.3. Plutarch, Cam. 39.2.5; Cassius Dio, Hist. Rom. 43.20.4.3. In Polybius 33.16.6, cited above, Antiphatas’s παρρησία is fortified by his father’s past contribution to the Achaean war efforts. On the other hand, social disgrace can undermine a person’s voice. Plutarch’s Solon legislates against illegitimate fathers by relieving their sons of financial duties to them and stripping the fathers’ παρρησία (Sol. 22.4.6). Hist. 6.1.1-6.5.9. The rhetorical evasion of direct criticism is treated by Frederick Ahl in, “The Art of Safe Criticism in Greece and Rome,” AJP 105 (1984): 174–208. Adornment and art are advocated, even for the more direct and friendly criticism of the Epicurean school that Philodemus pictures. See Philodemus, “Περί παρρησίας” 1.10. “Περὶ παρρησίας” fragment 25. Olivierii text. Tr. James Ware, SBL Publications. The story appears in Quo modo adul. 69.C-D. The Greek of the aphorism reads, “λυπουμένῳ γὰρ μύθος εὐμενής φίλων, ἄγαν δὲ μωραίνοντι νουθετήματα.” Josephus, AJ 16.385.2 (Tiro); Dionysius of Halicarnassus 6.1.1—6.5.9 (Philoxenus); Diodorus Siculus 1.17.30.5.6 (Charidemus). Polybius 2.8.9.2 and the parallel account in Cassius Dio’s Hist. Rom. 12.49.1.6. See also Cassius Dio, Hist. Rom. 57.2.5.5. Josephus, AJ 15.218–219; 237–239. See also BJ 1.437.2. Josephus, AJ 15.198.1; 15.217.2; 15.362.2. Josephus, AJ 16.101.3. Cicero’s decision to write his ἀπολογισμός appears in Hist. Rom. 39.10.2; the speech before the senate, in 45.18.2. The “characters” of the Holy Spirit (4.8) and Jesus of Nazareth (4.10) are pertinent to the plot. Indeed, they will figure prominently in our discussion of Luke’s theological explanation of the apostles’ boldness. However, in this strictly social analysis, they have no place. For a discussion of nonhuman actors in a symbolic or narrative world, see N. Petersen’s Rediscovering Paul (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986).

4. The Social Dynamics of Παρρησία

129

61 Luke’s presentation of the Jewish people and particularly the authorities has drawn considerable academic attention. I treat Luke’s Sanhedrin as the narrative depicts them, because the author may not even have known that institution, and his audience almost certainly did not. On the history of the Sanhedrin, see H. Mantel, “Sanhedrin,” Encyclopedia Judaica (Jerusalem, 1971). H. W. Tajra, The Trial of St. Paul (Tubingen: Siebeck, 1989), evaluates the legal authority of the Sanhedrin in the New Testament period (230–234). 62 For a detailed description of this custom and the specific way in which it came to bear on Roman Palestine, see M. Goodman’s fine book, The Ruling Class of Judaea (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 63 Lk. 22:66; Acts 4:15; 5:21, 27, 34, 41; 6:12, 15; 22:30; 23:1, 6, 15, 20, 28; 24:20. 64 The specific and exclusive partnership of Peter and John is first introduced near the end of Luke’s Gospel, when Jesus sends them to prepare a place for the Passover meal (22:8). They are, of course, paired in the healing scene at the temple which precipitates the mini-trial of Acts 4 (see 3:1). Their work together continues in 8:14-25, where they are sent by the Jerusalem apostles to Samaria. 65 See R. MacMullen, Roman Social Relations (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1974), 28–56. 66 Euripides, Thes. 382 (Nauck); Ps.-Lys. 20.11; Pliny NH 25.6; Plutarch, Arist. 7; Quintilian, Inst. W. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), generalizes, “The Greeks and Romans themselves frequently associated ignorance, and specifically illiteracy, with rusticity” (17). On the urban perception of the rural as uneducated, see also MacMullen, Roman Social Relations, 30–31. 67 This statement is made with intentional irony, for as we shall see in Chapter 5, Peter’s speeches in Acts 4 and 5 do resemble antiquity’s most classic defense speeches, namely, the ἀπολογία of Socrates. However, in the present context, it is necessary to recognize the elements of the speech that make it difficult for Peter’s audience to hear. 68 The καί that I have read as adversative and translated “but” may be simply conjunctive, in which case the Judean leaders both seek to kill Jesus and fear the people. According to this reading, the narrative of 20.20ff., which records their active pursuit of Jesus, would describe their attempt to lay hands on Jesus (ἐζήτησαν . . . ἐπιβαλεῖν ἐπ᾽ αὐτὸν τάς χεῖρας). My decision is based on Luke’s ἐν αὕτῇ ὥρᾳ in verse 19, which implies that, while they have settled for planting spies and attempting to trap him (20), their preference would have been for direct and immediate violence.

Chapter 5 T H E V I RT U E O F Π Α ΡΡΗ Σ ΙΑ

In his lecture entitled “That Women Too Should Study Philosophy,” the Roman Stoic Musonius Rufus states his answer to a question that was widely debated among philosophers in antiquity.1 In that lecture, Rufus argues his inclusive case in two parts. First, he establishes the natural equality of men and women, concluding that since they are similarly endowed by nature, the two sexes should be similarly educated. He argues a second point more extensively and the point is more significant. To introduce it, Rufus asks a rhetorical question:  “Could it be that it is fitting for men to be good, but not women?” Counting on a negative answer from his reader, he suggests that education will make the philosophical woman virtuous and that virtue makes the philosophical woman superior to the unphilosophical. Of the virtues, Rufus claims, “These are the things which the teachings of philosophy transmit.”2 Relevant to our current case, Rufus bases his entire case on the assumption that virtue is best, if not solely, attainable by means of a philosophical education. When Rufus presents the virtues women would accrue by becoming philosophers, he reflects vividly the prominent values within the philosophical circles of his day, both in its continuation of prior philosophical tradition and in its newly Roman particularity.The virtues are roughly the “standard” set:  the educated woman (γυνὴ ἡ πεπαιδευμένη), and particularly the one who has studied philosophy (καὶ ή φιλόσοφος) will manage her house well (οἰκονομικὴν εἶναι), exhibit noble self-control (σωφρόνα εἶναι), embody justice (δικαία . . . εἴη), and be more courageous than an uneducated woman (ἀνδρειοτέραν εἶναι τῆς ἰδιώτιδος).3 Rufus interprets each of the first three virtues as women would manifest them specifically as they live out a traditional woman’s role within the system of Roman patriarchy.4 However, along with her good housekeeping and simple dress, her fitness as a life partner and modesty, Rufus claims that the philosophical woman would exhibit an eye-catching form of courage that stands out among these others. As a result of her education, [the courageous woman] will not  . . . submit to anything shameful because of fear of death or unwillingness to face hardship, and she will not be intimidated by anyone because he is of noble birth (εὐγενής), or powerful (δυνατός) or wealthy (πλούσιος), no not even if he be the tyrant of her city (τύραννος). For

132

Illiterate Apostles

in fact she has schooled herself to be high-minded and to think of death not as an evil and life not as a good.5

Although he normally adapts his description of each virtue to accommodate the specific circumstances of a female within the patriarchal culture of ancient Rome, here Rufus surprisingly maintains that this philosophically educated woman would attain the very rugged and dangerous description of courage that dominated early Imperial moral philosophy. As a good advocate, he saves this description of courage until last, because it is his most potent argument and will clinch victory: the educated woman will even be willing to stand up to tyrants! Since this description falls within a lecture advocating the then very controversial opinion that women should be taught philosophy, it is important to note how confident Rufus is that his educated audience does share his two basic assumptions: first, that education is a necessary cause of virtue, and, second, that he can best illustrate the virtue of courage as a willingness to risk life and limb before a more powerful foe, even a tyrant. Rufus’s two assumptions directly address two exegetical concerns in Acts 4. First, in her disregard of the danger that awaits those who speak truth to power, this philosophical woman resembles the people we observed in Chapter 4, who stand and speak boldly before audiences of superior status. While her fortitude is called courage (ἀνδρεία), theirs is termed παρρησία. That host of ancients that spoke with παρρησία includes the two apostles, Peter and John, who dare in Acts 4:8-12 to stand up courageously before the statussuperior and violent Judean authorities. Therefore, in its principal points, Rufus’s description of the educated woman’s courage looks strikingly similar to Luke’s description of the uneducated apostles’ παρρησία. This parallel suggests a strong positive value for the term παρρησία and suggests that it has some relationship with courage. Second, the courage of Rufus’s hypothetical woman hinges, expressly and emphatically, on her education. Indeed, that argument is what prompts Rufus to pick up his pen in the first place. Because ἄσκησις and imitation have taught her well that death is not an evil and life is not a good, she is willing to risk her life for principles that do have value. In this way, her education has supplied her with the rudiments of courage. This parallel helps us identify what turns our surprised Sanhedrin members’ heads. When they reflect on Peter’s (and John’s) bold speech in Acts 4:13, they marvel (θαυμάζω) that these illiterate fishermen who have not been taken through the paces of philosophical exercises (ἀγράμματοι καὶ ίδιώται) should be able to speak with παρρησία. The Sanhedrin’s response reflects the same assumptions that Rufus takes for granted in his lecture: courage is produced by education. This set of assumptions may have a familiar ring to them, since the apologists treated in Part  1 of this work seem to have played on a similar field. When Athenagoras of Athens and Justin Martyr mention the illiteracy of their fellow Christians, they offer in return a commodity of value by which to compensate or negate the inferiority that the lack of education might imply. Therefore, the uneducated Christians (ἰδιῶται) of Athenagoras “love, rather than hate their

5. The Virtue of Παρρησία

133

enemies and pray for those who plot against their lives.”6 And Justin’s even lowlier illiterates (ούδαμώς ίδιώται) “have scorned glory and fear and death.”7 These courageous Christians serve each author’s rhetorical purpose by exceeding normal expectations of the uneducated. They attain a philosophical virtue without the training that should have been required for such distinguished behavior. To accentuate this achievement, Athenagoras and Justin both contrast the heroism of their illiterates to the less distinguished morality of certain philosophers.8 This unlikely victory of the underdogs increases the force of the rhetoric and compensates for the admission of illiteracy, which the apologists’ imagined audiences would otherwise count as a significant discredit to the Christians.9 If the critics of early Christianity assumed that their lack of education implied a handicap with respect to morality, these two authors confront that implication head on with evidence of Christian virtue. It is my hypothesis that when Luke portrays Peter and John as illiterate and uneducated men (ἀγράμματοι καὶ ἰδιῶται) in Acts 4:13, he hopes to transact through his narrative the same rhetorical deal that Athenagoras and Justin make in their apologies. By this reading, the apostles represent the illiterate Christian masses who have drawn the criticism of uneducated pagans. If Luke hopes to make a similar rhetorical trade, we would expect him to offer some form of Christian excellence in exchange for his admission of the critics’ accuracy. Yet, while we have noticed that Peter and John’s behavior resembles what Rufus describes as courage (ἀνδρεία), the trade value of παρρησία has remained unclear until now. Would παρρησία have impressed the educated in Luke’s audience sufficiently to refute the assumption that these uneducated men would be morally inferior. We have seen thus far that Peter and John, two uneducated rural laborers, managed to speak defiantly before their more powerful accusers, the educated aristocrats who form the Judean ruling class, and yet preserve life and limb. Such παρρησία summons adjectives like “wily” and “clever,” but its moral value initially seems pale alongside the Sermon-on-the-Mount self-giving and heroic martyrdoms of the apologists’ ἰδιώται. The moral significance and value of παρρησία remains to be developed. Our second concern is the coherence of the narrative, and, in order to preserve that, we must explain the Sanhedrin’s surprise. In Acts 4:13, the members of the court pause to marvel (θαυμάζω) at the apostles’ παρρησία because they are uneducated men. Even if we provisionally grant moral value to παρρησία, we still have not accounted for the Sanhedrin’s surprise that uneducated men should exhibit it. If Peter and John had displayed polished eloquence, the astonishment of the Judean rulers would make good sense. Their pause to marvel immediately follows Peter’s defense speech, and elegant speechmaking would naturally require a rhetorical education that the apostles explicitly lack. Alternatively, the Sanhedrin might understandably have wondered had the uneducated apostles displayed amazing erudition.10 Within his speech, Peter has produced a quotation from Psalm 118, and such an appropriate citation from even a Hebrew poet should presumably also be beyond the reach of uneducated people. However, παρρησία never describes either eloquence or erudition,11 so

134

Illiterate Apostles

Luke is not emphasizing that these ἰδιῶται are non-rhetoricians or non-rabbis. In fact, our best translation thus far for the term παρρησία has been “audacity,” an attribute that one would normally not reserve for the learned, either in Luke’s society or our own. What specific training do the apostles lack that παρρησία should require? What surprises the Sanhedrin about uneducated fishermen speaking brashly? The first tasks before us in this chapter, then, are to demonstrate that certain kinds of παρρησία might be regarded as virtuous behavior and to show that an educated audience would expect such virtue only from those who have been trained toward it.

Παρρησία as the Speech of the Courageous My argument rests on a close association between παρρησία and the classical Greco-Roman virtue of courage (ἀνδρεία), so let’s look at the evolution of that virtue through the centuries of antiquity. From the time of Homer through to the early Hellenistic period, this virtue was understood primarily as a fearlessness in battle.12 Aristotle illustrates, as he defines courage in the terms of his Golden Mean ethic (ἀνδρεία) as “the observance of the mean with respect of fear and confidence (περὶ φόβους καὶ θάρρη)”. He then widens his scope and his definition becomes, in the succeeding discussion, quite typical of Athenian thought. After enumerating the proper and improper fears, he specifies the conquest of fear that is most courageous. What then are the fearful things in respect of which Courage is displayed? I  suppose those which are the greatest, since there is no one more brave in enduring danger than the courageous man. Now the most terrible thing of all is death  . . . But even death, we should hold, does not in all circumstances give an opportunity for courage: for instance, we do not call a man courageous for facing death by drowning or disease. What form of death then is a test of courage? Presumably that which is the noblest (κάλλιστος). Now the noblest form of death is death in battle, for it is encountered in the midst of the greatest and most noble of dangers (μέγιστος καὶ κάλλιστος κίνδυνος).

Aristotle concludes, “The courageous man, therefore, in the proper sense of the term, will be he who fearlessly confronts a noble death, or some sudden peril that threatens death; and the perils of war answer this description most fully.”13 It is no accident, then, that when Socrates takes up the subject of courage in Plato’s Laches, “the only work he offers us devoted especially to [courage],”14 his interlocutor is a general. Laches, in fact, once speaks of his own virtue (ἀρετή) on the battlefield at Delium, preferring to skip the intermediate step of calling it courage (ἀνδρεία). Aristotle’s definition reflects an age when virtues were defined in terms of gentlemanly excellence, and when the “greatest and noblest” cause for which a gentleman might die was his polis.15

5. The Virtue of Παρρησία

135

Over the course of time, and owing to the changes in the sociopolitical landscape, the definition of “greatest and noblest” as it relates to courage naturally underwent change. While the soldier’s fearlessness endured as a virtue throughout antiquity, the social exigencies that accompanied the rise of the Hellenistic monarchies produced other sources of danger and fear that impacted the definition of courage. The Stoic emphasis on controlling the internal has often been identified as a direct response to an element of chaos that arose in this context. It is impossible to locate the origin of this shift, but, with the decline of the polis and under the Hellenistic tyrants in particular, philosophers began to nominate a new noblest cause and a new greatest danger. During the first two centuries of the Common Era, the Roman aristocracy tended toward the philosophical, philosophy was predominately Cynic and Stoic, and Cynicism and Stoicism were essentially practical. These three related social facts exerted an impact on the definition of virtue—and especially of courage— under the early Empire. In this setting, two strong Stoic values were destined to collide. On the one hand lay a distinct emphasis on moral freedom; on the other was the very practical Roman mandate to a public life. These duties to act freely and publicly produced philosophers inclined to air their views without inhibition. When these views involved emperors, conflict resulted. Ramsay MacMullen asks himself, “Why philosophy and subversion went together (as they undeniably did),” and answers, “Stoicism in particular sharpened the impulse and the courage to say what one felt, without supplying any specific political program. It made missionaries, but missionaries with very little more than the vague idea that men—other men—could be roused to revolution, or the emperor recalled to an antique virtue, by a great deal of defiance.”16 This summary captures a prevailing mood among the Roman aristocracy in the latter half of the first century, which closely linked moral achievement to the expression of freedom. As a result, one’s claim to virtue increased in proportion to the authority over against which one claimed independence. There arose, therefore, from Stoic predominance an anti-imperial and anti-tyrannical mood. It will be useful to contrast Plato’s and Aristotle’s portraits of courage with the definition of the same virtue as it is understood by the Roman Stoics. When Musonius Rufus illustrates the courage of his hypothetical educated woman, as we noticed above, the threatening foe and indomitable power is not an encroaching army but a well-born person, a powerful person, or a tyrant. If frequency of mention is a good indicator, not the enemy soldier but the tyrant is also the chief potential source of fear for Epictetus’s students. In a very characteristic flourish, he pronounces on the proper attitude toward death: “It is now time to die.” Why say “die”? Make no tragic parade of the matter, but speak of it as it is: “It is now time for the material of which you are constituted to be restored to those elements from which it came.” And what is there terrible about that? What one of the things that make up the universe will be lost, what novel or unreasonable thing will have taken place? Is it for this that the tyrant inspires fear?17

136

Illiterate Apostles

This passage appears in a lecture entitled “Of freedom from fear” (Περὶ ἀφοβίας), which begins with the question, “What makes the tyrant an object of fear?” Like Musonius Rufus, then, Epictetus defines the courageous act in terms of a tyrant or superior force that has the power to inflict bodily harm. These illustrations of courage are instructive because they shift the stage on which courage plays from the battlefield to the social and political arenas of tyranny and empire. While this change in venues may alter the outward shape of courage, the soul’s preparation for a terrifying foe remains similar, whether that foe should be an enemy warrior or a ruler. In one of his discourses, Epictetus chides his students with the following diatribe. “What do we admire? Externals. What are we in earnest about? About externals. Are we, then, at a loss to know how it comes about that we feel fear and are anxious?” According to Epictetus, the solution lies always close at hand in the divine benefaction: “Has [god] not given you endurance (καρτερία), has he not given you magnanimity (μεγαλοψυχία), has he not given you courage (ἀνδρεία)!” For Epictetus, the virtues are the “useful hands” (τηλικαῦται  . . . χεῖρες) with which humans combat the fates, not by changing matters but by enduring. For him, courage produces, not the external acts of aggressive combat, but the internal restraint to welcome the fates. This shift in the character of courage set the table for employing the term παρρησία in connection with it. On the battlefield, free speech obviously has very little place. A free-speaking soldier may, in fact, become a liability to his troop. However, in a context dominated by this defiant, anti-tyrannical definition of courage, we gain access to the way παρρησία might play an important part in the expression of that virtue. The fearless act of speaking frankly to someone who has the power to do you harm, in fact, epitomizes courage. The language that described this courageous and defiant mood, MacMullen recognized, “was libertas in Latin, in Greek, παρρησία.”18

Παρρησία and Education In Plutarch’s Lives, generals from the surrounding nations fear the Spartan King Agesilaus. In fact, when Agesilaus announces plans to expand his territory, most of his enemies shrink from opposing him for fear of violent reprisals. In this dangerous setting, a certain Epaminondas alone risks putting a voice to his opinions. He stands up boldly and speaks out against Agesilaus, while all the others have remained silent. In case the reader should begin to wonder what equips Epaminondas with the courage to speak out with παρρησία when everyone else remains fearfully silent, Plutarch supplies the answer when he characterizes the brave one as a man of culture and philosophy (παιδεία καί φιλοσοφία).19 Through Plutarch’s culturally colored lens, then, Epaminondas rises to the challenge of countering Agesilaus because he is educated and even philosophical. It is important to ask what kind of education Plutarch would have been imagining. If we have rightly paired παρρησία virtue of courage, we can see that it should also be associated with education. From the classical Greek period, authors closely

5. The Virtue of Παρρησία

137

linked the two. Additionally, Musonius Rufus assumed that the educated woman would be far more courageous than the uneducated woman, indicating again that this close association between education and virtue continues into the Roman period. We have seen already why Greco-Roman educational practices and, specifically, the educational methods of Roman Stoics made this connection valid. Stoics directed education toward the student’s self-mastery. Teachers employed training (ἄσκησις), and examples (παραδείγματα) to inculcate ethical sturdiness in their students and to prepare them to exhibit it in their public lives.20 Training (ἄσκησις) In his rigorous diatribal scrimmages, Epictetus directs his students’ ἄσκησις toward the real situations of the Roman aristocracy. Epictetus helped his students to train for their daily lives by rehearsing with them the thoughts and actions that should be natural to them. His questions and corrections were aimed at instilling habits of thought that focused on the realm of their moral purpose. It will help now to see this ἄσκησις at work specifically on the subject of courageous speech. In a long discourse on freedom, Epictetus builds toward the conclusion that “the unhampered person  . . . who fixes his aim on nothing that is not his own  . . . is free.”21 As a way of applying this principle, he now turns to direct questioning. E. But what say you, philosopher? The tyrant calls upon you to say something that is unworthy of you. Do you say it, or not say it? Tell me! St. Let me think about it. E. Think about it now? But what were you thinking about when you were attending lectures? Did you not study the questions, what things are good, and what bad, and what are neither good nor bad? St. I did. E. And what conclusions were approved, then, by you and your fellows? St. That things righteous and excellent were good, things unrighteous and disgraceful bad. E. Life is not a good thing, is it? St. No. E. Nor death a bad thing? St. No. E. Nor imprisonment? St. No. E. But ignoble speech and faithless, and betrayal of a friend, and flattery of a tyrant, what did you and your fellows think of these? St. We thought them evil. E. What then? . . . Why, then, do you stop to “think about it,” if the question is, are black things white? or, are heavy things light?22 This exchange helps us understand the way the teacher used ἄσκησις to prepare students for the real-life experience of a tyrant’s threat.

138

Illiterate Apostles

This exchange is instructive in several ways. First, it helps us to imagine the real circumstances that Epictetus envisions his students facing. In the world of this diatribe, this student must decide whether to flatter or to speak truthfully to a tyrant. The easy and safe choice, in that setting, would clearly be to say what the ruler wants to hear. The second value of this example for us is to give a window to the specific function of education in producing παρρησία. Philosophical education like this prepares this student to speak boldly by helping him make the better decision in advance. By interiorizing a value system that ranks moral freedom (ἐλευθερία) above physical well-being or social advancement, the student has made decisions in advance that will be crucial to the courageous stand. Finally, this passage also illustrates the specific wording used by Musonius Rufus above. It will be recalled that the educated woman would be more courageous than the uneducated woman because “she has schooled herself to be high-minded and to think of death not as an evil and life not as a good . . . .”23 Like teacher like student: both Rufus and Epictetus prepare their students to act and speak courageously by countering their natural fear of death. Example (παράδειγμα) During the early Imperial period, within the anti-tyrannical circles that most revered παρρησία, Socrates became the exemplar of choice. Philosophical teachers used exemplars to depict courage, just as they did with other philosophical lessons and virtues. In this aspect of the philosophical life, even more than others, Socrates proved an apt example because of his signature performance before the Athenian jury in his trial.24 As it became fashionable for philosophers and other educated persons to defy the powerful rulers of their day, their minds naturally gravitated to Plato and Xenophon and other authors who presented vivid images of Socrates before his Athenian accusers. By the frequency with which they import the heroism of Socrates, these authors and teachers reflect his primacy in the philosophical education of the early empire. This reminiscence might be employed, either in the third-person narrative portrayal of such defiance, or in the first-person defiance itself. As an example of the former, when Lucian’s Demonax runs afoul of the Athenian people because of his παρρησία, Lucian reasons that just as Socrates had his accusers, so Demonax “had his own Anytos and Meletus.”25 The memory of Socrates might also be evoked by the dissenters themselves, as an act of defiance. During the first two centuries of the Common Era, rallying cries from both Plato’s and Xenophon’s apologies circulated in the philosophical schools. One such excerpt is the terse and defiant slogan, “Anytos and Meletus can kill me, but they cannot harm me.”26 The formula, which condenses several sentences from Plato’s Apology became widely useful. Plutarch imagines fate as the Anytos and Meletus of the wise man, but this is not the most common employment. Cassius Dio places these words in the mouth of Thrasea Puetas before Nero, who became his Anytos and Meletus. Even Christian authors like Justin, Clement, and Origen employed the image in their circumstances. The widespread distribution of this slogan and the specific use to which it was put illustrate both the significance and the specific appropriateness of Socrates to this social setting. The widespread usage

5. The Virtue of Παρρησία

139

of the slogan among such a varied array of authors, also demonstrates that this connection between the model of Socrates and the defiant ethos was a part of the educated person’s cultural literacy during the early empire. The anti-tyrant preparing for his performance in the charged political arena of the early Empire may have played out a Socratic dress rehearsal in the classroom many times. Epictetus illustrates one such use of the Socrates tradition in Discourse 2.13. There, he compares the anxiety one feels before facing a tyrant to the nerves a musician experiences preceding a cithara recital. Both the musician and the potential anti-tyrant feel fear because they cannot determine the response of their audience. The solution for Epictetus is, of course, Stoic detachment: in order to face a tyrant boldly, one must lay aside all possessive attachment to the physical body and so take away the ground of the oppressor’s terror. To drive home this point, Epictetus produces several exemplars, including Socrates:  “Slave, do not brag, nor claim to be a philosopher, nor fail to recognize who your masters are; as long as you let them have this hold on you through your body, you will follow everyone who is stronger than you are. But Socrates used to practice speaking to some purpose—Socrates, who spoke his discourses to the tyrants, to his judges, and in the prison (2.13.24).” Elsewhere, Epictetus and his students debate the prudence of baiting one’s accusers as Socrates did (Diss. 2.2.22), also with an eye to the real-world possibilities of accusation and trial. Clearly, the image of Socrates featured prominently in the education toward virtuous παρρησία.

The “Philosophical” Setting of Acts 4 If we hope to construe the παρρησία of Peter and John as good and even virtuous, that assignation of value should fit unobtrusively within the flow of Luke’s narrative. In other words, this reading only works if the rest of Luke-Acts exhibits signs that Luke is the sort of author who would know and share the educated assumptions on which Musonius Rufus relies in his lecture. But what sort of evidence would be convincing in this regard? Ideal would be Luke’s own claim that the early Christians were philosophers and their gatherings were philosophical schools. On this subject, a quick survey initially proves discouraging. Luke does not call his characters φιλόσοφοι,27 and none of them will accept the name, “school,” or “sect” (αἵρεσις) by which outsiders refer to them in the narrative.28 Neither do they bear the philosopher’s toga, staff, and beard. However, although these obvious symbols of philosophy and the philosophical are lacking, Luke does offer more subtle hints that his Christians are doing something philosophical. In this space, we shall treat three important examples: the portrayal of the Jerusalem church as an ideal philosophical community, and the portraits of Jesus and Paul as ideal philosophers. Philosophical Community Twice in the first five chapters of Acts, Luke emphasizes the church’s custom of communal sharing. Within a summary in 2:42-47, Luke writes, “All the believers

140

Illiterate Apostles

were in the same place and they had all things in common (εἶχον ἅπαντα κοινά). They were selling both their property (τὰ κτήματα) and their belongings (τάς ὑπάρξεις) and were distributing them to all of the people as they had need (2:4445).” Again in 4:32-35, Luke summarizes: “the whole number of those who had believed were of one heart and mind (ἦν καρδία καὶ ψυχή μία), and not even one person was calling anything among his belongings (τι τῶν ὑπαρχόντων αύτῷ) his own, but all things were in common (ήν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά).” These famous summaries have long been recognized for their allusions to well-known philosophical themes. The Greek and Hellenistic philosophers discuss the sharing of possessions in two distinct contexts. A  handful of authors idealize the ancient origin of community by suggesting that “in those days” private property did not exist. In the Critias, for example, Plato imagines the military class during the earliest days of Athens in these terms: “It was supplied with all that was required for its sustenance and training, and none of its members possessed any private property, but they regarded all they had as the common property of all (ἅπαντα δὲ πάντων κοινὰ νομίζοντες αὐτῶν).” Plato elsewhere expands this vision to include the entire city, decrying private wealth as counterproductive to both harmony and production in his utopian community.29 Among Roman authors, Ovid portrays this vision vividly when he depicts that Golden Age (aurea  . . . aetas) when, “with no one to compel, without a law, of its own will, [the community] kept faith and did the right.”30 These first humans needed no armies or nations or borders, and they lived cooperatively with one another and with the earth. “The earth herself, without compulsion, untouched by hoe or plowshare, of herself gave all things needful. And people, content with food which came with no one’s seeking, gathered the arbute fruit, strawberries from the mountain-sides, cornel-cherries, berries hanging thick upon the prickly bramble, and acorns fallen from the spreading tree of Jove.”31 The silver people (argentea proles) brought private property and agriculture, the bronze people (aenea proles) instituted armed combat, and the iron age ushered in impiety and evil.32 Civilization had unfortunately led humanity away from their initial state of modesty and truth and faith (pudor verumque fidesque).33 Both Plato and Ovid imagine origins, whether of Athens or of humanity, in these idyllic and communally harmonious terms. The sharing of goods lay in the deep DNA of their culture. The ancient philosophical topic of friendship provides a second subject that produces language that resembles Luke’s.34 Tradition associates the language with Pythagoras. Diogenes Laertius writes, “According to Timaeus [of Tauromenium], Pythagoras was the first to say, ‘Friends have all things in common’ (κοινὰ τὰ φιλῶν) . . . and in fact, his disciples did put all their possessions into one common stock.”35 Whatever its origin, it was a widely quoted (if not widely observed) ideal. Plato often cites it, and Aristotle places it alongside other similar maxims in his extended discussion of friendship. “Among friends everything is in common” is quite correct, he writes, “for friendship consists in sharing (κοινονία).” Elsewhere, he returns to the theme: “All the maxims agree, for example ‘one soul’ and ‘among friends everything is common’ and ‘friendship is equality.’ ”36 Euripides not only

5. The Virtue of Παρρησία

141

quotes the maxim, but appears to summarize it as well, when he writes, “True friends cling not to private property. Their wealth is shared in close community.”37 Plutarch and Athenaeus place the idea in the mouths of Theophrastus and Cratinus, respectively. Among Latin authors, Menander and Terence repeat the maxim, as do Martial, Cicero, and Seneca.38 Clearly, the community of goods and ideas was a well-known and cherished ideal, not only among philosophers, but also among educated and philosophically minded Greeks and Romans. A second aspect of Luke’s summary also would have summoned similar philosophical discussions. Adjacent to the community of goods in Acts 4:32 and thematically related to it is the singleness of heart Luke attributes to the Jerusalem church. He writes, “The whole number of those who had believed was a single heart and soul (καρδία καὶ ψυχὴ μία).” This language may reflect the author’s acquaintance with the Septuagint in 1 Chron. 12:39, where the people is of one soul (ψυχὴ μία) to make David king.39 However, it almost certainly would have summoned for him and for his audience another tenet of the friendship discussion. We have already seen that Aristotle mentions ψυχὴ μία in his discussion of friendship in book nine of the Nichomachean Ethics. Diogenes Laertius adds to this tradition by attributing to Aristotle the famous definition, “[A friend] is one soul dwelling in two bodies (μία ψυχὴ δύο σώμασιν ἐνοἰκοῦσα).”40 Cicero also reflects this theme, mentioning it twice in his essay, On Friendship and once in On First Things, even expanding the merger to include many souls in a unity (unus . . . animus . . . ex pluribus).41 Luke is not the only ancient author to combine the community of goods and the union of souls in a single literary context. We have already seen that Aristotle places the two maxims, “μία ψυχή” and “κοινά τα φιλών,” together and declares that they “agree” (ὁμογνωμονοῦσιν).42 Plutarch attempts to describe the connection more precisely in his essay, “The Dialogue on Love,” where he writes, The one who is taken over and inspired by Eros starts by eliminating the expressions “mine” and “not mine,” just as Plato excluded them from his ideal republic, for we can say quite simply that friends possess everything in common (κοινὰ τὰ φιλῶν). This is true, however, only of those who, though existing in separate bodies, actively unite their souls together, no longer wishing or considering themselves to be two separate beings.43

Here, the causal arrow moves from the internal affections of the participants to the external management of their affairs: the community of souls that Eros works both precedes and effects the community of goods. More importantly for our purposes, an educated and philosophical Greek of the first century joins the two themes in a manner not unlike Luke’s. Luke’s “one soul” and “all things in common” language functions to idealize the Jerusalem Christians. Several allusions seem to be operating at once here, all of them quite positive. First, there are echoes of Deut. 6 and 1 Chron. 12. Second, the utopian vision of an ideal community that needs no walls or distinctions and shares all goods lies close at hand in both literary and philosophical sources.

142

Illiterate Apostles

Finally, the prescriptions for a philosophical friendship frequently employ such language in order to depict the intimate union between friends and their consequent willingness to pool their possessions. It is difficult and, for our purposes, unnecessary to choose which of these three referents Luke “has in mind.” He may mean to signal all three. Beyond doubt, however, all three contexts represent a significant good. By appealing to the cultured literacy of his Hellenistic audience, Luke imports lofty themes that paint the upstart community with the colors of the Greek philosophical ideal of community. A Philosophical Jesus Luke’s Jesus is the Jewish “Prophet like Moses” whose coming was announced in Deut. 34:10-12. He conducts his life and ministry among Jewish people and is crucified for claiming to be King of the Jews. This Jesus is thus squarely fixed within Jewish tradition. But Luke’s Jesus also clearly embodies the highest aspirations of Greco-Roman culture. Luke portrays Jesus as a blessed sage, from his precocious youth to his tranquil crucifixion. Even at age twelve, Jesus indicates his future destiny (Lk. 2:41-52). The story is one of the more familiar in the Gospel: having lost track of Jesus after the Passover feast in Jerusalem, Mary and Joseph ultimately find him in the temple precincts (2:43-45). When they arrive, he is sitting with the teachers, listening to them and asking questions. Lest these bare facts should leave the reader unimpressed, Luke relates the reaction of the teachers to Jesus: “All those who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his responses” (2:47). In this passage, like Apollonius of Tyana and Philo’s Moses, not to mention Josephus in his autobiography,44 Luke’s Jesus exceeds the normal behavior of a boy his age with his prodigious intellect. This tradition could easily have been known to some in Luke’s community. Jesus’s Sermon on the Plain offers a similar appeal to cultured Greeks and Romans. In both form and content the Sermon presents familiar elements from the Greco-Roman moral philosophers. Formally, Jesus’s words feature alternation of negative and positive commands, extensive rhetorical questioning, and the use of examples. The themes are also common to the moralists: the relationship between words and deeds and between character and deeds; the centrality of action to define convictions; and the well-defined, purposeful relationship between teacher and student. All these have many parallels in the philosophical literature. Indeed, “if [Lk. 6:36-49] were excerpted, it would not seem . . . out of place in the writings of many Hellenistic moralists, at least in its major concerns.”45 At least twice in the course of the Gospel according to Luke,46 Jesus sits down to table and teaches in the tradition of the Greek symposium. The meal was a common setting for topical speeches like the splendid set of tributes to Eros that Plato narrates in his Symposium.47 In Lk. 14:1-14, Jesus reclines at table with the rulers of the Pharisees. Since the episode is set on the Sabbath and features a healing, this meal has its share of conflict. Additionally, however, Jesus addresses the familiar philosophical topic of humility (ταπεινοφροσύνη). He cleverly addresses his mealtime topic by teaching about behavior at meals. First, he suggests that

5. The Virtue of Παρρησία

143

those who attend feasts should choose lowly seats,48 ending with the pithy saying, “Everyone who exalts her/himself will be humbled, and everyone who humbles her/himself will be exalted” (14:11). Next, he commands those who host feasts not to invite guests based on potential return. Though more grave than the usual symposium, this scene has most of its standard features. The second symposium is Luke’s Passover meal. Of the four canonical evangelists, Luke is the only one who includes both a meal and a discourse at the Last Supper.49 By extending the meal into a discussion afterward, Luke gives place to both a symposium-style speech on authority and greatness (22:25ff.) and a farewell discourse. The former was common for soldiers and philosophers, with the latter tending to follow the account of Socrates’s last days in Plato’s Phaedo. Certain conventions that were common to the tradition appear also in Luke, including a summary of one’s life (22:27-28) predictions (22:34), and a passing on of the mantle to a next generation (22:29). Thus, in his youth, his teaching, his meals, and his farewell, Luke’s Jesus follows the conventions of Hellenistic philosophy. A Philosophical Paul Not only in the famous episode on the Areopagus in Athens before the Epicureans and Stoics, but also in Miletus before the Ephesian elders and in Caesarea before Agrippa II and Festus, Luke’s Paul gives speeches flavored with the philosophical. There are, it turns out, significant parallels between Paul’s words in Acts 20:1735 and 26:26-49 and the teachings of the Greco-Roman moralists.50 The speech before the Ephesian elders summarizes Paul’s work—“the way I have been with you”—in eastern Asia Minor. In the short space of eighteen verses, Paul exhibits at least five of the salutary behaviors associated with ancient psychogogy.51 In his insistence on teaching both publicly and privately,52 by refusing to cower before his audience, but boldly speaking what was profitable,53 and by attending to each individual,54 Paul fits securely within the tradition of proper mentoring. When he represents rival teachers as “fierce wolves” and warns his charge against them, he echoes standard polemical practice.55 We have already observed the importance of imitation within ancient philosophical education. Both in offering himself as an example (πάντα ὑπέδειξα ύμῖν 20:35), and in the specific behavior he exhorts them to imitate—“the absence of greed and the willingness to work” (20:33-34) he again follows the well-worn path of the moralists.56 Thus, in Luke’s “final ‘insider’ interpretation” of Paul,57 the apostle appears the consummate moralist, tending to the needs of his charges in a quite philosophical manner. In the composition of Paul’s legal defense speech before Agrippa II (ἀπολογέομaι—26:1, 2), Luke once again uses terms that would have sounded philosophical to the educated first-century reader.58 Abraham Malherbe has suggested a larger apologetic purpose for Paul’s ἀπολογία. Through Paul’s answer to his accusers within the narrative, Malherbe suggests that Luke answers to Christianity’s accusers outside the narrative by “presenting Paul as speaking in the manner of a philosopher.”59 For our purposes, the specific criticism behind Acts 26 and its philosophical context will be less important than the characterization

144

Illiterate Apostles

of Paul with which Luke refutes that criticism—a characterization that prompts Festus to conclude that Paul has gone mad because of his great learning (πολλά yράμματα—26:24). Critics often levied just this charge of madness against ascetic Cynic philosophers.60 A  milder Cynic like Dio Chrysostom could address this stereotype in two ways: (1) by differentiating his sane words, as truth, from the words of those who merely launch their harangues, or (2)  by capitalizing on a popular ancient association between madness and divine inspiration. Luke’s Paul seems aware of this tradition, and he actually uses both of these techniques in his defense before Festus and Agrippa. In the first place, immediately after Festus has interrupted to suggest his madness, Paul assures him, “I am not mad (οὐ μαίνομαι.), Most Excellent Festus, but I  am speaking words of truth and sanity (ἀλήθειας καὶ σωφροσύνης ῥήματα—26:25).” Second, Paul earlier claimed divine witness and assistance for his words, both to the masses and now to Festus and Agrippa.61 By Malherbe’s light, then, Paul looks quite a lot like Dio and the milder Cynics.62 Acts 17 offers the most unmistakable illustration of this sort of philosophical characterization.63 In that narrative, whose verisimilitude within the Athenian context is impressive,64 Luke places his traveling Jewish missionary in the philosophical capitol of the ancient world. Even in bare outline, the scene summons associations with education and philosophy.65 The first obvious cue is the debate with representatives from two of the major philosophical schools of his day, the Epicureans and the Stoics. Whatever may be the level of sophistication of Luke’s understanding of current philosophical discussion,66 the symbolic function of the conversation on even the crudest level is to place Paul amid the great schools. The second association the educated would have drawn from Luke’s narrative is that between Paul and Socrates.67 Paul engages (διαλέγομαι—17:17) his Epicurean and Stoic interlocutors, who informally charge him, as the Athenians had formally charged Socrates, with introducing “foreign deities” (ξένα δαιμόνια—17:18). The term διαλέγομαι itself may allude to Socrates, as Plato uses that term to describe the everyday conversation of Socrates with his own Athenian audiences.68 Clearer, however, is the allusion to the Athenians’ charge against Socrates. Both Plato and Xenophon list the charge against Socrates in terms of his challenge to Athenian religious norms: Socrates has believed or introduced “other new deities” (ἕτερα καινὰ δαιμόνια).69 Such language, spoken in an Athenian setting, alludes unmistakably to Socrates. This Socratic parallel surely goosed Paul’s value on the balance sheet of Luke’s audience. In the educated culture of Greece and Rome, as we noted in our discussion of philosophical exemplars, no philosopher matched Socrates for wideness of recognition and general reverence. Cicero reflects his central importance to the various forms of Hellenistic philosophy when he calls him their “fount and head.”70 His place is specified in the following excerpt from his treatise, On Oratory. “The variety of Socrates’ methods of discussion, and the complexity of his material, and the greatness of his genius . . . caused the emergence of a number of different philosophical schools, putting forward contradictory views.”71 This prominence appears in the widespread impulse to record his words.

5. The Virtue of Παρρησία

145

The brief second-century doxography of Diogenes Laertius suggests that the Socratic traditions must have been myriad and widely distributed. In the short space of 390 Greek lines, that author can name twenty-eight different sources for one hundred bits of anecdotal evidence. Our authors relay Socrates traditions in a variety of ways, but these various usages are almost exclusively positive. Aside from the early Peripatetics and Epicureans, who occasionally spoke ill of him,72 Socrates enjoyed the almost uninterrupted esteem of ancient authors. The nearly universal reverence for Socrates has obvious implications for our understanding and estimation of Paul. By characterizing the Jerusalem community, Jesus, and Paul in these terms, Luke demonstrates that he is the sort of author who knew and appreciated the philosophical discussions of his day.

A Philosophical Peter Let us look again at Peter in light of the very philosophical company he keeps. He is the president of the ideal community of Jerusalem Christians, who share all things in common and possess one heart and mind; he was a full-time disciple of Jesus, that child prodigy and wise teacher in the mold of the Greco-Roman sage; and he is the missionary parallel of Paul, the gentle, responsible, and Socratic apostle of Acts 13–28. The exalted company Peter keeps in the narrative of LukeActs produces certain expectations. It would be surprising, in fact, if Luke did not sprinkle similar philosophical elements into his characterization of Peter as well. Therefore, when he stands before the Sanhedrin in Acts 4–5, if he is anything like Jesus, the Jerusalem church, and Paul, it is likely that Luke’s Peter will behave in the fashion most prized by the educated people of his day. Luke hopes to satisfy those exalted expectations by characterizing Peter’s speech as παρρησία. But what is the behavior that he describes with this term? Three times in the course of the two chapters, Peter raises his voice before the Judean authorities of the Sanhedrin. In 4:8-12, that body summons him to give a defense. Then, after a period of judicial deliberation, Peter replies to the Sanhedrin’s firm demand that the apostles no longer speak or teach in the name of Jesus (4:19-20). Finally, when Peter and John are once again incarcerated, Peter gives a brief reprise of his earlier defense speech (5:29-32). In each speech, Peter blatantly defies his accusers. He indicts the Sanhedrin for Jesus’s crucifixion, insinuates that they directly oppose the purposes of God, and refuses to stop speaking about Jesus, even after they order him to do so. In order to understand the danger to which Peter exposes himself with his defiant speech, it is important to note that the leaders he defies are roughly the same collection of officials who opposed Jesus and instigated his crucifixion. This crew will also oversee the stoning of Stephen in the very next episode of Acts. Without noticing this antecedent and arc, the reader of Acts 4 might underestimate the risk Peter takes and the deftness of his escape from the Sanhedrin’s power. In the narrative world of Luke-Acts, this is no impotent and innocuous organization.

146

Illiterate Apostles

Rather, the members of the Sanhedrin comprise a powerful and characteristically violent authority.73 Peter’s defiance, especially in his two “defense” speeches, exceeds mere resistance. His tone might be described as baiting and even seems intended to provoke. In the first trial, he has been charged with teaching the resurrection of the dead in Jesus (4:2). Within his speech, Peter openly admits the accuracy of the charge, reiterating that Jesus is “the one whom God raised from the dead” (4:10). Surrounding this proclamation, however, are two other claims that are bound to incite the Jerusalem council. The first is the charge that they themselves are responsible for the murder of Jesus. Jesus is not only the resurrected one, but “the one whom you crucified.” This stone is rejected, not simply by “the builders” (οἱ οἰκοδόμοι—LXX Ps 118), but by “you builders” (ὑμεῖς οἱ οἰκοδόμοι—Acts 4:11). The second inflammatory claim is that the very Jesus whom they put to death is the sole source of God’s salvation (σωτηρία—4:12). Peter here supplies the Sanhedrin with an additional charge, proclaiming not only the resurrection of Jesus, but his unique role in the salvation of Israel. This baiting speech is what the surprised Sanhedrin labels παρρησία in Acts 4:13. The Judean authorities might just as well have used the same term to describe Peter’s speech at the second trial, at which he exhibits the same defiant attitude (5:29-32). There, the council members have become angry that the apostles keep ignoring their order “not to teach in this name” and particularly that they are “determined to bring this man’s blood on us” (5:28). This time Peter and the apostles speak in chorus (5:29), proclaiming again the resurrection of Jesus and the guilt of the council members in his crucifixion (5:30). They then claim that Jesus is at the right hand of God, meting out repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel (5:31). Finally, they identify themselves as witnesses (μάρτυρες) to all these things. While the first speech made the Sanhedrin want to refute (ἀντιλέγω— 4:14) and punish (κολάζομαι 4:21) the apostles, the second speech prompts more violent measures. “Those who had heard were enraged (διαπρίομαι) and wished to destroy them (ἀναιρέω—5:33).” Only the restraint of a ranking Pharisee named Gamaliel keeps the council from carrying out their wish (5:34-39). In each trial, Peter states the principle behind his defiance. During the first trial, the Sanhedrin summarily commands the apostles “not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus” (4:18). The pitch has been raised a notch by the second trial, when the council complains that their previous order has been ignored. Peter states (with John) his conviction in 4:19:  “You must judge whether it is proper before God to listen to you rather than to God (ὑμῶν ἀκούειν μάλλον ή τοῦ θεοῦ); for we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.” The matter is put even more succinctly in chapter 5: “We must obey God rather than humans” (πειθαρχεῖν δεῖ θεῷ μάλλον ἢ ἀνθρώποις—5:29). By drawing a distinction between obedience to God and obedience to the official leaders of Jerusalem Judaism, Peter clearly implies that the two are at cross purposes. Thus prompted to decide for one or the other, he naturally chooses to obey God. In his appeals in 4:19 and 5:29, Peter’s defiance before the Sanhedrin falls naturally in line with the several examples of παρρησία that we observed among

5. The Virtue of Παρρησία

147

the anti-tyrants. Particularly striking, however, are the parallels between Peter’s baiting defense and the famous apology of Socrates before his Athenian accusers. Like Socrates, Peter elects not to give a classic defense, by refuting the stated charges consecutively. Instead, following the example of Socrates, Peter maintains his own innocence while charging his accusers with a crime. And like Socrates, Peter refuses to cease practicing and teaching the things that have gotten him arrested in the first place. Thus, even in the content of Peter’s “apology,” at least in broad outline, the example of Socrates is in view. Just to make sure his reader does not miss this connection, Luke patterns Peter’s very words after the speech of Socrates in Plato’s Apology. There, Socrates imagines his jury saying: “Socrates, this time we will let you go, but on this condition: that you no longer spend your time in this investigation or in philosophy, and if you are caught doing so again you shall die.” Socrates’s reply is one of the most familiar in Western literature: “Men of Athens, I honor and love you, but I shall obey the god rather than you, and while I live and am able to continue, I shall never give up philosophy or stop exhorting you and pointing out the truth to any of you whom I may meet.”74 In Acts 4:19-20 and then even more precisely in Acts 5:29, Peter issues a similar clarification. Recall that in the first setting, when the Sanhedrin is unable to punish the apostles, for fear of repercussions with the people of Jerusalem, that body employs the Athenian strategy. They reason, “In order to keep [the news of the apostles’ power] from spreading even further among the people, let us warn them not to speak any more to anyone in this name.” So, “after summoning [the apostles], they ordered them to completely cease proclaiming or teaching in the name of Jesus.” Peter answers with a Socratic refusal. “You judge whether it is righteous before God to obey you rather than to obey God. For we are unable to cease telling of the things we have seen and heard.” A chapter later, the Sanhedrin recalls its former gag order: “We ordered you not to teach in this name, and look, you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you wish to lay this man’s blood on us.” The apostles’ response is again Socratic: “It is necessary to obey God rather than humans.” In both passages, but particularly in the latter, verbal echoes are considerable. Luke uses the verb for persuasion (πείθω/πειθάρχω) and the comparative formula (μάλλον ἤ) that appear in the Apology, making the allusion unmistakable.75 Thus, like Paul, Peter is cast in a very Socratic, and therefore a very philosophical and virtuous mold. While Luke’s allusions to Socrates certainly add value to Peter and John’s bold speech in a general way, it is important to note the specific strategy at work here. These are uneducated, provincial, rural fishermen. While traditions about Socrates surely made their way beyond the classroom walls and into general educated conversation, Peter and John as illiterate and uneducated men should not have had access to them. For the same reason that the Sanhedrin is surprised to see them display παρρησία, it would be outlandish to think that they are here quoting Socrates from books they have read. Therefore, the function of these parallels cannot be to suggest that Peter and John had somehow learned philosophical lore despite their lack of education. Rather, Luke imports Socrates in chapters 4 and 5 to validate the apostles’ virtue. If educated people can manage to speak boldly

148

Illiterate Apostles

after they have engaged in philosophical training and heard stories about worthy exemplars, Peter and John may even exceed their accomplishment by achieving the virtue without the education. The important point, however, is that their παρρησία is stamped with a Socratic seal of approval.

Conclusion Luke’s apologetic trading card is now on the table. We began Part 2 of this study with the simple question, why does an author like Luke include a detail like the apostles’ illiteracy in his book? Luke generally throws a very positive light on the early Christians, but a lack of education would have had negative associations for the very audience whom he seems most desirous to please. In light of the apologetic strategies that Justin and Athenagoras employed to defend against criticisms of Christian illiteracy, I  have suggested that, facing a similar criticism, Luke has characterized Peter and John as “ἀγράμματοι  . . . και ἰδιῶται” ’ so that they may stand in for the lot of uneducated common Christians who bear the brunt of this criticism. Like Justin and Athenagoras would do later, Luke admits that the pagan critics accurately assume low early Christian education levels. Also like Justin and Athenagoras, however, he is not inclined to accept the implication of that pagan criticism. Because of a close association between education and virtue in educated circles, the critics would have supposed that the early Christians’ lack of education would handicap them morally. To answer and refute this assumed implication of Christian illiteracy, Luke has his uneducated apostles display noble παρρησία, the virtual equivalent of courage in the defiant Cynic–Stoic ethos established by early Imperial philosophy. The narrative nuance with which Luke subtly plays out his argument is impressive. The members of the Sanhedrin are the only audience for Peter’s virtuous boldness. They must therefore play two roles. First, the Sanhedrin plays the part of the tyrant—the dangerous, powerful, repressive foil against which the apostles can showcase their defiance—and for this role they are well-suited. Their dangerous power has been clearly signaled within the narrative through their instigation of Jesus’s crucifixion. Their unwillingness to profit from the frank criticism that is described by the term παρρησία also fits them for this role. As the Athenian jury at Socrates’s trial and the tyrants who appear in the works of Hellenistic and Roman historians, the Sanhedrin refuses to recognize their flaws and remain blind to the realities surrounding them. Thus, the Sanhedrin is well-characterized in its role as the obstinate foil to Peter and John’s παρρησία. Because they are the sole audience to Peter and John’s defense, the members of the council must also wear a second hat in this story. This second function is discharged very simply and might go unnoticed by anyone not attuned to the criticism Luke addresses. When these uneducated fishermen stand up in their midst and deliver a baiting and accusatory defense that favors Socrates and would be at home in the philosophical circles of the Roman aristocracy, this group of Judean aristocrats momentarily suspend their otherwise uninterrupted opposition in

5. The Virtue of Παρρησία

149

order to marvel. This brief expression of astonishment, out of place in the character of the tyrant, imports the assumptions of Luke’s critic into the scene. Like the Sanhedrin members, these educated pagans would be utterly shocked to see rustics display virtue. Two uneducated fishermen seem almost to imitate Socrates, their principled defiance is so close to the textbook. The critic or the Christian audience that knows of the criticism sees this scene through the Sanhedrin’s surprised eyes. Thus, just as he has represented the common, uneducated Christians in Peter and John, Luke here uses the Sanhedrin to represent the skeptical, educated critic. The source of the apostles’ astonishing courage shall occupy us next.

Notes 1 The Stoics generally held to a relative equality of the sexes. For the texts and a brief discussion, see M. L. Colish, The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, vol. 1, Stoicism in Classical Latin Literature (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1985), 36–37. On the education of women, see S. Guettel Cole, “Could Greek Women Read and Write?” in Reflections of Women in Antiquity, ed. H. P. Foley (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1981), 219–246. On women and philosophy, see S. Blundell, Women in Ancient Greece (London: British Museum Press, 1995), 181–187. On images of women in the literary and philosophical writings of men, see E. Cantarella, Pandora’s Daughters: The Role and Status of Women in Greek and Roman Antiquity, trans. M. B. Fant (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 52–76; and S. B. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (New York: Schocken Books, 1975), 93–119. 2 ταῦτα δ’ ὁ φιλόσοφος παρεγγυᾷ λόγος (40.23-24). Citations of Musonius Rufus are from the text of Cora E. Lutz, Musonius Rufus: The Roman Socrates (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1947). On the relationship between education and virtue, see my discussion in Chapter 3. 3 Of course, I use the term “standard” loosely here. The definition and list of the virtues was widely discussed. For example, Plutarch, St. rep. 1034C, juxtaposes two lists of the virtues from the same Stoic author. In one place, Plutarch claims, “Zeno admits several different virtues, as Plato does, namely prudence (φρόνησις), courage (ἀνδρεία), moderation (σωφροσύνη), and justice (δικαοσύνη).” However, Plutarch points out, Zeno later unifies the virtues under the single virtue of φρόνησις, defining courage, moderation, and justice as prudence in matters pertaining to endurance, choice, and distribution, respectively. I call σωφροσύνη, δικαιοσύνη, and ἀνδρεία “standard” because they appear on almost all of these lists. 4 Ancient philosophers debated as to whether virtues were gender-specific. Rufus himself maintains that the virtues are unified and applicable to both genders equally. However, it is clear from his explication of this conviction that the practical outcome varies with gender. For example, a woman’s household management is the proper female parallel to a man’s participation in civic affairs, both under the head of being just (δίκαιος). On specifically female virtues in antiquity, see, for example, V. Lambropoulou, “Some Pythagorean female virtues,” in Women in Antiquity: New Assessments, ed. R. Hawley and B. Levick (New York: Routledge, 1995), 122–134. 5 Lutz, Musonius Rufus, 40.35–42.5. 6 Legatio 11.

150

Illiterate Apostles

7 2 Apol. 10.5. 8 In Leg. 11, Athenagoras juxtaposes Christian fortitude to the inferior ethics of those who make syllogisms and dissect grammar. These philosophers resemble the Stoics, but it is difficult to be precise. Justin contrasts his martyred ἰδιῶται to the first-generation followers of Socrates in 2 Apol. 10.5, and he emphasizes that none of these died for his cause in the way uneducated Christians were dying for their allegiance to Christ. 9 On the low opinion the educated held of the uneducated in Greco-Roman antiquity, see Chapters 2 and 3. 10 Some commentators correctly translate παρρησία as “boldness,” but then name erudition and a rabbinic grasp of Psalm 118, rather than boldness, as the cause of the Sanhedrin’s wonder. F. F. Bruce is illustrative: “Peter and John’s examiners were surprised that, though [they were] untrained . . .…‘people of the land,’ they could sustain a theological disputation with members of the supreme court” (The Acts of the Apostles: Greek Text with Introduction and Commentary [3rd ed., Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1990]), 152–153. M.-E. Boismard and A. Lemouille give a similar reading: “[Peter and John] do not understand the scriptures; they are not regulars in the rabbinic schools and should therefore be incapable of discussing and appealing to the passages of scripture as the rabbis do. But voila: right before their eyes, Peter tosses out a passage from Psalm 118 in order to confound them!” (Les Actes des Deux Apotres, Vol. II: Le sens de recits [Paris: Libraire Lecoffre, 1990]), 152–153. A recent version of this argument appears in Chris Keith, “The Oddity of the Reference to Jesus in Acts 4:13b,” JBL 134 (2015) 791–811. Keith writes, “They [i.e., the Sanhedrin] are surprised that Peter speaks with παρρησία specifically vis-à-vis interpretation of the Scriptures (Acts 3:12–26).” (p. 795) 11 For an extended discussion and definition of the term παρρησία, see Chapter 4. 12 Of course, definitions varied not only by period, but among the schools as well. The Stoics, Sphaerus and Chrysippus, acknowledge the place of fear but emphasize endurance and persistence in their definitions (Cicero, Tusc. Disp. 4.53). Zeno of Critium maintains this emphasis, identifying courage as “prudence . . . in matters requiring endurance” (Plutarch, On Moral Virtue 440E–441D). When Stobaeus lists Stoic virtues, he identifies courage as “the science of things that are fearful and not fearful and neither of these” (2.59.4-60.2 = SVF 3.262). 13 Aristotle EN 3.6.6-10. For the definition of courage within the Golden Mean, see also 2.6.2 and 2.7.2. 14 W. T. Schmid, On Manly Courage: A Study of Plato’s Laches (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992), xv. 15 This does not, of course, preclude the attribution of courage to women—even in the classical period. See, for example, Sophocles, Electra 983 and Aristotle, Pol. 1260A.22. 16 Enemies of the Roman Order (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), 53. 17 Diss. 4.7.15-16. For additional examples, see also Diss. 3.22.105: 3.24.29; 3.24.117; 3.26.35-36; In Diss. 4.12.8-9 Epictetus says, similarly, “What kind of tyrant inspires fear, what kind of disease, or poverty, or obstacle?” He does on occasion also illustrate the same point by envisioning the murderous advance of a soldier. For example, in Diss. 4.7.27-28 he claims that one who is reconciled to death will care not that it comes more quickly at the hand of a soldier. Notice, though, that he speaks in the next sentence of the tyrant. 18 Enemies of the Roman Order, 69. For an extended discussion of the social phenomenon of anti-tyranny and opposition to Empire, see the entire chapter entitled “Philosophers” (46–94).

5. The Virtue of Παρρησία

151

19 Ages. 27.4.5. 20 A few texts indicate that along with the courage to speak, a philosophical education would have been needed to provide the student with other more technical skills necessary for the proper exercise of παρρησία. Timing is an especially important factor, as mistimed criticism can end in tragedy (see Chapter 4). In Antiquities 16, Josephus recounts the forced silence of Herod’s reign, in which παρρησία has been specifically outlawed. When the courageous soldier Tiro breaks this silence and exercises παρρησία, he surprisingly gains an audience with Herod himself; however, after early promise this meeting devolves toward Tiro’s rejection and ultimate execution. While it is heroic, then, Tiro’s παρρησία is flawed and Josephus traces his failure to a misestimation of timing that comes from his lack of education: Tiro is ἀπαίδευτος (16.385.2-3). 21 Diss. 4.1.128. 22 Diss. 4.1.132-36. 23 Lutz, Musonius Rufus, “That Women Too Should Study Philosophy” (42.3–5). 24 The formidable shadow of Socrates was cast over all subsequent periods of ancient philosophy. A glimpse of this influence was offered in Chapter 3 during the discussion of philosophical education under the empire. Indeed, the turf wars between the various Hellenistic schools were often fought on the grounds of his memory. The Stoics made early claims and ultimately traced their lineage to Socrates through Antisthenes and then Zeno. The Cynics later tapped into this Stoic line and emulated the Socratic irony and caustic dialectic. The Skeptics eventually traced their own roots to Socrates’s famous pronouncement of his own ignorance (“The single thing I know is that I know nothing”). Perhaps because they had been beaten to the claim, perhaps out of a true disagreement in principle, the Epicureans and Peripatetics traced their identity otherwise. Occasionally, the members of these two schools oppose or disparage Socrates, but in the broad literature of antiquity it is difficult to find dissenters from the pervasive reverence. See A. A. Long, “Socrates in Hellenistic Philosophy,” Classical Quarterly NS 38 (1988): 150–171. For a brief discussion, see also K. Doring, Exemplum Socratis: Studien zur Sokratesnachwirkung in der kynischstoischen Popularphilosophie der fruhen Kaiserzeit und im fruhen Christentum, Hermes Einzelschriften 42 (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1979),1–17. 25 Dem. 11.4. 26 Epictetus, Diss. 1.29.18.204; 2.2.15.2-3; 3.23.21.4-5; Ench. 53.4.1-2; Plutarch, De tranq. anim. 475.E.3–4; Dio Cassius, HR 61.15.4.3-4; 10.S155.13; Olympiodorus, in Alc. 153.19-20; Simplicius, in Epict 138.6; Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 4.4.11.80.4.1; Origen, CC 8.8.4. T. Baumeister, “Anytos und Meletos konnen mich zwar toten,” Platonismus und Christentum, ed. H. D. Blume and F. Mann, Jahrbuch fur Antike und Christentum (Munster Westfalen: Aschendorfsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1983), 58–63. 27 The only occurrence of the term φιλόσοφος in Luke-Acts is in Acts 17:18, where Luke describes the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. 28 The term αἵρεσις appears six times in Acts, never in Luke. It describes the two major sects within first-century Judaism. The narrator applies it to the Sadducees (5:17). Paul uses it for the Pharisees (15:5 and 26:5), interestingly calling them “the most exacting school of our religion” (ή ἀκριβεστάτη αἵρεσις τής ήμετέρας θρησκείας). The other three times, it is applied to the Christians, but in each case, it is manifestly the label used by outsiders. The Jewish prosecutor Tertullus calls Paul “the ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes” (προτοστάτη τε τῆς τῶν Ναζωραίων αἱρέσεως—24:5).

152

29 30 31 32 33 34

35 36 37 38 39

40 41

42 43 44 45

46 47

48

Illiterate Apostles In response to Tertullus, Paul terms his group “The Way” (ή ὁδός) but admits that his accusers call them a school (ἣν λέγουσιν αἵρεσιν—24:14). Finally, the Jewish leaders of Rome want more information on “this sect” (αὕτη ή αἵρεσις) that everyone is opposing (28:22). Luke clearly rejects the label for the young Christian church. The reasons for this phenomenon are complex, involving Luke’s placement of Christianity relative to Judaism within God’s plan—issues that are not germane to the present study. See Resp. 420C-422B; 462B-464A; Leg. 679B-C; 684C-D; 744B-746C; 757A. Met. 1.88. Met. 1.101–06. Met. 1.120–24 (houses and farms); 1.125–27 (arms); and 1.127ff. (impiety and evil). Met. 1.129. J. Wettstein, Novum Testamentum Graecum II (Amsterdam: Dommerian, 1752) was the first to recognize this connection (470), which has subsequently received considerable attention. For recent studies, see L. T. Johnson, The Literary Function of Possessions in Luke-Acts (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1977), 2–5; L. T. Johnson, The Acts of the Apostles (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1992), 61–62; and J. Dupont, “Community of Goods in the Early Church,” in The Salvation of the Gentiles, trans. J. R. Keating (New York: Paulist Press, 1967). Vit. 8.10. ΕΝ 9.8. Andromache 376–377. See J. Dupont, “Community of Goods,” 90. The LXX translator has rendered leb of 1 Chron. 12:39 as ψυχή. Luke’s addition of καρδία may reflect knowledge of this decision, but need not. Καρδία and ψυχή are a common tandem in the LXX (e.g. Deut. 4:29, 6:6, and 11:18). See J. Dupont, “Community of Goods,” 96. Vit. 5.20. See also Euripides, Orestes 1046. He attributes the notion that “two become one” in friendship to Pythagoras. In de Amicitia 21.81, Cicero refers to the practical merger of two souls into one “ut efficiat paene unum [animum] ex duobus.” Then in the same treatise, he speaks of one soul being formed from many (“unus quasi animus fiat ex pluribus” 25.92). NE 1168B/9.8.2. Mor. 967E. Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 1.7–8; Philo, Life of Moses 1.21; Josephus, Life 8–9. Johnson, Acts, 115. Johnson rightly distinguishes the Sermon from the “moralists’ ” teaching by its assumption that the blessed will be rooted in the divine. This distinction is not important to the present project, however, as I am merely demonstrating the presence of popular philosophical themes in the life and teachings of Luke’s Jesus. For references to other shared meals in the Gospel of Luke, see 5:29; 7:36–50; 11:37–53. For other examples from this tradition, see Xenophon’s Symposium; Plutarch’s Table Talk; and the Jewish Letter of Aristeas. A less formal, extended dinner conversation appears in Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae. This is Jesus’s twist on the philosophical topic. Humility was a virtue only among the Christians, as it was categorized as a vice by the moralists. See Epictetus Discourses 1.9.10 and 3.24.56.

5. The Virtue of Παρρησία

153

49 Matthew and Mark have only the meal; John has the discourse, with only a slight hint that there was a meal. See Mt. 26:20–29; Mk 14:12–25; and Jn 13–17. 50 I rely here on A. J. Malherbe’s article, “ ‘Not in a Corner’: Early Christian Apologetic in Acts 26.26,” in Paul and the Popular Philosophers (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 150–163. As is obvious from the title, Prof. Malherbe suggests that these philosophical parallels serve Luke’s apologetic purpose. His work initially alerted me to similar possibilities in Acts 4. 51 See A. J. Malherbe, “Not in a Corner,” 152–154. 52 Acts 20:20. Epictetus, Diss. 3.23.33-34; Dio Or. 13.31; 77/78.37-38. 53 Acts 20:20. Among orators, see Demosthenes 1.16; 4.51; Isocrates 8.41. Among philosophers, ps-Plato Clitophon 407A; Dio Chrysostom Or. 11.27; 13.16; Plutarch quo modo 60C. 54 Acts 20:31. Dio Chrysostom Or. 77/78.37-38; Plutarch On Listening to Lectures 4344A; Quo modo 70D-71D. 55 Lucian, Pise. 35–36; Dem. 6–8. 56 For the prominence of exempla and imitation in philosophical education, see the discussion in Chapter 3 and the brief treatment in section 5.2.b of the present chapter. For condemnation of money-hungry teachers, see Dio Chrysostom Or. 3.14–15; Lucian Nig. 25–26. 57 Johnson, Acts, 366. The “outsider” opinion is yet to be revealed in the series of trials that span succeeding chapters of Acts. 58 A. J. Malherbe, “Not in a Corner,” 154–163. 59 A. J. Malherbe, “Not in a Corner,” 155. 60 Pseudo-Socrates Epistles 6.1; 9.3; Dio Chrysostom Or. 66.25; 77/78.41; pseudo-Lucian The Cynic 5. 61 Acts 26:16 repeats the divine commission at Paul’s conversion; in 26:22, Paul refers to assistance from God as he has spoken in the past; and 26:28 has Paul praying to God for Festus and all the rest of the audience. See A. J. Malherbe, “Not in a Corner,” 160–161. 62 Malherbe, “Not in a Corner,” suggests that Paul’s παρρησία and the abrupt conversion he hopes for Festus also contribute to a philosophical portrait of the apostle (160– 163). About παρρησία, see the discussion below. As for the rapid conversion, I am not convinced that this would have prompted the ancient reader to perceive Paul as philosophical. 63 The literature on Acts 17:16–34 is enormous. Recent works on its accuracy to the first- or second-century philosophical setting include D. L. Balch, “The Areopagus Speech: An Appeal to the Stoic Historian Posidonius against Later Stoics and the Epicureans,” in Greeks, Romans, and Christians, ed. D. Balch and M. White (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 52–79; J. Neyrey, “Acts 17, Epicureans, and Theodicy,” Greeks, Romans, and Christians, ed. D. Balch and M. White (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 118–134. 64 Johnson, Acts, writes, “What impresses every reader with even the slightest knowledge of Hellenistic culture is how cunningly Luke has got everything right” (318). Johnson then names four aspects of the narrative that illustrate its accuracy: (1) the statues and shrines that represent Athenian piety and superstition; (2) the ubiquity of philosophers ready to debate; (3) the skepticism of Epicureans and guarded openness of Stoics regarding religious claims; (4) the traditional portrayal of Socrates, charged with introducing “foreign gods” and tried before the Areopagus. He concludes, “Luke gets all of this as vibrantly as any sketch in Lucian of Samosata” (319).

154

Illiterate Apostles

65 At a deeper level, educational culture is summoned by Paul’s general openness to pagan religious and philosophical expression. While he decries and even ridicules the details of pagan practice, Paul welcomes the outlines of deity described by an altar to “an unknown God” (17.23) and by the quotation from Aratus (17.28). See Johnson, Acts, 318–320. 66 One example of a scholar who credits Luke with a keen understanding of issues in contemporary philosophy is D. Balch. The title of his article suggests as much: “The Areopagus Speech: An Appeal to the Stoic Historian Posidonius against Later Stoics and Epicureans.” Balch maintains that Paul’s speech directly enters “contemporary philosophical debates . . . concerning providence in nature, debates concerning providence in history, and debates concerning whether or not the divine is to be worshiped by images in temples.” He also suggests that it does so in a fashion similar to that of Dio Chrysostom in his Olympic Oration 12. If Balch is correct, it obviously supports my own thesis. However, even without such sophistication, the reference to Stoics and Epicureans places Paul and Luke’s Christians in the midst of the educated debates of his day. 67 Allusions to Socrates in Acts 17 were recognized at least as early as the 1860s. See Cadbury, The Making of Luke-Acts (London: SPCK, 1927), 243. More recently, see E. Plumacher, Lukas als hellenistischer Schriftsteller, SUNT 9 (Gottingen: Vandenoeck & Ruprecht, 1972), 19, 97–98 and K. Doring, Exemplum Socratis. 68 See Plato, Apol. 19D, where Socrates characterizes his customary mode of philosophical conversation as διαλεγόμενος. 69 While the use of the term δαιμόνια suggests this allusion, the charge against Paul in Acts and against Socrates in Xenophon and Plato are not precisely parallel. For Luke, Paul “is a preacher of foreign deities” (ξένων δαιμόνιων . . . κατάγγελος—Acts 17:18); according to Xenophon, Socrates “introduces other new deities” (ἕτερα καινὰ δαιμόνια εἰσφέρωv—Mem. 1.1.1.3-5 and similarly Mem. 1.1.2.6–3.1; Apol. 10.2– 11.1; 12.1-2); and for Plato, Socrates “believes in other new deities (νομίζει . . . έτερα δαιμόνια καινά—Apol. 24Β)”. 70 Latin: “illo fonte et capite Socrate” (De Or. 1.42). 71 De Oratore 1.42 and 3.61. 72 Aristotle’s student, Aristoxenus wrote a critical biography of Socrates, now unavailable to us, in which he claimed that Socrates was a bigamist and that Archelaus was his lover (Ferguson, Socrates: A Source Book, 213). These charges were repeated by Callisthenes, Demetrius of Phalerum, Satirus, and Hieronymus of Rhodes. See Athenaeus Deip. 13.555D. Among the Epicureans, on the other hand, “a tradition of hostility to Socrates was established that is virulent even by the standards of ancient polemic.” See A. A. Long, “Socrates in Hellenistic Philosophy.” 73 My interest is in the narrative composition of the Sanhedrin as a dangerous and powerful body against which Peter and John can demonstrate παρρησία that fits the description current in early Imperial philosophical circles. Many have written on Luke’s portrayal of the Jewish leaders and its motivations. The vast literature is schematized conveniently and well by L. Wills, “The Depiction of the Jews in Acts,” JBL 110 (1991): 631–634. 74 Apology 29D. 75 Plato Apol. 29D reads, “πείσομαι δὲ μᾶλλον τῷ θεῷ ἢ ὑμῖν.” Acts 5:29 reads, “πειθαρχεῖν δεῖ θεῷ μᾶλλον ἢ ἀνθρώποις.”

Chapter 6 T H E “ E DU C AT IO N ” O F T H E A P O ST L E S

At last, the trade has been made. Though Peter and John lack formal education, they have somehow summoned the courage to speak with a παρρησία that is usually the province of the very educated. This has raised their accusers’ eyebrows and prompted them to pause and wonder at the sight of uneducated virtue. In this way, Luke has explained the element of surprise θαυμάζω signifies. This much would have sufficed to complete the rhetorical trade that was made by several of the early Christian apologists we have surveyed. As Luke’s critics would have charged, the apostles lack the education that should have been required to produce virtue, but the apostles have exhibited virtue nonetheless. It is finished. Luke has successfully discharged his apologetic duties at this point. Luke’s audience could also be satisfied with the way this apologetic purpose elucidates the various elements of the narrative. Now versed in the social and philosophical phenomena described by the term παρρησία, you and I  can comprehend what at least some in Luke’s audience would already have known: that uneducated provincial fisherman on trial before powerful Judean aristocrats should cower, but instead wax courageous. Additionally, the inability of those powerful aristocrats to discipline the brash fisherman now makes sense in light of the apostles’ popularity. The apologetic point even explains the Sanhedrin’s harsh treatment of Peter and John, since such bold defendants need tyrannical accusers for their virtue to shine forth; and it accounts for the defiant nature of Peter’s defense in 4:8-12, as he uses the kind of speech that would have been lauded within the anti-tyrannical ethos of his day. The explicit claim that the two apostles are uneducated men echoes the later criticism of early Christian illiteracy, and Luke’s Socratic allusions make sense to those who recognize them, in light of Socrates’s prominence as the foremost exemplar of just this sort of defiant courage in the philosophical schools of the first and second centuries. Both author and some elements of his audience, then, might gladly move on and agree that a fair trade had been made and a fair story told. Yet once we have described the social dynamic and the rhetorical trade, two significant elements of this episode remain unexplained. First, Luke prefaces Peter’s speech in 4.8 with an introductory formula that is longer than necessary. In it, Luke names not only the speaker but also a curious other character that plays a mysterious role in Peter’s audacity. Indeed, it is only after he has been “filled

156

Illiterate Apostles

with the Holy Spirit” (πλησθεὶς πνεύματος ἁγίoυ) that Peter speaks so boldly. Additionally, immediately after his speech, after the Sanhedrin has marveled at uneducated παρρησία, that august body ventures a guess at how these two fishermen have pulled it off:  “they’d been with Jesus.” (4:13) As bookends to Peter’s astonishing speech, these two details supply a theological explanation for the apostles’ unschooled virtue. We cannot truly complete our work with Luke’s project until we have understood these two claims. By this point in his two-volume story, Luke has amply acquainted his audience with the Holy Spirit as a character. The Holy Spirit plays a prominent role, not only in the Gospel of Luke, where it appears explicitly thirteen times,1 but also in the book of Acts, where the name shows up seven times in the first two chapters.2 Additionally, the character will remain prominent right up to the Apostle Paul’s climactic stint under house arrest in the city of Rome (chapter 28), being named thirty-four times between Acts 4:8 and the final paragraph of the book.3 In Luke’s world, the Holy Spirit clearly powers this eyebrow raising speech we have called παρρησία. The latter half of the Sanhedrin’s response to the apostles has also yet to be explained satisfactorily. Unlike Luke’s ancient audience and unlike us, the Judean authorities have of course not heard Luke’s narrator attribute Peter and John’s moxy to the Holy Spirit, so they speculate about this marvel’s cause. Their best guess is a recollection:  the apostles’ παρρησία suddenly reminds the Judean leaders where they have seen these men before: Peter and John were with Jesus (σὺν τῷ ᾽Ιησοῦ ἦσαν). An attentive audience is left to ask what prompted this connection. The presence of these additional elements suggests that the text’s purpose is not exhausted with his mundane apologetic trade. Experienced readers of Luke-Acts will hardly be surprised at this. Scholars have speculated for two centuries as to the purpose of Luke-Acts. The fact that they have had fodder for debate and reason to speak of a Lukan theology indicates that the narrative is not a singularly focused apologetic piece. Rather, Luke subtly knits his apologetic purpose into a larger, theologically driven story. Luke’s inclusion of the Holy Spirit and Jesus reminds us that the larger narrative of Luke-Acts has purposes that go beyond sociological and philosophical explanations. By tracing the lines that lead to their appearance here, we will better understand the encompassing theological themes in which the apostles’ appearance before the Sanhedrin participates.

The Power of the Spirit In Acts 4:8, Peter has been filled with the Holy Spirit (πλησθεὶς πνεύματος ἁyίoυ) before he speaks, a distinction that sets his words apart as significant and perhaps even prophetic.4 Hellenistic philosophy by no means excluded religious and theological aspects. However, when Luke names the Holy Spirit as the empowering agent of Peter’s speech (4:8), he is asserting a specifically Jewish and Christian theological element into the discussion.

6. The “Education” of the Apostles

157

The Holy Spirit and Prophecy Characters who speak prophetically in Luke-Acts do so, almost without exception, with the recognized assistance of the Holy Spirit. Some characters speak, as Peter does in Acts 4:8, only after being filled with the Holy Spirit. Luke uses this metaphor of filling several times in the two volumes, always as a way to mark off an important speech or speaker, and usually to identify a prophet or prophecy. The first instance of this pattern occurs in Lk. 1:15, when an angel of the Lord announces to Zechariah that his son, John the Baptizer, “shall be filled with the Holy Spirit (πνεύματος ἁγίου πλησθήσεται) even from the time he is in his mother’s womb.” Still before his birth, John’s prophetic vocation is explicitly declared and compared to Elijah’s when the angel tells Zechariah that John will possess “the Spirit and power of Elijah” (1:17). It is not until thirty years later that we see the word of the Lord come to John in the wilderness (3:1-2), but the fact that he is filled with the Spirit before his birth identifies him as a prophet (1:76; 7:26). Additionally, both of John’s parents are filled with the Holy Spirit before they utter prophetic words that identify God’s work. When Mary greets Elizabeth, the unborn child leaps in her womb, and she is suddenly “filled with the Holy Spirit” (ἐπλήσθη πνεύματος ἁγίου) and pronounces blessing on Mary and her child-to-be:  “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?” (1:42-43). Our narrator also tells us that Zechariah has been “filled with the Holy Spirit” (έπλήσθη πνεύματος άγίου) before he speaks in the Temple, and then labels his speech “prophecy” (έπροφήευσεν—1:67). Jesus himself ventures out into the wilderness only after the descent of the Holy Spirit upon him (3:22), so that when he is “led by the Spirit” (ἤγετο ἐν τῷ πνεύματι) into the wilderness, he has already become “full of the Holy Spirit (πλήρης πνεύματος άγιου—4:1)”. He then returns to Nazareth “in the power of the Spirit” (ἐν τῷ δυνάμει τοῦ πνεύματος) and announces that the prophet Isaiah anticipated him and his work: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me . . . .” He follows this announcement by reiterating his point, claiming that he, as a prophet, is not recognized in his own town (4:24) and then comparing himself to Elijah and Elisha (4:26-27). In the Gospel of Luke, then, those who have been filled with the Spirit are prophets, or at least utter prophetic words. In the book of Acts as well, the Spirit fills those characters who will speak the word of God. In the early chapters of Luke’s Gospel, John the Baptizer has foretold to his audience by the Jordan River, that Jesus “will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (3:16), and the first two chapters of Acts narrate Jesus’s reiteration of that promise and its fulfillment on Pentecost. Acts 1:4-8 recalls Jesus’s pre-ascension exhortation to his disciples to stay in Jerusalem and wait “for the Father’s promise.” He explains, “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now” (1:5). In his description of the event, the narrator pictures rushing winds and tongues of fire (2:2-3), but ultimately summarizes the event’s effect upon the disciples in familiar terms:  “They were all filled with the Holy Spirit (ἐπλήσθησαν πάντες

158

Illiterate Apostles

πνεύματος) and began to speak in other languages” (2:4). After this, the promised Spirit becomes associated with belief and baptism. On Pentecost, Peter exhorts the enthralled crowds in Jerusalem, “repent and be baptized every one of you . . . and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (2:38). He continues, “For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him” (2:39). Thus, the Holy Spirit has become at Pentecost the promised gift, not only to the prophetic few, but to every believer. While this general gift of the Spirit to all believers may seem to de-emphasize the close association between the Holy Spirit and prophecy, after Peter’s pneuma moment in Acts 4, Luke continues to identify both Stephen and Paul as prophetic speakers by describing them as “filled with the Holy Spirit.” The apostles urge the church to choose deacons who are “full of the Spirit and wisdom” (πλήρεις πνεύματος καὶ σοφίας—6:3), Stephen, certifies their obedience. Stephen is initially described as a man who is “full of faith and the Holy Spirit” (6:5), and his powerful speech before the large Jerusalem crowd exhibits “wisdom” and “Spirit” (σοφία and πνεῦμα—6:10); and finally, when he has finished his abrasive speech recounting the history of God’s salvation and the resistance of some Jewish people to it, Stephen is “full of the Holy Spirit” (πλήρης πνεύματος ἁγίου) and sees the heavens open (7:55). Like Peter’s defense in 4:8-12, Stephen’s speech is confrontational. He even accuses his audience of opposing the Holy Spirit (7:51). Thus, while Luke does not explicitly label Stephen a prophet within the narrative, he fits the description of a prophet because his speech is combative and issues from a character who is full of the Holy Spirit. The Apostle Paul is the third main character in the book of Acts whom the Holy Spirit fills. At the time of Paul’s dramatic conversion in Damascus, God summons a disciple from that city named Ananias in a vision and sends him to Paul. Once Ananias has arrived, he lays his hands on Paul and, lo and behold, Paul is suddenly “filled with the Holy Spirit” (πλησθῇς πνεύματος ἁγίου—9:17). Then the newly baptized Paul speaks. “Immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, ‘He is the Son of God’ ” (9:20). In chapter thirteen, Paul exhibits a different aspect of the prophet’s vocation, when he opposes the magician Elymas. Having been “filled with the Holy Spirit” (πλησθεὶς πνεύματος ἁγίου), Paul calls Elymas a “son of the devil” and the “enemy of all righteousness,” pronouncing divine judgment on the magician. “The hand of the Lord is against you,” Paul proclaims, “and you will be blind for a while, unable to see the sun” (13:11). Thus, both in his proclamation of Jesus as Messiah and his opposition to satanic representatives, Paul carries out the vocation of the prophet who has been filled with the Holy Spirit. It is clear that when Peter is filled with the Holy Spirit in Acts 4:8, he joins a company of such Spirit-filled prophets as Zechariah, Elizabeth, John the Baptizer, Jesus himself, Stephen, and Paul. The Holy Spirit and παρρησία During his ministry in Galilee, Luke’s Jesus predicts that his followers will experience formidable opposition when they carry the gospel into the world. Jesus

6. The “Education” of the Apostles

159

describes this opposition explicitly just after he has envisioned the apocalyptic woes that will befall the earth. In this passage, Jesus assures his faithful that they will not be alone in these trials. Before all these things, they shall lay their hands upon you (ἐπιβαλοῦσιν) and pursue you, handing you over to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be ushered before kings and governors because of my name. This will provide you with an occasion for testimony. Therefore, purpose in your hearts not to be worried about giving a defense (άτολογηθήναι). For I  shall give to you a mouth and wisdom which all who array themselves against you will be unable to withstand or refute. (ἀντειπεῖν— Luke 21:12-15)

Several elements in this speech point to Acts 4. First, these words appear in the immediate context of the incident in Luke 20, which, we have already recognized, are structurally and verbally parallel to Acts 4.5 Second, when Jesus envisions violent capture in which the pursuers will “lay hands upon” the apostles, he uses the same term (ἐπιβάλλω) that describes the Judean authorities’ incarceration of Peter and John in Acts 4. In the latter scene, “the priests and the temple guard and the Sadducees . . . threw their hands on them (ἐπέβαλον) and placed them in a cell until the next day” (4:3). Third, the use of the verb ἀπολογέομαι evokes images of a trial like the one in which Peter and John stand in 4:5-12. And fourth, Jesus describes the inability of the apostles’ opponents to refute them, using the same verb (άντιλέγω) that describes the Sanhedrin members’ frustration in Acts 4: As they observed the apostles’ παρρησία, they have designs on retaliation, but “seeing the man who had been healed standing with them, they had no way of answering back” (οὐδὲν εἶχον ἀντειπεῖν—4:14). These verbal and thematic connections suggest that the author of Acts 4 has this prior prediction in view. As Jesus foretold, Peter has been given a mouth to speak in his defense, and the opponents have been unable to refute him. Another passage suggests that the Holy Spirit will carry out Jesus’s promise to support his followers when they face opposition. In a saying that is similar in content to the speech in Luke 21, earlier in the Gospel Jesus also portrays the future opposition to the apostles’ ministry. In that prior context, Jesus explicitly connects this supply of words and apologetic readiness to the work of the Holy Spirit. He says, “Whenever they haul you in before the synagogues, the rulers, and the authorities, do not worry how you will give a defense (ἀπολογήσεσθε) or what you will say. For the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what things you must say” (12:11-12). Thus, it hardly surprises us that Peter is prepared for this. Under the fire of the Sanhedrin’s questions and in his effort to give a defense, Peter gets his strength from the Holy Spirit in Acts 4:8. Along with marking off Peter’s defense as prophetic speech, then, the presence of the Holy Spirit also signals that that defense fulfills Jesus’s own prophecy about his disciples. The term παρρησία is absent from both of Jesus’s predictions. However, while it is missing from the Gospel, it will become thematic in the narrative of the

160

Illiterate Apostles

Christians’ work throughout the book of Acts; what is more, παρρησία will also be explicitly connected to the presence of the Holy Spirit again after 4:8. In fact, this association appears immediately after the apostles escape unharmed from the Sanhedrin’s trial, when Peter and John report their success to the other Jerusalem Christians. Immediately, they all want to speak with παρρησία. The narrative proceeds from the apostles’ report to the Christians’ prayer, recounting opposition to God’s servants. “Now, Lord, look at the hearts [of your enemies] and grant to your servants to speak your word with all boldness (μετὰ παρρησίας πάσης λαλεῖν τὸν λόγον σου)”. And after they had prayed, the place in which they had gathered was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit (ἐπλήσθησαν .,. τοῦ ἁγίου πνεύματος) and began speaking the word of God boldly. (μετὰ παρρησίας—4:29-31)

Two significant points arise: first, in this passage the Christians themselves identify their own desire to speak with παρρησία. The label παρρησία never appears in the mouth or thoughts of Peter during the trial, but is attributed to his speech by the narrator through the Sanhedrin’s musings. Interestingly, though, in this prayer, the gathered church asks specifically that God will help them to speak “with all boldness” (μετά παρρησίας πάσης). More important than this, however, the Holy Spirit produces their παρρησία. The Christians do not ask to receive παρρησία through the Holy Spirit, but that is indeed the answer to their prayer. First, they are filled with the Holy Spirit (4:30); then, as a result, they begin speaking God’s word boldly (4:31). The same Holy Spirit that filled Peter before his bold speech now fills the rest of the company and supplies their bold speech. While this connection between the Holy Spirit and παρρησία may seem a small point, it is possible that Luke utilizes the Holy Spirit to substitute for the model of Jesus in the lives of post-Pentecost converts. If Jesus’s behavior in Luke 20 provided an example for Peter and John to follow in their own defense before the Sanhedrin (4:13b), it could not do the same for their proselytes, who have not travelled with Jesus. Since many of the disciples who pray for παρρησία in Acts 4:29-31 have not been with Jesus (συν τφ Ίησοΰ—4:13), they rely upon the Holy Spirit’s guidance and power to produce bold speech. This function of the Holy Spirit is particularly necessary for Paul, who had not witnessed Jesus’s ministry at all. Subsequent to Peter’s “defense” speech and the believers’ prayer in 4:29-31, seven of the eight occurrences of παρρησία or its verbal form, will describe the speech of Paul.6 Immediately upon receiving the Holy Spirit, Paul begins to speak in the Damascan synagogue (9:19-22), speech that Barnabas later characterizes as bold (ἐν Δαμάσκφ ἐπαρρησιάσατο—9:27). Again, during his first trip to Jerusalem, Paul “went in and out among them . . . speaking boldly (παρρησιαζόμενος) in the name of the Lord” (9:28). Therefore, when Paul is filled with the Holy Spirit, the immediate effect is bold speech that the author characterizes as παρρησία. This habit of speaking boldly endures throughout Paul’s ministry, whether the audience (or opposition) is Jewish, as in the synagogues of Pisidian Antioch (13:46),

6. The “Education” of the Apostles

161

Iconium (14:3), and Ephesus (19:8), or Gentile, as in the courtroom of Festus (26:26). In fact, Luke summarizes Paul’s ministry in Rome with the last words of Luke-Acts: “He lived in Rome two full years at his own expense and welcomed everyone who came to him, preaching the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness (μετὰ πάσης παρρησίας) and without hindrance” (28:30-31). Thus, as Peter, the other main player in the book of Acts, so Paul characteristically speaks with a παρρησία that was planted in him by the Holy Spirit. Returning to Acts 4, the defense speech of Peter takes on new significance in light of these discoveries. Along with being prophecy itself, Peter’s speech fulfills Jesus’s prophecy. It proves out the promise of Jesus that he and/or the Holy Spirit would supply the apostles with words and wisdom in their time of persecution. Peter has been hauled before the council of Judean leaders, just as Jesus had predicted, and he has spoken freely and well with words given and empowered by the Holy Spirit that has filled him. Additionally, the παρρησία that proved so pivotal to Luke’s apologetic strategy assumes a new force in its connection to the larger theme of empowered speech. The apostles’ noble παρρησία becomes connected to a larger whole. As the motive force for the propagation of the Gospel, the Holy Spirit empowers Peter and Paul to speak boldly, whether that bold speech functions to defend or to proselytize.

The Example of Jesus This author clearly fashions his tale with an ear for the narrative echo. Parallels abound in Luke-Acts, whether between Jesus and Peter or between Peter and Paul.7 The widespread recognition of this authorial tendency makes it all the more surprising that very clear parallels between Acts 4 and Luke 20 have generally not been recognized. This is especially odd since, as we shall see, Luke fashions them with especial care and precision. Returning to a parallel discussed in Chapter 5, Peter’s widely recognized resemblance to Socrates is left implicit and the likeness is to an outside philosophical source. In contrast, Luke’s narrator explicitly labels this parallel, in order to highlight the resemblance for his reader. Even the daft Sanhedrin members recognize that Peter and John have been with Jesus (σὺν τῷ Ἰησοῦ ἦσαν).8 This parallel between the life of Jesus and the leaders of the earliest church serves a specific purpose within Luke’s strategy to showcase the apostles’ παρρησία. When the Sanhedrin mention Peter’s and John’s company-keeping with Jesus in Acts 4:13, the ancient audience and latter-day reader should naturally recollect a very similar scene in Luke 20. There, the Judean rulers approach Jesus while he is teaching the people in the temple. In Acts 4, a similar group approaches Peter and John while they are speaking to the people in the temple. They ask Jesus, “By what authority do you do these things?” They ask Peter and John, “By what name and power did you do this thing?” Jesus evades the Sanhedrin members’ question and then, by telling the parable of the vineyard, cryptically accuses them of past

162

Illiterate Apostles

violence and of perpetrating his own impending death. Peter alters the Sanhedrin’s charge and then accuses them of perpetrating the crucifixion of Jesus. Jesus then cites Psalm 118 to undergird his claim, saying, “The stone that the builders rejected, this one has become the head of the comer.” Peter also cites Psalm 118, adapting it to his context by saying, “This man is the stone that has been rejected by you builders, that has become the head of the comer.” In Luke 20, the Judean rulers immediately attempt to lay hands on Jesus, but are prohibited by their sense of his immense popularity; in Acts 4, they have already laid hands on Peter and John, but are similarly prohibited from punishing the apostles by their sense that the apostles enjoy the favor of the people. The similarities between the two narratives are so extensive that it is not an exaggeration to say that they are formal mirrors of one another. The verbal connections between Luke 20 and Acts 4 illustrate the care with which Luke constructs this intra-textual allusion. Arraying the two scenes in parallel columns will help demonstrate the close verbal connection between our two texts. Luke 20 και ἐγένετο ἐν μίᾳ τῶν ἡμέρων διδάσκοντος αυτοῦ τὸν λαὸν ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ καὶ εὐαγγελισμένου ἐπέστησαν οἱ ἀρχιερεῖς καὶ οἱ γραμματεῖς σὺν τοῖς πρεσβυτέροις και εἶπον λέγοντες πρὸς αὐτὸν εἶπον ήμίν έν ποίᾳ ἐξουσίᾳ ταῦτα ποιεῖς ἢ τίς ἐστιν ό δούς σοι τὴν έξουσίᾳ ταῦτα ποιείς Jesus indicts the Jewish leaders by telling the parable of the vineyard. ἀκούσαντες δὲ εἶπον μὴ γένοιτο. ὁ ἐμβλέψας αὐτοῖς εἶπεν τί οὖν έστιν το γεγραμμένον τούτο’ λίθον ὃν ἀπεδοκίμασαν οἱ οἰκοδομοῦντες, οὗτος έγενήθη εις κεφαλήν ·γωνίας; καὶ έξήτησαν……. έπιβαλεΐν έπ’ αυτόν τάς χειρας έν αύτη τη ώρςι

Acts 4 λαλούντων δὲ αὐτῶν πρὸ τὸν λαόν [ἀνέβαινον ἐν τὸ ἱερόν — 3:1] έπέστησαν αὐτοῖς οἱ ἱερεῖς καὶ ὁ στρατηγὸς τοῦ ἱεροῦ και οί σαδδουκαῖοι και στήσαντες αυτούς έν τῷ μέσῳ ἐπυνθάνοντο ἐν ποια δυνάμει ἢ ἐν ποίῳ ὀνόματι ἐποιήσατε τούτο ὑμεῖς Peter indicts the Sanhedrin by accusing them of Jesus’s death. τότε Πέτρος…εἶπεν πρὸς αὐτούς οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ λίθος ὁ ἐξουθενήθεις ὑφ’ ὑμῶν τῶν οἰκοδόμων, ό γενόμενος εἰς κεφαλὴν γωνίας. [καὶ ἐπέβαλον αυτόῖς τὰς χεῖρας — 4:3]

Given the obvious differences between the two contexts and story lines, the verbal resonance and even precise repetition of some phrases rings significant. By the time the narrative reaches Acts 4:13, the careful listener to Luke-Acts has already

6. The “Education” of the Apostles

163

begun to experience the familiarity that prompts the Jewish leaders’ questions. They are raised by Jesus’s and Peter’s nearly identical defiant answers to their opponents, and in their similar citation of Psalm 118. The author confirms and rewards this attentive ear by including the Sanhedrin’s recognition. It is almost as if the answer key has been written in capital letters, in the very explicit claim that the disciples had been “with Jesus (σὺν τῷ ᾽Ιησοῦ).” By this narrative technique, the author gives his audience license to see the same resemblance the Sanhedrin sees: Peter and John look like Jesus. If the parallel construction prompts the recognition that these two had indeed followed Jesus, the next question concerns the narrative function of this reminiscence. What does Luke want his reader to do with the parallels, beyond seeing this master–disciple resemblance? In order to answer this question, it may help to review the process through which the audience has already been led. Luke has already characterized the Jerusalem church as a noble and almost philosophical community, whose members share all possessions in common. Now the leaders of that community have mustered a grand and philosophical παρρησία in their defiant response to the Judean aristocrats who oppose them. What is more, these leaders are explicitly called uneducated men, who therefore lack the normal source for such virtuous activity. This is such a heady claim that the educated listener may, at this point, ask the author to explain how, in fact, this turn of events has occurred. If the apostles have not attained their παρρησία through the normal channels of philosophical training, where have they gotten it? As an answer to this question, Luke offers the exemplary behavior of Jesus. The very clear parallels between the two events of Luke 20 and Acts 4 implies that Luke’s narrator links Peter and John’s bold and defiant speech directly to their association with Jesus. If the allusions to Socrates in Acts 4:19-20 and 5:29 validate the apostles’ παρρησία and speak its worth, this clear allusion to the life of Jesus as it is recorded in Luke 20 traces the source of that παρρησία. We have seen that the courage to speak before powerful officials should have required παιδεία and philosophical training and, additionally, that the training would have been comprised of both ἄσκησις and imitation. Jesus’s education of the apostles in the Gospel of Luke does not mirror the rigorous training that we would term ἄσκησις with Jesus. But Luke clearly suggests that these apostles imitate Jesus. They have carefully observed the behavior of their mentor and have naturally emulated it in the pressurized chamber of the Sanhedrin. To the educated Greek or Roman, this imitation would have been a credit to both Jesus and the disciples. While Luke curiously does not use the word παρρησία in Luke 20, or in the entire Gospel, for that matter,9 the fact that the apostles have learned their παρρησία from Jesus speaks well of him as a worthy exemplar. However, Luke’s Jesus needs no further recommendation than that which the Gospel of Luke gives him. One need not delve too deeply into Luke’s Christology to realize that being an adequate model of a Roman philosophical virtue would not merit mention among his primary credits. He is the son of God, the son of Man, and the Lord. “Teacher” would hardly make the first page of his curriculum vitae. The natural elements, the superhuman spirits, and diseases all

164

Illiterate Apostles

follow his lead. Obviously, then, it is the apostles, not the teacher, who are the real beneficiaries of the Sanhedrin’s recognition. In Luke-Acts, to be deemed Jesus-like is a decidedly good thing! While Jesus’s personal exchange with his disciples has elements of the teacher– student, Luke’s Jesus is by no means a typical philosophical teacher. While space does not allow even a survey of Luke’s Christology, it would be possible to illustrate the clear distinction Luke has drawn between Jesus and other teachers by reviewing his origin and destiny, the range of titles that are applied to him, and the powers that are attributed to him in the course of the two volumes. It is possible to be brief, because the distinctions are so obvious. To be sure, he is called teacher (διδάσκαλος), and even describes himself in this way (22:11). However, his disciples rarely use this title. Jesus is called διδάσκαλος in Lk. 7:40 by Simon the Pharisee; in 8:49 by Jairus’s servant; in 9:38 by the demoniac boy’s father; in 10:25 by the inquiring lawyer; in 11:45 by one of the lawyers; in 12:13 by an anonymous person from the crowd; in 18:18 by the rich young ruler; in 19:39 by some of the Pharisees; in 20:21 by the Judean leaders’ “spies,” in 20:28 by some of the Sadducees; in 20:39 by some of the scribes; in 21:7 by the audience in the temple; and in 22:11 by Jesus himself, but to identify himself to one who is outside the circle. Notice that it is almost exclusively an outsider perception. This detail may well fit with the similar fact about Luke’s use of αἵρεσις. We noted earlier that the early Christians are called a sect or school only by outsiders and are very hesitant to accept that designation the few times it is used.10 Luke may be acknowledging the shallow run of the merely apologetic presentation of Jesus and his followers. “If this is what it takes for outsiders to be satisfied, let them think of us as a school of philosophers with a virtuous teacher. However, we know that he is Savior, Lord, and Christ.”

Conclusion The reduction of Acts 4 to a mere apologetic piece would impoverish it. Clearly, Luke had Christianity’s critics in view when he constructed the narrative, and it is just as clear that he answers them in a cogent way. However, other significant considerations enter the picture as well. If Peter and John have exhibited a virtue that is admirable to educated onlookers, Luke makes sure to stipulate that they have done so, not by their own wiles, but by following the example of God’s Son and by receiving the guidance and empowerment of the Holy Spirit. For Luke, the apostles’ παρρησία is most assuredly not a natural virtue, instilled by a rustic habit of simplicity. Rather, it is a God-given courage that serves to defend and advance the gospel. To the extent that their tutelage under Jesus is education, Luke clearly distinguishes it from Greco-Roman philosophical training by the unique character of the teacher and by the power of the Holy Spirit. Thus, while Peter and John’s παρρησία is indeed offered as a commodity for rhetorical exchange, a token that compensates for their lack of education, it is explained and its source is identified in theological terms.

6. The “Education” of the Apostles

165

This intricate interweaving of the theological and the apologetic story lines fits well within Luke’s habit as an author. Paul’s evangelistic speech, which lasts late into the night in Troas (to Eutychus’s dismay—20:7-12), serves at least two causes. The first purpose is theological:  the gospel advances in Macedonia and the power of God is displayed in the resuscitation of poor Eutychus. Luke’s telling of the story, secondly, serves apologetic purposes, by answering rampant rumors about the unruly nighttime meetings of the Christians with this portrait of a very civil gathering of peaceable people.11 A surplus purpose may also lie behind Acts 20. A story about an overlong sermon that puts at least one congregant to sleep may set out to arouse the same chuckle in its first-century audience as it would receive today.12 Luke constructs the fabric of his narrative with apologetic as a red thread that runs through his whole two-volume work. The apologetic subplot is largely played out subtly, detectable but not distracting. The author combines forthright, unmasked apologetic speeches (mostly in the trial scenes of Paul) with a clever apologetic conversation that pervades the text. Acts 4 has offered us one of the many episodes that brilliantly move this theme. As we wrap up our exploration, we should not overlook the profound love that lies behind Luke’s artistry and the works of the apologists who come after him. In the ancient world we have inhabited here, highly educated people do not normally even know their uneducated neighbors. They do not seek to understand them, do not keep company with them, and, when the occasion arises, differentiate themselves starkly from them. We have noticed along the way what disdain these elite authors hold for their uneducated inferiors, who, in their view, forfeit all access to the good life well lived when they do not show up for school. Contrast those normal educated attitudes with the generosity of our nowfamiliar friends Luke, Justin, Athenagoras, Origen, and Minucius Felix. These apologists live in such salon circles. Yet they employ the very gift of education that might divide them from their uneducated fellow Christians, with all the social status and authority it affords them, to defend them instead. Rather than disowning their uneducated brothers and sisters, these members of the very educated one percent risk their own social standing (and likely not a few friendships) to stand up for and include them. In our own divided contemporary world, where Christians disown Christians and neighbors disdain neighbors over differences in race, educational level, and political difference, this sort of self-sacrificing love shines across the centuries like a beacon to guide our way.

Notes 1 Some combination of the neuter noun πνεῦμα and the neuter form of the adjective ἅγιoς occur at Lk. 1:15, 35, 41, 67; 2:25, 26; 3:16, 22; 4:1; 10:21; 11:13; 12:10, 12:12. 2 Acts 1:2, 5, 8, 16; 2:4, 33, 38. 3 Acts 4:25, 31; 5:3, 32; 6:5; 7:51, 55; 8:15, 17, 19; 9:17, 31; 10:38, 44, 45, 47; 11:15, 16, 24; 13:2, 4, 9, 52, 15:8, 28, 29; 16:6; 19:2 (twice), 6; 20:23, 28; 21:11; 28:25. The lists in this

166

4

5 6

7

8

9

10

11 12

Illiterate Apostles and the two preceding notes do not include Luke’s twenty-one references to το πνεύμα without the adjective ἅγιος. See Lk. 1:17, 47 (μου = God’s); 4:1, 14, 18 (κυρίου); Acts 2:4, 17, 18 (μου = God’s); 5:9; 6:3, 10; 8:18, 29, 39 (κυρίου); 10:19; 11:12, 28; 16:7 (᾽Ιησοῦ); 19:21; 20:22; 21:4. This is not to say that the Holy Spirit does not function as a character in Luke-Acts. For a helpful discussion of this point, see W. H. Sheperd, Jr., The Narrative Function of the Holy Spirit as a Character in Luke-Acts (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994), 99–240. We will explore this further below in “The Example of Jesus.” The other appears in Acts 18:26, where Apollos “speaks boldly” (μετὰ παρρησίας) in an Ephesian synagogue. Additionally, Barnabas is named along with Paul in connection with παρρησία at 13:46 and 14:3. See the extensive list of references to parallels between Luke and Acts in Robert C. Tannehill, The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts: A Literary Interpretation, 2 vols (Philadelphia and Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1986). C. K. Barrett, The Acts of the Apostles (International Critical Commentary, Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1994), rightly points out that the sentence construction leaves some ambiguity as to whether the Sanhedrin is recognizing a fact or the persons. If they are realizing the fact of the association, stress is laid on the on. If they are recognizing Peter and John, αὐτούς becomes the direct object of ἐπεγίνωσκον. We should seek the answer to this puzzle of usage in Luke’s christology. While the apostles may be credited for being Socratic and for exhibiting παρρησία, Luke’s Christ is presumably above such comparisons. Similarly, whenever Justin draws parallels with Socrates, it is always Christians and not Christ to whom the Athenian philosopher is likened. See K. Doring, Exemplum Socratis: Studien zur Sokratenachwirkung in der kynische-stoischen Popularphilosophie der friihen Kaiserzeit und im friihen Christentum, Hermes Einzelschriften 42 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1979.), 150–152. The Greek word αἵρεσις is used to describe the Christians in Acts 24:5, 24:14, and 28:22. In each case, it is either stated or reported as an outsider’s observation. Most explicit is 24:14, where Paul refers to his group as “The Way” (ὁδός) “which they call a school” (λέγουσιv αἵρεσιν). The term also appears in 5:17 to describe the Sadducees and in 15:5 and 26:5 to describe the Pharisees. See K. Cukrowski, Pagan Polemic and Lukan Apologetic, Dissertation, Yale University, 1994. See R. Pervo, Profit with Delight (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987. Pervo’s formcritical project is to find “the classification of works that are bad history but good writing” (3). He identifies Luke as a “popular writer” (11) and his book as edifying fun. This is a nice corrective to unrealistic genre speculations. Unfortunately, once Pervo identifies the genre of Acts, he allows that determination to narrow his expectations about Luke’s accomplishment. Specifically, he misses the apologetic strand of the story and thus an element of its also-delightful gravitas.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Ahl, F., “The Art of Safe Criticism in Greece and Rome,” AJP 105 (1984): 174–208. Anderson, G., The Second Sophistic: A Cultural Phenomenon in the Roman Empire (New York: Routledge, 1993). Andresen, C., “Justin und der mittlere Platonismus,” ZNW 44 (1952/53): 157–195. Andrewes, A., The Greek Tyrants (New York: Harper & Row, 1963). Arasteh, R. Education and Social Awakening in Iran (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1962). Bader, R., Der Alethes Logos des Kelsos (Stuttgart and Berlin: Kohlhammer, 1940). Balch, D. L., “The Areopagus Speech: An Appeal to the Stoic Historian Posidonius against Later Stoics and the Epicureans,” in Greeks, Romans, and Christians, ed. D. Balch and M. White (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990). Barclay, W., Educational Ideals in the Ancient World (London: Collins, 1959). Barnard, L. W., Justin Martyr: His Life and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967). Barnard, L. W., Athenagoras: A Study in Second Century Christian Apologetic (Paris: Beauchesne, 1972). Barnes, T. D., Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971). Barnes, T. D., “The Embassy of Athenagoras,” JTS 26 (1975): 111–114. Barrett, C. K., Luke the Historian in Recent Study (London: Epworth, 1961). Barrett, C. K., The Acts of the Apostles (International Critical Commentary, Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1994). Baumeister, T., “ ‘Anytos und Meletos können mich zwar toten, schaden jedoch können sie mir nicht’: Platon, Apologie des Sokrates 30c/d bei Plutarch, Epiktet, Justin Martyr und Clemens Alexandrinus,” in Platonismus und Christentum: Festschrift für Heinrich Dorrie, ed. H. D. Blume and F. Mann, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, (Münster Westfalen: Aschendorfsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1983). Bauer, W. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, trans. W. F. Arndt and F. W. Gingrich (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1952/1957). Beard, M., “Ancient Literacy and the Function of the Written Word in Roman Religion,” in Literacy in the Roman World, ed. M. Beard (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991). Beck, F., Greek Education, 450–350 B.C. (London: Methuen, 1964). Benko, S., “Pagan Criticisms of the Early Christians,” ANRW 23.2, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, (1980): 1055–1118. Benko, S., Pagan Rome and the Early Christians (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984). Benz, E., “Christus und Sokrates in der alten Kirche,” ZNW 43 (1950/51): 195–224. Best, E. E., “The Literate Roman Soldier,” CJ 62 (1966): 166–167. Bilheimer, A., “Age-Classes in Spartan Education,” ΤΑΡΑ 78 (1947): 99–104. Blundell, S., Women in Ancient Greece (London: British Museum Press, 1995).

168

Bibliography

Bohenblust, G., Beitrage zum Topos ΠΕΡΙ ΦΙΛΙΑΣ (Berlin: Universitaets-Buchdruckerei von Gustav Schade [Otto Francke], 1905). Boismard, M. -E., and A. Lemouille, Les Actes des Deux Apotres, Vol. II: Le sens de recits (Paris: Libraire Lecoffre, 1990). Bolgar, R., “The Training of Elites in Greek Education,” in Governing Elites, ed. R. Wilkinson, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 23–49. Bonner, S. F., “The Street-Teacher: An Educational Scene in Horace,” AJP 93 (1972): 509–528. Bonner, S. F., Education in Ancient Rome (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1977). Boring, T., Literacy in Ancient Sparta (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1979). Bowen, J., A History of Western Education, Vol. I: The Ancient World (London: Methuen, 1972). Bowersock, G. W., Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969). Boyd, C. E., Public Libraries and Literary Culture in Ancient Rome (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1915). Bruce, F. F., The Acts of the Apostles: Greek Text with Introduction and Commentary (3rd ed., Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1990). Cadbury, H. J., The Making of Luke-Acts (London: SPCK, 1927). Cadbury, H. J., The Purpose of Acts (London: SPCK, 1936). Calinescu, M., “Orality in Literacy,” Yale Journal of Criticism 6 (1993): 175. Cantarella, E., Pandora’s Daughters: The Role and Status of Women in Greek and Roman Antiquity, trans. M. B. Fant (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987). Carlson, M. L., “Pagan Examples of Fortitude in the Latin Apologists,” CPh 43 (1948): 93–104. Chadwick, H., Origen: Contra Celsum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953). Chadwick, H., “Justin Martyr’s Defence of Christianity,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 47 (1965): 275–297. Chadwick, H., Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966). Clarke, G. W. ed. and trans., The Octavius of Marcus Minucius Felix (New York: Newman Press, 1974). Clarke, M. L., “Three Notes on Roman Education,” CP 63 (1968): 42–44. Clarke, M. L., Higher Education in the Ancient World (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971). Cohn, B. S., “History and Anthropology: The State of Play,” Comparative Studies in Sociology and History 22 (1980): 198–221. Colardeau, Th., Étude sur Epictète (Paris: Libraire Thorin & Fils, 1903). Cole, S. G., “Could Greek Women Read and Write?” in Reflections of Women in Antiquity, ed. H. P. Foley (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1981). Cole, T., The Origins of Rhetoric in Ancient Greece (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991). Colish, M. L., The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, vol. 1., Stoicism in Classical Latin Literature (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1985). Colson, F. H., “Philo on Education,” JTS (1917): 151–162. Conzelmann, H., The Theology of St. Luke (trans. G. Buswell, New York: Harper & Row, 1961). Conzelmann, H., Acts of the Apostles, trans. J. Limburg, A. T. Kraabel, and D. H. Juel; ed. E. J. Epp and C. R. Matthews (Hermeneia, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987). Cook-Gumperz, J., The Social Construction of Literacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

Bibliography

169

Cornell, T., “The Tyranny of the Evidence: A Discussion of the Possible Uses of Literacy in Etruria and Latium in the Archaic Age,” in Literacy in the Roman World, ed. M. Beard (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991). Cressy, D., Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). Cribiore, R., Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005). Cribiore, R., Writing, Teachers and Students in Graeco-Roman Egypt, Dissertation (Columbia University, 1993). Cukrowski, K. Pagan Polemic and Lucan Apologetic, Dissertation (Yale University, 1994), 31–34. D’Arcy, M., The Meaning and Matter of History (Farrar, Straus and Cudahy: New York, 1959). Doring, Κ., Exemplum Socratis: Studien zur Sokratenachwirkung in der kynische-stoischen Popularphilosophie der frühen Kaiserzeit und im frühen Christentum, Hermes Einzelschriften 42 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1979). Dover, Κ., “The Portrayal of Moral Evaluation in Greek Poetry,” JHS 103 (1983): 35–48. Dressier, H. The Usage οf Άσκέω and its Cognates in Greek Documents to 100 A. D. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1947). Droge, A. J., “Justin Martyr and the Restoration of Philosophy,” Church History 56 (1987): 303–319. Dupont, J., “Community of Goods in the Early Church,” in The Salvation of the Gentiles, trans. J. R. Keating (New York: Paulist Press, 1967). Ehrhardt, A., “Justin Martyr’s Two Apologies,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 4 (1953): 1–12. Erskine, A., The Hellenistic Stoa (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990). Eyre, J. J., “Roman Education in the Late Republic and Early Empire,” Greece and Rome, 2nd series, 10 (1963): 47–59. Feldman, L., “Abraham the Greek Philosopher in Josephus,” ΤΑΡΑ 99 (1968): 143–156. Ferrari, G., “Orality and Literacy in the Origin of Philosophy,” Ancient Philosophy 4 (1984): 194–205. Ferrill, A., “Herodotus on Tyranny,” Historia 27 (1978): 385–398. Finley, M. I., Ancient History: Evidence and Models (New York: Viking Adult, 1986). Finnegan, R., “Literacy Versus Non-Literacy: The Great Divide,” in Modes of Thought: Essays on Thinking in Western and Non-Western Societies, eds. R. Finnegan and R. Horton (London: Faber, 1973). Finnegan, R., Literacy and Orality: Studies in the Technology of Communication (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988). Finnegan, R., “Literacy as Mythical Charter,” in Literacy. Interdisciplinary Conversations, ed. R. Finnegan (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton, 1994). Fiore, B., The Function of Example in the Socratic and Pastoral Epistles (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1986). Fitzmyer, J., The Gospel According to Luke (New York: Doubleday, 1981). Forbes, C. A., “The Education and Training of Slaves in Antiquity,” ΤΑΡΑ 86 (1955): 321–360. Fox, R. L., “Literacy and Power in Early Christianity,” in Literacy and Power in the Ancient World, eds. A. K. Bowman and G. Woolf (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994).

170

Bibliography

Fraisse, J. C., Philia: La Notion d’Amitie, Essai sur un probleme perdu et retrouve (Paris: Vrin, 1984). Franklin, J. L., Jr., “Literacy and the Parietal Inscriptions of Pompeii,” in Literacy in the Roman World, ed. M. Beard (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991). Furet, F., and W. Sachs, Annales E.S.C. 29 (1974): 715–21. Gamble, H. Y., Books and Readers in the Early Church (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). Gemet, L., The Anthropology of Ancient Greece, trans. J. Hamilton, S. J. Nagy, and B. Nagy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981). Gentili, B., Poetry and Its Public in Ancient Greece (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988). Glockner, O., Celsi Alethes Logos (Bonn: Marcus & Weber, 1924). Goffman, E., The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City : Doubleday, 1959). Goodman, M., The Ruling Class of Judaea (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 27–68. Goody, J., (ed.), Literacy in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1968). Goody, J., The Logic of Writing and the Organisation of Society (Cambridge, 1986). Goody, J., M. Cole, and S. Scribner, “Writing and Formal Operations: A Case Study among the Vai,” Africa 47 (1977). Goody, J., and I. Watt, “The Consequences of Literacy,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 5 (1962–63): 304–45 (= J. Goody, ed., Literacy in Traditional Societies, Cambridge, 1968, pp. 27–68). Graff, H. J., Literacy and Social Development in the West: A Reader( Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1981). Graff, H. J., “The Legacies of Literacy,” Journal of Communication 32 (1982): 12–26. Graff, H. J., The Legacies of Literacy (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University, 1987). Grant, R. M., “Athenagoras or Pseudo-Athenagoras,” Harvard Theological Review 47 (1954): 121–129. Grant, R. M., “The Chronology of the Greek Apologists,” Vigiliae Christianae 8 (1955): 25–33. Grant, R. M., “Aristotle and the Conversion of Justin,” JTS 7 (1956): 246–248. Grant, R. M., “Charges of ‘Immorality’ against Various Religious Groups in Antiquity,” in Studies in Honor of Gilles Quispel, ed. R. van den Broek, and M. J. Vermaseren (Leiden: Brill, 1981), 161–170. Grant, R. M., Greek Apologists of the Second Century (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1988). Grasberger, L., Erziehung und Unterricht im klassischen Altertum, 3 vols. (Wiirzburg, 1864–81). Griffith, G. T., “Isegoria in the Assembly of Athens,” in Ancient Society and Institutions: Studies Presented to Victor Ehrenberg, ed. E. Badin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), 115–138. Guillemin, A.-M., Le public et la vie littéraire ά Rome (Paris, 1937). Gwynn, A., Roman Education from Cicero to Quintilian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1926). Haenchen, E., “The Book of Acts as Source Material for the History of Early Christianity,” in Studies in Luke-Acts, eds. L. E. Keck and J. L. Martyn (New York: Abingdon Press, 1966), 258–278.

Bibliography

171

Haidt, J., The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Pantheon, 2012). Hains, C. R. ed. and trans., The Communings with Himself of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (New York: Loeb Classical Library, 1916), 382–383. Hanson, A. E., ‘Ancient Illiteracy,’ in Literacy in the Roman World, ed. M. Beard, Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1991. Harnack, A., Bible Reading in the Early Church, trans. J. B. Wilkinson (New York: Putnam, 1918). Harris, William V., Ancient Literacy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989). Harvey, F. D., “Literacy in the Athenian Democracy,” REG 79 (1966): 585–635. Havelock, E., Preface to Plato (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963). Havelock, E., Prologue to Greek Literacy (Semple Lectures, University of Cincinnati, 1971). Havelock, E., The Literate Revolution in Greece and Its Cultural Consequences (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982). Havelock, E., “Pre-Literacy and the Pre-Socratics,” in The Literate Revolution in Greece and Its Cultural Consequences (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982). Havelock, E., “The Oral-Literate Equation: A Formula for the Modern Mind,” in Literacy and Orality, ed. D. R. Olson and N. Torrance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Herman, G., Ritualized Friendship and the Greek City (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Hezser, Catherine, Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine (TSAJ 81; Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001). Hijmans, B. L., Jr., ΑΣΚΗΣΙΣ: Notes on Epictetus’ Educational System (Te Assen Bij: VanGorcum, 1959). Hopkins, Κ., “Conquest by Book,” in Literacy in the Roman World, ed. M. Beard (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991). Horsfall, N., “Statistics or States of Mind?” in Literacy in the Roman World, ed. M. Beard (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991). Irwin, T., Plato’s Moral Theory: The Early and Middle Dialogues (New York, 1979). Jaeger, W., Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, trans. G. Highet, 3 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946). Jaekel, S., Menandri Sententiae (Leipzig: Teubner, 1964). Johnson, L. T., The Literary Function of Possessions in Luke-Acts (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1977). Johnson, L.T., The Acts of the Apostles (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1992). Johnson, W.A. and H. Parker, eds., Ancient Literacies: The Culture of Reading in Greece and Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) Jones, C. P., Culture and Society in Lucian (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986). Jongman, W., The Economy and Society of Pompeii (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1988). Julien, H., Les Professeurs de litterature dans I’ancienne Rome (Paris, 1885). Kaster, R. A., Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1988). Keith, Chris, Jesus’ Literacy: Scribal Culture and the Teacher from Galilee (Bloomsbury : T&T Clark, 2011). Keith, Chris, Jesus against the Scribal Elite: The Origins of the Conflict (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014). Keith, Chris, “The Oddity of the Reference to Jesus in Acts 4:13b,” Journal of Biblical Literature 134(2015): 791–811.

172

Bibliography

Kenyon, F. G., Books and Readers in Ancient Greece and Rome (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932). Keresztes, P., “The Literary Genre of Justin’s First Apology,” Vigiliae Christianae 19 (1965): 99–110. Keresztes, P., “The ‘So-Called’ Second Apology of Justin,” Latomus 24 (1965): 858–869. Kidd, D. A., Roman Attitudes to Education (Christchurch Classical Association, New Zealand, 1958). Knox, B., “Silent Reading in Antiquity,” GRBS 9 (1968): 421–435. Kornhardt, H., Exemplum: Eine bedeutungsgeschichtliche Studie (Gottingen: Robert Noske, 1936). Kraus, T. J., ‘ “Uneducated”, “ignorant”, or even “illiterate”? Aspects and Background for an Understanding of ΑΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΟΙ (and ΙΔΙΩΤΑΙ) in Acts 4.13,” in Ad fonte: Original Manuscripts and Their Significance for Studying Early Christianity—Selected Essays (TENTS 3; Leiden Brill, 2007), 149–170; repr. from NTS (1999): 434–449. Kuhnert, F., Allgemeinbildung und Fachbildung (Berlin, 1961.) Lambropoulou, V., “Some Pythagorean Female Virtues,” in Women in Antiquity: New Assessments, ed. R. Hawley and B. Levick (New York: Routledge, 1995). Lampe, P., Die stadtrömischen Christen in der ersten beiden Jahrhunderten (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1987). La Piana, G., “Foreign Groups in Rome During the First Centuries of the Empire,” Harvard Theological Review 20 (1927): 183–403. Laudan, L., Science and Relativism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). Lechner, M., Erziehung und Bildung in der grieschischrdmischen Antike (Munich, 1933). Leipoldt, J., and S. Morenz, Heilige Schriften (Leipzig, 1953). Levi-Strauss, C., La pensee sauvage (Paris: Plou, 1962). Lewis, J. D., “Isegoria at Athens: When Did It Begin?” Historia 20 (1971): 129–140. Liddell, H. G., and R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, rev. by H. S. Jones and R. McKenzie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1843/1968). Lockridge, K. A., Literacy in Colonial New England (New York: Norton, 1974). Long, A. A., “Socrates in Hellenistic Philosophy,” Classical Quarterly NS 38 (1988): 150–171. Long, H. S., “Notes on Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 102 (1958): 229–280. Lutz, C. E., Musonius Rufus: The Roman Socrates (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1947). Lynch, J., Aristotle’s School: A Study of a Greek Educational Institution (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1972). MacMullen, R., Enemies of the Roman Order: Treason, Unrest and Alienation in the Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966). MacMullen, R., Roman Social Relations (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1974). Malherbe, A. J., “The Structure of Athenagoras, ‘Supplicatio pro Christianis,’ ” Vigiliae Christianae 23 (1969): 1–20. Malherbe, A. J., Social Aspects of Early Christianity, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983). Malherbe, A. J., “ ‘Not in a Corner’: Early Christian Apologetic in Acts 26.26,” The Second Century 5 (1985/86): 193–210 (= Paul and the Popular Philosophers, [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989], 147–164). Mantel, H., “Sanhedrin,” Encyclopedia Judaica (Jerusalem, 1971). Marquardt, J., Das Privatleben der Romer, 2nd ed., rev. A. Mau (Leipzig, 1886), 80–126.

Bibliography

173

Marrou, H. I., Saint Augustin et la Fin de la Culture antique (Paris, 1949). Marrou, H. I., A History of Education in Antiquity, trans. G. Lamb (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1956). Marrow, S. B., “Parrhesia and the New Testament,” CBQ 44 (1982): 431–446. McLuhan, M., The Gutenberg Galaxy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962). Michalowski, P., “Writing and Literacy in Early States: A Mesopotamianist Perspective,” in Literacy: Interdisciplinary Conversations, ed. R. Finnegan (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton, 1994). Mohler, S. L., “Slave Education in the Roman Empire,” ΤΑΡΑ 71 (1940): 262–280. Momigliano, A., “The Historians of the Classical World and Their Audiences: Some Suggestions,” Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Lettere e Filosofia, ser. 3, 8 (1978), 59–75. Muir, J. V., “Protagoras and Education at Thourioi,” Greece and Rome 29 (1982): 17–24. Muir, J. V., “A Note on Ancient Methods of Learning to Write,” Classical Quarterly 34 (1984): 236–237. Murray, O., Early Greece (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980). Neyrey, J., “Acts 17, Epicureans, and Theodicy,” in Greeks, Romans, and Christians, ed. D. Balch and M. White (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990). Nilsson, M. P., Die hellenistische Schule (Munich, 1955). North, H., “The Use of Poetry in the Training of Ancient Orators,” Traditio 8 (1952): 1–33. Nussbaum, M., The Therapy of Desire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). Ober, J., Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989). Ong, W. J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London and New York: Methuen, 1982). Osborn, E. F., Justin Martyr (Tubingen: Mohr, 1973). Parkes, M. B. On Literacy: The Politics of the Word from Homer to the Age of Rock (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982). Peacock, J. L., The Anthropological Lens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). Pelling, C. B. R., “Truth and Fiction in Plutarch’s Lives,” in Antonine Literature, ed. D. A. Russell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). Pervo, R., Profit with Delight (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987). Petersen, N., Rediscovering Paul (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986). Peterson, E., “Zur Bedeutungsgeschichte von Παρρησία,” Reinhold-Seeberg Festschrift, vol 1, Zur Theorie des Christentums, ed. W. Koepp (Leipzig: D. Werner Scholl, 1929). Pichler, K., Streit urn das Christentum. Der Angriffdes Kelsos und die Antwort des Origenes (Regensberger Studien zur Theologie 23, 1980). Plumacher, E., Lukas als hellenistishcer Schriftsteller (SUNT 9, Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972). Pomeroy, S. B., Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (New York: Schocken Books, 1975). Price, B. J., “Paradeigma and Exemplum in Ancient Rhetorical Theory,” Dissertation (University of California, Berkeley, 1975). Rabbow, P., Seelenfuhrung, Methodik der Exercitien in der Antike (Munich: Kosel, 1954). Radin, M., “Freedom of Speech in Ancient Athens,” AJP 48 (1927): 217. Rauch, J. L., “Greek Logic and Philosophy and the Problem of Authorship in Athenagoras,” Dissertation (University of Chicago, 1968). Robb, Κ., “Greek Oral Memory and the Origins of Philosophy,” The Personalist 51 (1970): 5–45.

174

Bibliography

Robb, Κ., Literacy and Paideia in Ancient Greece (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). Roberts, C. H., Cambridge History of the Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971). Rostovtzeff, M., Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, 2 vols., rev. P. M. Fraser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937). Rostovtzeff, M., Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World (3 vols, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1941). Russell, D. A. Greek Declamation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Safrai, S. “Elementary Education, It’s Religious and Social Significance in the Talmudic Period,” in Jewish Society through the Ages, ed. H. H. Ben-Sasson and S. Ettinger (New York, 1969), 148–169. Scarpat, G., Parrhesia: Storia del termine e delle traditione in Latino (Brescia: Paideia, 1964). Schlier, Η., “Παρρησία, ταρρησιάζομαι,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 5, ed. G. Kittel, trans. G. W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968). Schmid, W. T., On Manly Courage: A Study of Plato’s Laches (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992). Schoedel, W. R., Athenagoras: Legatio and De Resurrectione (Oxford Early Christian Texts, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972). Schousboe, Κ., and M. T. Larsen, eds, Literacy and Society (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1989). Scollon, R., “Cultural Aspects in Constructing the Author,” in Literacy: Interdisciplinary Conversations, ed. R. Finnegan (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton, 1994). Scribner, S., “Literacy in Three Metaphors,” AJE 93 (1984): 6–21. Scribner, S., and M. Cole, “Unpackaging Literacy,” in Writing: The Nature, Development and Teaching of Written Communication, vol. 1, Variation in Writing, ed. M. Farr Whiteman (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1981). Shepherd, W. H., Jr., “The Narrative Function of the Holy Spirit as a Character in LukeActs” (SBL Dissertation Series 147, Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994). Skarsaune, O., “The Conversion of Justin Martyr,” Mnemosyne 31 (1978): 360–388. Smith, W. A., Ancient Education (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969). Steiner, D. T., The Tyrant’s Writ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). Stone, L., “Literacy and Education in England, 1640–1900,” P & P 42 (1969): 98–99. Street, B. V. Literacy in Theory and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Street, B. V., ed., Cross-Cultural Approaches to Literacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).Stroud, R. S., “The Art of Writing in Ancient Greece,” in The Origins of Writing, ed. W. M. Senner (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), pp. 103–119. Stubbs, M., Language and Literacy. The Sociolinguistics of Reading and Writing (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980). Szwed, J., “The Ethnography of Literacy,” in Variation in Writing: Functional and Linguistic-Cultural Differences, ed. M. Farr Whiteman (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1981). Tajra, H. W., The Trial of St. Paul (Tubingen: Siebeck, 1989). Tannehill, R. C., The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts, 2 vols (Philadelphia and Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1986–90). Tanzer, H. H. The Common People of Pompeii (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1939).

Bibliography

175

Thomas, R., Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Tigerstedt, E., The Legend of Sparta in Classical Antiquity, 2 vols (Stockholm, 1965–74). Timpe, D., ”Apologeti cristiani e storia sociale della chiesa antica,” Annuario della Facolta lettere e filosofia, Universita di Siena 7 (1986): 99–127. UNESCO. Compendium of Statistics on Illiteracy (Paris: Unesco, 1978). Unnik, W. van, “The Christian’s Freedom of Speech in the New Testament,” BJRL 44 (1962): 466–488. Verdenius, W. J., Homer, the Educator of the Greeks (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1970). Vermander, J. M., “Celse, source et adversaire de Minucius Felix,” Revue des Etudes Augustiniennes 16 (1970): 205–225. Vogel, C. J. de, “Problems Concerning Justin Martyr,” Mnemosyne 31 (1978): 360–388. Walzer, R., Galen on Jews and Christians (London: Oxford University Press, 1949). Warde F. W., Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero (London, 1908). Weiss, J., Uber die Absicht und den literarischen Character der Apostelgeschichte (Marburg: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1897). Westaway, K. W., The Educational Theory of Plutarch (London, 1922). Wettstein, J., Novum Testamentum Graecum II (Amsterdam: Dommerian, 1752). Wifstrand, A., “Die Wahre Lehre des Kelsos,” Bulletin de la Societe Royale des Lettres de Lund (1941/42). Wilken, R., The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984). Wills, L. M., “The Depiction of the Jews in Acts,” JBL 110 (1991): 631–654. Woodhead, A. G., “IEHTOPIA and the Council of 500,” Historia 16 (1967): 129–140. Woodside, M. St. A., “Vespasian’s Patronage of Education and the Arts,” ΤΑΡΑ 73 (1942): 123–129. Youtie, H. C., “Βραδέως Γράφων: Between Literacy and Illiteracy,” GRBS 12 (1971): 239–261. Youtie, H. C., “ΑΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΟΣ: An Aspect of Greek Society in Egypt,” HSCP 75 (1971): 161–176. Youtie, H. C., “ΥΠΟΓΡΑΦΕΥΣ: The Social Impact of Illiteracy in Graeco-Roman Egypt,” ZPE 17 (1975): 201–221. Youtie, H. C., “Because They Do Not Know Letters,” ZPE 19 (1975): 101–108. Ziebarth, E., Aus dem grieschischen Schulwesen, 2nd edn (Leipzig/Berlin, 1914).

INDEX παρρησία 99–100, 133–4, 138, 146–7, 151 n.20, 156 and Acts 4, 118–25 boldness 150 n.10 and courage 134–6 defined 103–6 and democracy 111–13 and education 136–9 and friendship 111–13 and receptive audience 113–14 and social status 108–10 as speech 106–8 and tolerable speaker 114–18 Acts 46, 95–8, 100, 101 n.2, 126 n.9, 129, 132–3, 143–4, 145–7, 153 n.50, 153 n.61, 153 n.63, 154 n.66, 154 n.69, 156–65 n.64 and αἵρεσις 151 n.28, 166 n.10 and παρρησία 118–25 philosophical community in 139–42 Aeschylus 14, 25, 87 n.2 Ahl, Frederick 128 n.51 amicitia 127–8 n.39, 127 n.36 ancient literacy/education 8–9, 69, 88 n.12 see also Greco-Roman education definitions 10–12 early Christian literacy 18–20 Gamble on 36 issues and attitudes 23–9 as monolith 66 Origen on 36 quantification of 15–17 anti-intellectual attitude 27 Antisthenes 92 n.82, 113 apologists/apologetic texts 1–4, 28–9, 35–6, 47, 49, 50–3, 55–6, 60–1 n.69, 82, 85–7, 96–9, 131–2, 138, 143, 147, 148, 153 n.50, 155–6, 159, 161, 164–1 see also John; Luke; Paul; Peter Aristo 93 n.93

Aristotle 14, 26, 27, 36, 37, 88 n.18, 112–13, 134, 135 on friendship 140, 141 Aristoxenus 154 n.72 Arnobius 97 atheism 1, 2, 41–2, 50, 51, 53 Athenaeus 141 Athenagoras 4, 28, 36, 50–1, 53–7, 60 n.69, 79, 83, 85, 86, 97, 99, 132–3, 148, 150 n.8, 165 Athens 13, 22, 35, 50, 64, 77, 104, 107, 109–10, 111–12, 114, 127 n.23, 127 n.29, 140, 143 Atticus, Herodes 97 n.81 Augustine 91 n.54 Augustus 67, 117 Babbitt, F. C. 126 n.11 Balch, D. 154 n.66 Barrett, C. K. 96, 101 n.7, 166 n.8 Bauermeister, T. 93 n.103 Bohenblust, G. 127 n.36 Boismard, M.-E. 150 n.10 Bonner, Stanley 73, 89 n.24 Bruce, F. F. 150 n.10 burden of proof 17, 19 Caecilius 4, 38, 44, 47–50, 51, 54, 56–7, 69, 71, 74, 77, 85 caste system 28–9, 73 Celsus 3, 4, 18, 38, 44–7, 54, 56, 57, 60 n.51, 60 n.53, 69, 74, 77, 85 Chilon 76–7 Chrysostom, John 67 Cicero 3, 5 n.9, 11, 90 n.54, 112, 117, 127 n.36, 127 n.39, 141, 144, 152 n.41 city-wide systems 88 n.11 civilization 22, 140 Clarke, M. L. 88 n.12, 90 n.36 class-think 28 Clement of Alexandria 19

178

Index

community 11, 35, 77, 98, 139–42, 145, 163 Comte, August 17, 31 n.30 Cornell, T. 29 n.2 courage 46, 53, 54–5, 80–1, 86, 97, 100, 103–6, 115, 131–8, 145, 149 n.3, 150 n.12, 150 n.15, 151 n.20, 155, 163, 164 creative writing 72 Cribiore, R. 88 n.19, 89 n.23 cultural revolution 21 Cynicism 38, 46–7, 77–8, 81, 91–2 n.76, 92 n.79, 103, 107, 116, 135, 144, 151 n.24 Darius, King 108 death 135 Demades 107, 109, 114, 126 n.8 Demetrius and Sotas story 21, 116 democracy, and παρρησία 111–13 Dio, Cassius 107, 108, 109, 117, 138 Dio Chrysostom 35, 66, 76, 107, 127 n.23, 144 Diodorus Siculus 25, 26–7, 36, 37, 66–7, 88 n.14, 107, 115, 116, 126 n.9 Diogenes Laertius 68, 78, 81, 107, 140, 141, 145 Dionysius of Syracuse 110, 115 dividing function, of illiteracy 21 dogmatism 42–3, 50, 54, 57, 59 n.39 early Christian literacy, quanitifcation of 18–20 educated and uneducated, differentiation between 26–7 educational level 83 elitism 17, 19, 25, 27, 28, 35, 37, 38, 63, 75, 84, 109, 165 “emic” 22 Empiricus, Sextus 27, 71–2 Epictetus 28, 76, 77, 78–82, 83–4, 85, 86, 92 n.79, 92 n.81, 93 n.102, 135–6, 137–8, 139, 150 n.17 Epicurus 5 n.9, 37, 40–1, 42 ethics 53, 54–5, 57, 77–8, 80, 81, 99, 134, 137, 150 n.8 ethnography 7–33 “etic” 22 Euripides 68, 83, 111, 127 n.30, 140–1

Eusebius 60 n.68 evangelism 45–7, 143, 165 example/exemplars 80–1, 138–9 exercise 78–80 explicit criticism 44 Caecilius 47–50 Celsus 44–7 expression of freedom 135 fear 134 see also courage Finnegan, Ruth 22 Fiore, B. 93 n.92, 93 n.95 Fitzmyer, J. 101 n.3 Franklin, James L., Jr. 16, 31 n.24 freedom 76, 107, 114, 135–6 moral 135, 138 of speech 53, 104, 105, 107, 109–10, 111, 114, 118, 124, 127 n.29, 136 friendship 68, 80, 104–8, 114, 116, 118, 125, 127, 127 n.36, 128 n.43, 140– 2 n.37 and παρρησία 111–13 functional literacy 11 Galen 4, 38, 42–4, 46–7, 51, 53–7, 59 n.39, 59 n.40, 59 n.41, 61 n.91, 65, 69, 74, 75, 85, 92 n.76 Galilee 95, 98 Gamble, Harry 19, 36, 37, 56 Gellius 92 n.81 geographical theory, of education level 41 gnome 73 Goffman, Erving 126 n.22 Goody, Jack 13, 22 grammatical reading 18, 66, 67, 69, 70–4, 75, 84, 85–6, 88 n.17, 90 n.36, 90 n.38, 90 n.47, 90 n.48, 91 n.55, 91 n.60 Greco-Roman antiquity 8, 15, 18, 31 n.31, 36, 47 elite value system 75 exercise 78–80 violent retaliation and safety 110–18 Greco-Roman education 65–6, 73 angle of the apologists 85–7 higher education 75–8 imitation 80–2 and pretender 82–5 primary education 66–72 secondary education 72–4

Index groupism 63, 65, 87 n.1 Guillemin, A. M. 13 Haines, C. R. 38 Hamack 19 Hammerstein II, Oscar 82 Hanson, A. Ellis 32 n.41 Harmon, A. M. 39 Harris, William V. 12–13, 16–17, 18, 19, 30 n.10, 31 n.29, 36 Havelock, Eric 12, 13, 14, 21–2, 30 n.21, 30 n.22 Hellenistic education 15, 16, 18, 22, 64, 66, 68, 71, 76, 81, 87 n.9, 89 n.30, 90 n.54, 103, 104, 117, 134, 135, 140, 144, 148, 151 n.24, 153 n.64, 156 Hesperia 110 Hieronymous 114 higher education 35, 75–8 philosophical schools 76–8 rhetorical schools 75–6 Hijmans, B. L., Jr. 77 Hippolytus 18 historical analogy 17 Holy Spirit 128 n.60, 156, 164, 166 n.4 power of 156–61 and prophecy 157–8 Homeric tradition 13–14, 25, 39, 71, 73, 74 Horace 73 human social behavior, scientific laws of 17 humility 152 n.48 Humphrey, J. H. 31 n.31 ignorance 45, 47, 48, 53, 56, 76, 99, 151 n.24 imitation 66, 67, 72, 80–2, 132, 143, 149, 163 immorality 37, 53–4, 57 implicit criticism 50–1 Athenagoras 53–5 Justin 51–3 inlitteratus 11 intellect 21, 22, 37, 41, 42, 43, 46, 49–50, 53–5, 90 n.48, 142 Isocrates 107–8, 127 n.23 Ivy League elite 63

179

Jaekel, S. 89 n.25 Jesus Christ 98, 100, 121–2, 123, 142–3 Jews 18, 31 n.31, 59 n.41 John 95, 97–9, 110, 118–25, 127 n.28, 129 n.64, 132, 133, 139, 145, 147–9, 154 n.73, 155–65, 166 n.8 Johnson, L. T. 152 n.45, 153 n.64 Josephus 105–6, 108–9, 116–17, 124, 127 n.28, 151 n.20 Judaism 28, 41, 96, 146, 152 n.28 Justin Martyr 28, 36, 50, 51–7, 60 n.69, 65, 69–70, 83, 85, 86, 92 n.81, 97, 99, 132–3, 138, 148, 150 n.8, 165, 166 n.9 Kaster 88 n.17, 90 n.48, 91 n.61 Keith, Chris 101 n.13, 150 n.10 Kornhardt, H. 92–3 n.92 Laertius, Diogenes 78, 92 n.76, 140, 141, 145 laypersons 39–40 Lemouille, A. 150 n.10 lettered, attitude towards 26–9 letters 23–4, 52 attitudes toward 24–6 Levi-Claude, Strauss 13 libertas 103, 125 n.1 Liddell, H. G. 104 literacy definitions of 10–12 social impact of 20–2 literacy, quantification of 12–20 ancient literacy 15–17 early Christian literacy 18–20 and orality 13–15 literacy rates, ancient 8, 13, 15, 23, 36–7 Logic 78 Lord, Albert 14 Lucian of Samosata 4, 38–42, 57, 70, 84, 86, 138 Luke 12 n.68, 53, 95–100, 101 n.3, 101 n.4, 118–25, 128 n.60, 129 n.61, 132, 133–4, 139–49, 151–2 n.28, 152 n.39, 153 n.50, 154 n.66, 154 n.73, 155–65, 156, 166 n.9, 166 n.12 philosophical community 139–42 portrayal of Jesus 142–3 portrayal of Paul 143–5 portrayal of Peter 145–8, 155–6

180

Index

MacMullen, Ramsay 135 Malherbe, Abraham 61 n.83, 96, 143, 144, 153 n.62 Marcus Aurelius, Emperor 14 n.14, 37 Marrou, Henri 59 n.40, 73, 75, 90 n.36, 91 n.55, 91 n.67 McLuhan, Marshall 13 memorization 68, 70, 71, 72, 74, 77, 90 n.54 Micah 51 Minucius Felix, Marcus 4, 28, 38, 44, 47–9, 50–1, 53, 56, 60 n.69, 83, 97, 165 misanthropes 1, 2 missionary strategy 46, 96, 135, 144, 145 monotheism 2, 41, 53 morality 18, 43–4, 53–4, 55, 57, 64, 68, 70, 73, 74, 77–8, 82, 83, 86, 104, 114, 133 moral weakness 35, 55 Moses 43, 52, 59 n.39, 59 n.41 myth 22, 24–5, 51, 63–4, 71, 72 name-calling 37 Nausiphanes 3, 5 n.9, 30 n.9, 37 non-Greek language people, considering as illiterate 10–11 Nussbaum, Martha 88 n.10 orality 13–15, 95 oratory 75–6 Origen 3, 4, 18, 19, 28, 36–7, 38, 44–8, 50, 53, 56, 60 n.56, 77, 85, 97, 138, 165 Ovid 140 paganism 1, 2–3, 4, 18, 28, 37–8, 47, 48– 51, 53, 56–7, 58 n.6, 65, 75, 82–3, 85, 92 n.81, 95–6, 148, 149, 154 n.65 Galen 42–4 Lucian of Samosata 38–42 Palestinian Christians 41, 51, 84, 105 papyri 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 21, 24, 60 n.69, 71, 83, 89 n.30 Parry, Milman 14 Paul 46, 95, 96, 100, 101 n.2, 143–5, 151–2 n.28, 153 n.61, 154 n.65, 154 n.69, 156, 158, 160–1, 165, 166 n.10 people of the book 18, 31 n.31 Persius 89 n.31 personal interaction 8 Peru 7, 8

Pervo, R. 166 n.12 Peter 95, 97–100, 118–25, 129 n.64, 132–4, 139, 145–8, 150 n.10, 154 n.73, 155–64, 166 n.8 Philip 107, 109, 114, 123 Philodemus 116, 128 n.41, 128 n.51 philosophical education 35, 41, 43, 48–9, 50, 76–8, 86–7, 138, 151 n.20 philosophical woman 131–2 Philoxenus 115, 116, 124 Plato 14, 25–6, 35, 42, 52, 63, 76–7, 80, 90 n.54, 93–4 n.103, 127 n.29, 127 n.37, 134, 135, 138, 140, 141, 142, 143, 147, 149 n.3, 154 n.69 Plotinus 60 n.49, 77 Plutarch 26–7, 36, 37, 73, 76, 85, 109, 110, 112, 113, 116, 126 n.11, 126 n.22, 127 n.23, 128 n.43, 128 n.49, 136, 138, 141, 149 n.3 polis 22, 67, 104, 111, 134, 135 political progress, and literacy 22 Polybius 88 n.11, 111, 116 polytheism 42 Pompeii 15–16, 17, 18, 31 n.25 Pontic Christianity 41 primary education 66–70 Priscian 71 progumnasmata 72, 73, 75 Prometheus 25, 63–4, 87 n.2 prophecy, and Holy Spirit 157–8 Protagoras 63–5, 74 Pythagoras 42, 73, 111–12, 140, 152 n.41 Quintilian 65, 67, 69, 70–4, 90 n.36, 90 n.38, 114 Radin, Max 109 reading skills 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19–20, 21, 25, 51, 56, 66–70, 71, 74, 84–5, 117 receptive audience, and παρρησία 113–14 recruitment strategy 45 research teams, compromised 8–9 rhetorical schools 73, 74, 75–6 rhetorical skill 49, 51, 56 Rodgers, Richard 82 Rufus, Musonius 65, 78, 97 n.81, 131–3, 135–6, 137, 138, 149 n.4

Index Sanhedrin 98–100, 118–25, 129 n.61, 132– 4, 145–9, 154 n.73, 155, 156, 159–64, 166 n.8 Scott, R. 104 secondary education 70–4 sect, Christianity as 43 self-mastery 55, 78, 137 semi-educated 84–5 semi-literates 85 Seneca 5 n.9, 30 n.9, 80, 84, 93 n.93, 93 n.95, 141 sensationalism 1–2 sententia 73 sharing of possessions 140–1 simple folk 39 skills, lack of 56–7 social dynamics, of παρρησία 118–25 social positivism 17 Socrates 25, 35, 44, 48, 52–3, 57, 64, 77, 81–2, 93 n.102, 127 n.29, 134, 138, 139, 144, 145, 147, 151 n.24, 155, 161 Soknopaiou Nesos anecdote 9–10 attitudes towards letters 24 definitions of literacy 10–12 literacy quantification 12–20 social impact of literacy 20–1 Soranus 20 Spartan 80–1, 89 n.32, 107, 136 Steiner, Deborah Tam 24–5, 26 Stobaeus 150 n.12 Stoicism 77–8, 81, 82, 92 n.79, 92 n.81, 93 n.93, 103, 135, 137, 139, 143, 144, 149 n.1, 150 n.8, 150 n.12, 151 n.24, 153 n.64 symbolic world 3, 4, 33 n.55, 50, 86, 99, 120, 128 n.60, 144

Thamus 25–6 theology, of education level 41–2 Theon 75–6, 91 n.68 Thrax, Dionysius 71 Tiro 105–6, 109, 110, 124, 151 n.20 Titius, Gaius 107 tolerable speaker, and παρρησία 114–18 totalitarianism, and literacy 26 traditional classical scholarship 12–13 training (ἂσκησις) 137–8 transition, and orality 14–15 truth, and education 49, 55, 57, 107 UNESCO 11 unifying function, of illiteracy 21 unlettered, attitude towards 26–9 Vegetius 20 virtue 35, 44, 54, 63–4, 76, 86, 97, 112, 131–2 and friendship 113 as gender-specific 149 n.4 virtuous women 131–2 vulnerability of wise 128 n.41 Watt, I. 22 Weil, Simone 91 n.60 Western culture 14, 22–3 Wettstein, J. 152 n.34 will 54 wisdom 48, 60 n.56 writing skill 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 15, 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 66–9, 72, 84 Xenophon 85, 138, 154 n.69 Youtie, Herbert C. 15, 21, 33 n.65

Tanzer, H. H. 31 n.24 Tertullus 151–2 n.28

181

Zeno of Critium 149 n.3, 150 n.12