Maidens, Magic and Martyrs in Early Christianity: Collected Essays I 3161544501, 9783161544507

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Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament Herausgeber / Editor Jörg Frey (Zürich) Mitherausgeber / Associate Editors Markus Bockmuehl (Oxford) · James A. Kelhoffer (Uppsala) Hans-Josef Klauck (Chicago, IL) · Tobias Nicklas (Regensburg) J. Ross Wagner (Durham, NC)

379

Jan N. Bremmer

Maidens, Magic and Martyrs in Early Christianity Collected Essays I

Mohr Siebeck

Jan N. Bremmer, born 1944; Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Groningen.

e-ISBN 978-3-16-155438-4 ISBN 978-3-16-154450-7 ISSN  0512-1604 (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament) Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2017  by Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, Germany. www.mohr.de This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by copyright law) without the publisher’s written permission. This applies particularly to reproductions, translations, microfilms and storage and processing in electronic ­systems. The book was typeset and printed on non-aging paper by Gulde Druck in Tübingen and bound by Buch­binderei Spinner in Ottersweier. Printed in Germany.

For Christine Nearly fifty years later

Preface Although I am the son of a Dutch Calvinist minister, the grandson of a Calvinist minister and the great-grandson of a Calvinist professor of theology, the last thing I ever imagined was that I would publish my collected essays in the distinguished series of the Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament. I never was a theologian, a New Testament specialist or a patristic scholar, but after about fifteen years as ancient historian in Utrecht, I ended my scholarly career in the Chair of Religious Studies at Groningen. Yet the invitation by the editor, Jörg Frey, to publish my collected essays in his series was too attractive and honourable not to accept. After some deliberation, I decided to divide my essays into three volumes. The first one concentrates on Christianity in its first two centuries, the second on Greek and Roman mythology and religion, and the third on the interplay of Christianity and Judaism with the Greco-Roman world. The division is of course somewhat artificial, as all essays deal with the ancient world or its reception by modern scholars. It is therefore more a question of focus than of an always clear-cut division between the various volumes. The invitation also enables me to reflect on my scholarly career and to say something about the essays presented in the first volume. I began my career in 1974 as a lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Utrecht. My first articles were on the social and religious history of Greek and Roman religion, and ancient myth and ritual, especially, have continued to fascinate me, as the second volume will amply document. However, at the end of the 1970s, my then colleague, Jan den Boeft, himself a patristic scholar and later Professor of Latin at the Free University, Amsterdam, proposed that we should give a course together on the Acts of the Christian martyrs. This course led to a series of articles with notes on these Acts as well as a Dutch translation of the most important ones.1 In these articles Jan den Boeft usually commented from a more theological and linguistic point of view, whereas I was responsible more for the social and historical aspects of these Acts. The course introduced me to a world that was new to me, but which also intrigued me. Moreover, Jan den Boeft also 1  J. den Boeft and J.N. Bremmer, ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae I–V’, VigChris 35 (1981) 43–56; 36 (1982) 383–402; 39 (1985) 110–30; 45 (1991) 105–22; 49 (1995) 146–64; ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae VI: Passio Perpetuae 2, 16 and 17’, in J. Leemans (ed.), Persecution and Martyrdom in Late Antique Christianity. Essays in Honour of Boudewijn Dehandschutter (Leuven, 2010) 47–63 = this volume, Chapter  25, and Martelaren van de Oude Kerk (Kampen, 1988).

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introduced me to the Dutch Society for Early Christian Studies, where I made the acquaintance of two great Dutch patristic scholars, Toon Bastiaensen (1926– 2009) and Gerard Bartelink, whose Festschriften made me think of wider problems in early Christianity.2 The earliest of these contributions, on upper-class Christian women (Ch. 3), continued an interest of mine that started to develop in the early 1980s. It was the time when second-wave feminism reached Europe from the US and women’s history became popular. At first I looked only at women in ancient Greece,3 but gradually I realised that early Christianity also offered many fascinating perspectives in this respect, and this interest in women’s history remains visible all through this volume. In addition to the elite women, in the first section this interest is reflected especially in the chapters on widows (Ch. 4) and prophecy (Ch. 6) and in those on the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas (Ch. 22–26). At the same time, the study of the martyrs’ Acts introduced me to other aspects of early Christian life, such as the martyrs’ love of Christ, which I connect with the actual name of the Christians (Ch. 1), but which also made me think about the social and religious capital of the early Christians (Ch. 2). It is only when we come to grips with the factors that made Christianity attractive to outsiders that we can perhaps understand why the early Christians attracted so many people from outside their ranks. The latter question, although discussed by some of the very best (church) historians in the course of the last centuries, has still not been resolved 4. In fact, the problem has been analysed too little because most ancient historians do not study ancient religion, let alone early Christianity. It has been one of my aims all through the book to bridge this gap between students of the Greco-Roman world and those of early Christianity by combining evidence from both areas. That is also why I looked closely at the figure of Peregrinus (Ch. 5), whose life as described by Lucian gives us an unparalleled view of Christianity through the eyes of a pagan intellectual in the later second century.5 We may perhaps have too little ancient information ever to understand the rise of Christianity in detail, but that is all the more reason that we should exploit all the evidence we have.

2 

See this volume, Chapters 1 and 3. J.N. Bremmer, ‘La donna anziana: libertà e indipendenza’, in G. Arrigoni (ed.), Le donne in Grecia (Rome, 1985) 74–91, 177–82 and ‘De vrouw in de Griekse wereld’, in R. Stuip and C. Vellekoop (eds), Middeleeuwers over vrouwen 2 (Utrecht, 1985) 25–36, 180–81. 4  For example, see my The Rise of Christianity through the Eyes of Gibbon, Harnack and Rodney Stark (Groningen, 20102); from an early Christian perspective, L.W. Hurtado, Destroyers of the Gods (Waco, 2016). 5  See also my ‘Lucian on Peregrinus and Alexander of Abonuteichos: A Sceptical View of Two Religious Entrepeneurs’, in G. Petridou et al. (eds), Beyond Priesthood (Berlin and Boston, 2017) 47–76. 3 

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A new world opened up to me when I moved from Utrecht to Groningen in 1990. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the communist regimes, the Dutch government provided funding for cooperation with universities in Eastern Europe. On the initiative of the then Head of the Department of Church History, Hans Roldanus, the Groningen theological faculty initiated links with the Károli Gáspár University of Budapest, where our main partner was the then Professor of New Testament Studies, the humane János Bolyki (1931–2011). It was decided to focus on the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles as a genre that had been quite neglected until that time following the work at the turn of the last century by Richard Adelbert Lipsius (1830–1892) and Maximilien Bonnet (1841–1917). The choice proved to be a fortunate one. In a series of annual conferences, various aspects of all the main Apocryphal Acts as well as the, arguably, related Pseudo-Clementines, have been illuminated in a manner not done before. The advantage of this Groningen-Budapest cooperation was that it included not only Old Testament and New Testament scholars but also classicists and ancient historians. As a result, the volumes regularly contain a more varied approach to the Apocryphal Acts than many other publications in this field, which often are more interested in their relations to the canonical Scriptures. 6 In my own contributions to these volumes (Ch. 7–16), I usually looked at the position of women, as already explained, but also at the many occurrences of magic. In the middle of the 1980s, a new interest arose in magic in the ancient world,7 which also caught my attention. Although the occurrence of magic in the Apocryphal Acts had not gone unnoticed, 8 it appeared that the subject was still largely unexplored. Its study throws a light on a less noticed aspect of early Christianity, which in this respect seems to have been fairly close to its non-Christian environment. The many miracles of Jesus and the apostles must have been hard to distinguish from contemporary magic, as the efforts of the early Christians to differentiate themselves from the pagan magicians clearly show (Ch. 13). The confusion which this closeness seems to have caused lasted until the third century, when increasing acquaintance with the Christians must 6  For example, J.-M. Roessli and T. Nicklas (eds), Christian Apocrypha. Receptions of the New Testament in Ancient Christian Apocrypha (Göttingen, 2014). For the most recent review of the relationship between the Canonical and Apocryphal Acts, see the nuanced analysis of J. Snyder, ‘Relationships between the Acts of the Apostles and Other Apostle Narratives’, in J. Frey et al. (eds), Between Canonical and Apocryphal Texts: Processes of Reception, Rewriting and Interpretation in Early Judaism and Early Christianity (Tübingen, 2017), forthcoming. 7 For good bibliographies, see P. Brillet and A. Moreau, ‘Bibliographie générale’, in A. Moreau and J.-C. Turpin (eds), La magie, 4  vols (Montpellier, 2000) 4.7–159; J.L. Calvo Martínez, ‘Cien años de investigación sobre la magia antigua’, MHNH 1 (2001) 7–60; P. Fa­ brini, Magica antiqua. Indice e guida a una bibliografía informatica (Pisa, 2006); R. Gordon and F. Marco Simón (eds), Magical Practice in the Latin West (Leiden, 2010) 1–4. 8  G. Poupon, ‘L’accusation de magie dans les Actes Apocryphes’, in F. Bovon et al., Les Actes Apocryphes des Apôtres (Geneva, 1981) 71–93.

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have lessened the need to stress the difference with the pagans in this respect. The Apocryphal Acts are thus an important witness to this aspect of early Christianity, which is much less visible in other early Christian writings. The Apocryphal Acts are also valuable testimonies to Christian life in general in the second half of the second century. They show us something of the variety of the Christian movement, which, from a theological point of view, was being kept together by family resemblances rather than by its constitution as a monolithic group. It was the centrality of Christ, the acceptance of the Old Testament as authoritative together with the, somewhat flexible, Christian ritual that were the main unifying factors. Yet within this unity there was a large ‘interactive diversity’,9 as is also very noticeable in the Apocryphal Acts, which clearly reflect different theological ideas and ritual practices, but also react to one another. For a proper view, though, of the development of early Christianity, we should be able to locate these writings in time and place, the more so given the relative rarity of second-century Christian texts.10 In my earliest articles I took over the then current opinions, but increasing familiarity with the texts has led me to new insights. Attention to the theological themes, onomastics, social terminology and intertextuality of the Apocryphal Acts has now made me conclude that we must study them in the chronological order of John, Andrew, Peter, Paul and Thomas (Ch. 7–11, 14.2), noting that the first three were written in Pontus/Bithynia, the Acts of Paul in South West Asia Minor and the Acts of Thomas in Edessa. The location in Pontus/Bithynia may surprise, but the famous correspondence of Pliny with Trajan shows that Christianity was already widespread in that area at the beginning of the second century. After the Apocryphal Acts, the Groningen/Budapest conferences turned to the early Apocryphal Apocalypses (Ch. 17–21). Here my attention was first drawn to the problem of Greek influence on the Apocalypse of Peter. As explained in more detail in the various relevant chapters, classicists at the beginning of the last century wanted to explain the Christian ideas about hell through the influence of Orphism, whereas Martha Himmelfarb in her excellent Tours of Hell (1983) stressed the Jewish background to the Apocalypses. In the course of my investigations I have gradually come to the conclusion that the historical reality was more complicated. As I now see it, in the earliest Christian Apocalypses we can observe a merging of both Jewish and Greek traditions. Moreover, even regarding the Jewish traditions, we should be aware of the fact that 9  L. Hurtado, ‘Interactive Diversity: A Proposed Model of Christian Origins’, JThS 64 (2013) 445–62; T. Nicklas, Jews and Christians? (Tübingen, 2014). 10  R. Pervo, ‘Narratives about the Apostles: Non-canonical Acts and Related Literature’, in A. Gregory and C. Tuckett (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Apocrypha (Oxford, 2015) 65–89 is unhelpful in this respect. Better: H.-J. Klauck, The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles: An Introduction (Waco, 2008).

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recent research has increasingly shown the pervasive influence of Greek in Palestine from the Seleucid period onwards. Even if Greek did not become the language for religious discourse, all educated Judeans, and even some non-elite ones, if probably to a much smaller extent, must have been proficient in Greek at the time of emerging Christianity.11 As the origin of the Apocalypse of Peter, whether Egypt or Palestine, is still debated (Ch. 18.1), it is important to realise that educated Judeans, too, had access to Greek literature. Very early on, the Christians appropriated the Jewish genre of the tour of hell, adapted the genre to their own needs and fashions, and composed a number of such writings up to Late Antiquity. Although the oldest Apocalypses were still steeped in Jewish traditions, over time Christian influence on the genre increased. In fact, in the late fourth-century Apocalypse of Paul Christian sins have replaced most of the traditional Jewish ones (Ch. 19). Interestingly, we also notice that the descents of the early Apocalypses influenced a number of ascents in Gnostic writings, which were also influenced by Orphic traditions (Ch. 21.5). One of the fascinating aspects of this particular subject is the realisation of the entanglement of the various religious traditions, which previous generations of scholars often liked to keep as separate as possible. The final section of this book focuses on the Acts of the Christian martyrs, in particular on the, undoubtedly, most interesting one, the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas (Ch. 22–26). The Passio is a unique document, as it gives us an unparalleled insight into the mind and behaviour of a young woman who had converted to Christianity. But it also shows us something of her family circumstances as well as of the attitude of the Roman government and of her fellow Christians. It is no wonder that such a unique document has received much scrutiny in recent times. The problem with the early Acts of the Martyrs is not one of a simple choice between authenticity or forgery, but of determining to what extent these texts have used earlier Acts as intertexts, embedded the Acts in other writings or adapted them to the liturgy in which they were read. In the case of Perpetua, it is clear that we do not simply have a writing left by a young woman. There are indications that the editor modestly edited her ‘diary’, but he also influenced the reader by adding the vision of Saturus, his description of the deaths of the martyrs and by adding his own prologue and epilogue (Ch. 22.2). Yet despite the adaptation of Perpetua’s text to the ideological aim of the editor and his embedding it into a new context,12 the modest scale of the editor’s textual interventions and his chronological closeness to the original death of Per11  See now W. Ameling, ‘Epigraphy and the Greek Language in Hellenistic Palestine’, SCI 34 (2015) 1–18; M.O. Wise, Language and Literacy in Roman Judaea: A Study of the Bar Kokhba Documents (New Haven and London, 2015). 12  For the editor’s aims, see J. den Boeft, ‘The Editor’s Prime Objective: Haec in Aedificationem Ecclesiae Legere’, in J.N. Bremmer and M. Formisano (eds), Perpetua’s Passions (Oxford, 2012) 169–79.

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petua and her fellow martyrs (Ch. 24.2) seem to guarantee the authenticity of the text. In my analyses, I have tried to elucidate the visions of Perpetua and Saturus, but also visions of heaven (Ch. 27), by combining Christian motifs and the Roman Umwelt. It is my strong conviction that we should try to understand these visions not from pre-conceived modern ideas, like those of psychoanalysis, but from the contemporary world these martyrs were living in. At the time of writing the original version of the chapter on the motivation of the martyrs (Ch. 24), I was struck forcefully by the events of 9/11 and their aftermath. It seemed to me that we all had to reflect on the motivation of the perpetrators and try to understand, as far as that is possible, what moved them and the Palestinian suicide bombers, who were much in the news due to the Second Intifada (2000–2005). I therefore compared several aspects of their behaviour and context with that of Perpetua and her group.13 I further reflected on these problems in the original version of the chapter on Felicitas (Ch. 23). In the present book, I have merged and updated the two versions (Ch. 24.3). At the time of writing this Preface, the summer of 2016, Europe has been faced with a series of (suicide-)attacks by followers of ISIS, usually males with a career of petty criminality and/or an unstable mentality. They constitute a different category from those discussed in my chapter, but the need to understand remains, and that is why I have reprinted my reflections. I would like to thank Brill (Leiden), Cambridge University Press, De Gruyter (Berlin), Hephaistos (Hamburg), Oxford University Press, Peter Lang (Berne), Routledge (London), Steiner Verlag (Stuttgart), Wolters Kluwer (Deventer) and, especially, Peeters (Leuven) for their permission to reprint the articles mentioned in the Acknowledgements. Any scholar who collects his earlier writings is faced with the problem of possible revisions and updating. It is of course impossible to completely redo one’s own research of several decades. Yet I did not want to reprint views I no longer advocate. This is particularly the case regarding the place and time of the Apocryphal Acts. In some cases I have even completely re-written the original text in this respect, as in the chapter on the Acts of John (Ch. 7, Appendix). In other cases, I have simply updated the bibliography, made small corrections, removed overlaps where possible, reorganised a few sections and added more evidence, as in the discussion of the name of the Christians (Ch. 1.3) and in the chapter (16) on Apion and Anoubion, where very recently new evidence has enriched our understanding of these figures. Naturally, this could not be done in every case, but I have always tried to bring the volume up to date to 2016 in the more important issues I discuss.

13  The idea is not unique: see the implicit comparison in S. Weigel (ed.), Märtyrer-Porträts (Munich, 2007).

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Most of the revisions were made in the wonderful environment of the Max-Weber-Kolleg in Erfurt, where I was a fellow during the Sommersemester of 2016. I would like to thank here Jörg Rüpke for his invitation to this most stimulating institution. The final corrections and the proofs were done in the stimulating Käte Hamburger Kolleg ‘Dynamics in the History of Religion between Asia and Europe’ in Bochum, where I was a fellow in the academic year 2016–2017. I am most grateful to its director Volkhard Krech for inviting me. The many debts I have incurred in the course of these articles, I mention at the end of each chapter. Here I would single out Jan den Boeft, who, as already mentioned, was instrumental in introducing me to the world of early Christianity, and my Groningen colleague Ton Hilhorst, who has been a long standing critic of my articles and whose eagle eye and erudition have often saved me from mistakes. I am also grateful to Tobias Nicklas, who not only first suggested that I collect my articles but with whom I was able to resume the study of the apo­ cryphal literature through his great hospitality in Regensburg. Last but not least, these articles would not have been written without my wife Christine, who created the ideal circumstances to work and who also often accompanied me to the many conferences that lie at the basis of this volume.14

14 

I am grateful to Orla Mulholland for her correction of my English.

Contents Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VII Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XVII

Section I Aspects of Early Christianity 1. Why Did Jesus’ Followers Call Themselves ‘Christians’? . . . . . . 3 2. The Social and Religious Capital of the Early Christians . . . . . . 13 3. Why Did Early Christianity Attract Upper-class Women? . . . . . 33 4. Pauper or Patroness: the Widow in the Early Christian Church . . . 43 5. Peregrinus’ Christian Career . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 6. The Domestication of Early Christian Prophecy . . . . . . . . . . . 81

Section II Studies in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles and Pseudo-Clementines 7. Women in the Acts of John . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 8. Man, Magic, and Martyrdom in the Acts of Andrew . . . . . . . . . 115 9. Aspects of the Acts of Peter: Women, Magic, Place and Date . . . . 133 10. Magic, Martyrdom and Women’s Liberation in the Acts of Paul and Thecla . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 11. The Acts of Thomas: Place, Date and Women . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 12. Conversion in the Oldest Apocryphal Acts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 13. Magic in the Apocryphal Acts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

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14. The Apocryphal Acts: Authors, Place, Time and Readership . . . . 219 15. Pseudo-Clementines: Texts, Dates, Places, Authors and Magic . . . 235 16. Apion and Anoubion in the Homilies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

Section III Apocalypses and Tours of Hell 17. The Apocalypse of Peter: Greek or Jewish? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 18. The Apocalypse of Peter: Place, Date and Punishments . . . . . . . . 281 19. Christian Hell: From the Apocalypse of Peter to the Apocalypse of Paul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 20. Tours of Hell: Greek, Jewish, Roman and Early Christian . . . . . . 313 21. Descents to Hell and Ascents to Heaven in Apocalyptic Literature . 329

Section IV The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas 22. Perpetua and her Diary: Authenticity, Family and Visions . . . . . 349 23. Felicitas: The Martyrdom of a Young African Woman . . . . . . . . 387 24. The Motivation of Martyrs: Perpetua and the Palestinians . . . . . . 403 25. Passio Perpetuae 2, 16 and 17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 26. The Vision of Saturus in the Passio Perpetuae . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439 27. Contextualising Heaven in Third-Century North Africa . . . . . . 455

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469 Index of Names, Places and Passages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471

Abbreviations AB Analecta Bollandiana AE L’Année Épigraphique Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt ANRW Archiv für Religionswissenschaft ARW ASE Annali di Storia dell’Esegesi CCSL Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum CIL CPh Classical Philology Classical Quarterly CQ Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres CRAI CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Berlin and Leiden, FGrH 1923–) Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies GRBS HSCPh Harvard Studies in Classical Philology Harvard Theological Review HThR HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Supplement IDBSup IG Inscriptiones Graecae Inscriptiones Graecae ad Res Romanas Pertinentes (Paris 1906–1927) IGR JAC Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum Journal of Biblical Literature JBL Journal of Early Christian Studies JECS Journal of Hellenic Studies JHS JRS Journal of Roman Studies Journal for the Study of Judaism JSJ JThS Journal of Theological Studies Les Études Classiques LEC LIMC Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae (Zurich, 1981–1999) Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua (London et al., 1928–) MAMA MÉFRA Mélanges de l’École française de Rome (Antiquité) W. Schneemelcher (ed.), New Testament Apocrypha, tr. and ed. R. McL. NTA Wilson, 2  vols (Cambridge, 19922) New Testament Studies NTS OF A. Bernabé, Orphicorum et Orphicis similium testimonia et fragmenta. Poe­tae Epici Graeci. Pars II. Fasc. 1–3 (Munich and Leipzig, 2004–07) PG Patrologia Graeca PIR 2 Prosopographia Imperii Romani Saec I. II. III, second edition (Berlin, 1933– 2015)

XVIII RAC RB RE

Abbreviations

Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum (Stuttgart, 1950–) Revue Bénédictine Paulys Realenzyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart, 1984–1973) Revue des Études Anciennes REA Revue d’Études Augustiniennes et Patristiques RÉAug RECAM Regional Epigraphic Catalogues of Asia Minor Revue des Études Grecques REG Rheinisches Museum RhM Society of Biblical Literature SBL SCI Scripta Classica Israelica Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum (Leiden, 1923–) SEG SMSR Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni Studia Patristica SP TAM Tituli Asiae Minoris (Vienna, 1901–) Transactions of the American Philological Association TAPA ThesCRA Thesaurus Cultus et Rituum Antiquorum (Los Angeles, 2004–2012) Theologische Realenzyklopädie (Berlin and New York, 1977–2004) TRE TWNT Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament (Stuttgart, 1932–1979) VigChris Vigiliae Christianae ZAC Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft ZNW Zeitschschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik ZPE Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Theologie ZWT

Section I

Aspects of Early Christianity

Chapter 1

Why Did Jesus’ Followers Call Themselves ‘Christians’? As a rule, ancient historians pay hardly any attention to the figure and role of Christ in the Christianisation of the Roman Empire. The neglect is not only modern: Gibbon too disregarded him in his famous analysis of the rise of Christianity.1 This omission has something curious about it, since studies of the rise of early Christianity might naturally have been expected to say something about the relevance of the founder of the faith to his followers. It is therefore my aim to show in this chapter (§  1) that early Christianity had an affective relationship with Christ, (§  2) that a proper evaluation of the position of Christ in early Christian belief is a precondition for the understanding of the meteoric rise of early Christianity and (§  3) that this relationship played a major role in the self-designation of the early followers of Christ as ‘Christians’.

1.  The Importance of Christ It is certainly true that in certain sectors of early Christian literature Christ did not figure very clearly as an identifiable human being who had been crucified on Golgotha. Second-century apologetics, which tried to make the Christian faith respectable in the eyes of educated pagans, portrayed Christ as the incarnation of the Logos – hardly a figure to be very intimate with.2 And in the later second-century apocryphal Acts of the Apostles Jesus is not pictured as really human but as God; in these Acts Jesus remains ‘invisible’ and the apostles have taken his place as the person to imitate.3 However, a rather different picture emerges when we look at the early Christian Acta martyrum.4 1  E. Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. D. Womersley, 3  vols (London, 1995) 1.446–581; R. MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire (New Haven and London, 1984) 21; R. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (Harmondsworth, 1986) 112; K. Hopkins, A World Full of Gods: Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Roman Empire (London, 1999). 2  Cf. R. Grant, Gods and the One God (London, 1986) 105–11; J. Roldanus, ‘Verdediging of verbastering? Over subversieve elementen in het vroege christendom en de ontkenning daarvan’, in De historie herzien. Vijfde bundel ‘Historische avonden’ uitgegeven door het Historisch genootschap te Groningen (Hilversum, 1987) 135–64 at 148–52. 3  L. van Kampen, Apostelverhalen (Diss. Utrecht, 1990); Hopkins, World Full of Gods, 156–60. It may be asked – but space does not permit an answer – whether the martyrs’ love for

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Section I:  Aspects of Early Christianity

We will take as our point of departure the martyrdom of Polycarp. When the Roman governor asked Polycarp to curse Christ, he answered, ‘For eighty-six years I have been his slave (cf. below) and he has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme against my king and saviour?’ (Polycarp 9.3). The account of his death states, in reaction to Jewish agitation, ‘little did they know that we could never abandon Christ, for it was he who suffered for the redemption of those who are saved in the entire world, the innocent one dying on behalf of sinners. Nor could we worship anyone else’ (17.2); Carpus cried out when the fire was set beneath his cross, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, you know that we suffer this for your name’s sake’ (Carpus, Papylus and Agathonice [Latin version] 5); Perpetua walked to the arena ‘as a matrona of Christ’ (Perpetua 18.2); Maximillian has ‘the sign of Christ’ and is therefore unable to accept ‘the seal of the world’ (Maximilian 2.4); Marcellus can only serve ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God, the almighty Father’ (Marcellus 2.2); Euplus has received the holy Gospels ‘from my Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God’ (Euplus 1.5) and Gallonius is Christi devotus.5 We even find a mystical presence of Christ in some of the martyrs. When the Lyonese martyr Sanctus was cruelly tortured, ‘Christ suffering in him achieved great deeds of glory’ (Martyrs of Lyons 23), and when Felicitas, labouring in the pains of childbirth, was asked how she would endure the terrors of the arena, she answered, ‘then there will be another one in me who will suffer for me, just as I shall be suffering for him’ (Perpetua 15). 6 The mystical presence may also explain the state of ecstasy which helped martyrs bear their tortures. In its account of the martyrdom of Polycarp, the Smyrnean church relates that ‘some indeed attained to such courage that they would utter not a sound of a cry, showing to all of us that in the hour of their torment these witnesses of Christ were not present in the flesh, or rather that the Lord was there present holding converse with them. Fixing their eyes on the favour of Christ, they despised the tortures of this world, in one hour buying themselves an exemption from eternal fire’ (Polycarp 2.2). And after Blandina was being tossed a lot by a bull, ‘she no longer perceived what was happening because of the hope and possession of all she believed in and because of her intimacy with Christ’ (Martyrs of Lyons 56).

and dedication to a human Christ was not an important factor in the victory of ‘orthodox’ Christianity over those Christians with strong docetist interests. 4  For the texts, editions and historical value of these Acta, see this volume, Chapter  2 2.1. I cite the Acta by their main protagonist(s). 5  P. Chiesa, ‘Un testo agiografico Africano di Aquileia: Gli Acta di Gallonio e dei martiri di Timida Regia’, AB 114 (1996) 241–68 at 265 (martyrdom of AD 303/4). 6  The presence of Christ in the martyr can also be found in Tertullian, Pudicitia, 22.6 and in Augustine, cf. J. den Boeft, ‘Martyres sunt homines fuerunt’, in A.A.R. Bastiaensen et al. (eds), Fructus Centesimus. Mélanges G.J.M. Bartelink (Steenbrugge and Dordrecht, 1989) 115–24 at 120.

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These quotations demonstrate that the early Christians had an affective relationship with Christ.7 They also show that students of early Christianity have to be attentive to the mode of discourse in that literature. Schematically we could say, using a favourite distinction of modern French historiography, that early Christian apologetic, theological and fictional literature shows Christianity conçu, whereas the Acta martyrum illustrate more how it was vécu. A proper evaluation of early Christianity has to take into account both these aspects.

2.  Christian and pagan adhesion to one god Ancient historians’ misjudgment of the position of Christ also precludes a proper understanding of the rise of early Christianity.8 Naturally we cannot here analyse the whole of this complicated issue, as a proper understanding has to account for the various ways Christianity fulfilled the religious, social, moral and intellectual needs of its time. Here I want to limit myself to some observations as to how the love for Christ fitted into the religious climate of the Roman Empire. The close relationship between Jesus and his followers is regularly characterised in Paul (Romans 1.1, Philippians 1.1, Titus 1.1),9 the Apostolic Fathers (1 Clement 60.2; Ignace, Magn. 2), the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles (Acta Petri 30, 41) and the Acta martyrum (Polycarp 9.3) by the term doulos, ‘slave’.10 This self-designation of Jesus’ followers as his ‘slaves’ has its counterpart in the designation of Jesus himself as the Kyrios, the ‘Master’ or ‘Lord’, a 7  For the central place of Christ in the life of the early Christian martyrs, see also M. Pellegrino, Ricerche patristiche, 2  vols (Turin, 1982) 1.385–425; H. Crouzel, ‘L’imitation et la “suite” de Dieu et du Christ dans les premiers siècles chrétiens ainsi que dans leurs sources gréco-romaines et hébraïques’, JAC 21 (1978) 18–41; V. Saxer, Pères saints et culte chrétien dans l’Eglise des premiers siècles (Aldershot, 1994) Ch. VIII (‘La professione di fede del martire negli Atti autentici dei primi tre secoli’); C. Pietri, Christiana respublica, 3  vols (Rome, 1997) 2.1229–30; H. Bakker, Exemplar Domini. Ignatius of Antioch and His Martyrological Self-Concept (Diss. Groningen, 2003) 149–57; C.R. Moss, The Other Christs (Oxford, 2010) and Ancient Christian Martyrdom (New Haven and London, 2012) 49–76. The theme remains important in the later ‘passions épiques’: M. Taveirne, ‘Das Martyrium als imitatio Christi: Die literarische Gestaltung der spätantiken Märtyrerakten und -passionen nach der Passion Christi’, ZAC 18 (2014) 167–203. In general: L.W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids, 2003). 8  R. Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton, 1996); Hopkins, World full of Gods; J.N. Bremmer, The Rise of Christianity through the Eyes of Gibbon, Harnack and Rodney Stark (Groningen, 20102). 9  See also K.H. Rengstorf, ‘doulos etc.’, in TWNT, 2.264–83 at 276–80; D. Martin, Slavery as Salvation (New Haven and London, 1990) 50–85; G. Theissen, Social Reality and the Early Christians (Minneapolis, 1992) 187–201. 10  For the later, very normal, usage, note P.J. Sijpesteijn, ‘Apphus and Pascentius: servi dei tempore’, Archiv für Papyrusforschung 40 (1994) 69–70; R. Haensch, ‘Bescheidenheit ist eine Zier: Der Gebrauch der Demutsformel δοῦλος θεοῦ in den Kirchenbauinschriften der spätantiken Patriarchate Antiochia und Jerusalem’, in A.B. Kuhn (ed.), Social Status and Prestige in

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title occurring more than 180 times in the New Testament.11 A.D. Nock (1902– 1963), like W. Bousset (1866–1920) and A. Deissmann (1866–1937) before him, rightly connected this title of Christ with a development in Hellenistic piety, in which gods are represented as absolute rulers and addressed by such titles as Kyrios, Despotês and Tyrannos. According to Nock, in Christianity the title Kyrios ‘implies a belief in the divine overruling of the individual, who receives commands from on high.’ This is certainly too one-sided a view, as Nock paid insufficient attention to the correlation between the title Kyrios and the self-designation of the faithful as slaves of god so-and-so. It is this self-designation, which has been studied in an important contribution by my compatriot Pleket, who has demonstrated that even before the Hellenistic-Roman period we can find traces of a close affective relationship between deity and worshipper. This dependency was strengthened and disseminated in the Hellenistic-Roman period, as he argued, under oriental influence and in connection with the rise of autocratic political systems. Like Nock before him, Pleket noted that ‘these elements acted as a sort of praeparatio evangelica for the common man whose head was not crammed with theological dogma, and facilitated the transition to a structurally subservient religion (Christianity)’.12 The shift from polytheism to adhesion to one god first manifested itself in the so-called oriental cults of the later classical era, but in the Roman period its spirit also pervaded established pagan religion.13 However, in early Christianity this adhesion to only one god seems to have assumed more intense forms than in competing, pagan cults.14 Consequently, a neglect of Christ overlooks an important aspect of early Christianity.

the Graeco-Roman World (Stuttgart, 2015) 315–39. For the Old Testament background of the Christian usage, see J.P. Floss, Jahweh dienen – Götter dienen (Cologne, 1975). 11  E. Bickerman, Studies in Jewish and Christian Religion, 3  vols (Leiden, 1976–86) 3.148–9 wrongly derives the terminology from Persia where the word ‘slave’ was used to denote high officers of the king, cf. G. Widengren, Der Feudalismus im alten Iran (Cologne, 1969) 21–34. 12  A.D. Nock, Essays on Religion and the Ancient World, ed. Z. Stewart, 2  vols (Oxford, 1972) 1.77; H.W. Pleket, ‘Religious history as the history of mentality: the “believer” as servant of the deity in the Greek world’, in H.S. Versnel (ed.), Faith, Hope and Worship (Leiden, 1981) 152–92. 13  Pleket, ‘Religious history’; P. Veyne, ‘Une évolution du paganisme gréco-romain: injustice et piété des dieux, leurs ordres ou “oracles”’, Latomus 45 (1986) 259–83, repr. in his La société romaine (Paris, 1991) 281–310; H.S. Versnel, Ter Unus (Leiden, 1990) 88–94. 14  Cf. A. Hilhorst, ‘“Servir Dieu” dans la terminologie du judaïsme hellénistique et des premières générations chrétiennes de langue grecque’, in Bastiaensen et al., Fructus Centesimus, 177–92.

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3.  Jesus’ followers as ‘Christians’ An additional argument for the importance of Christ can be found in the name ‘Christian’, since the early Christians not infrequently connected their name with Christ. For example, in his Scorpiace (9.8–9) Tertullian observes that whoever confesses to be a Christian also testifies to belonging to Christ (Christi se esse), and a similar connection between ‘Christian’ and ‘Christ’ occurs in the Greek version of Carpus, Papylus and Agathonice (5). The connection looks only natural to us: surely, the followers of Christ called themselves ‘Christians’! Yet this was not the case in early Christianity. Other names, such as ‘the Way’,15 ‘the believers’, ‘the saints’ or ‘God’s people’ were more popular in the first two centuries.16 The term ‘Christian’ is still absent from Paul, 1 Clement and Tatian, and it is rare in Irenaeus and Hippolytus. Aristides, Ignatius and Athenagoras even speak of the ‘so-called Christians’.17 Which factor(s), then, helped to get the name established? Various solutions have been proposed, of which that of ­Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930) has been the most influential: ‘er (i.e. the name ‘Christian’) allein war gegen jede Verwechslung geschützt’.18 However, his very practical solution takes insufficient account of the fact that at one particular occasion the utterance of the name ‘Christian’ was not only normal but virtually obligatory. Before studying this occasion, we will first look at the origin of the term ‘Christian’. In the canonical Acts, Luke relates that ‘it was in Antioch that the disciples were called Christians for the first time’ (11.26: χρηματίσαι τε πρώτως ἐν Ἀντιοχείᾳ τοὺς μαθητὰς Χριστιανούς). This is the usual translation, but Elias Bickerman (1897–1981) argued that the Greek usage of χρηματίζω obliges us to accept a translation which has these followers style themselves Christians.19 15  E.R. Urciuoli, ‘“Quella ὁδός che essi chiamano αἵρεσις”. Alle origini dell’autocomprensione filosofica dei seguaci di Gesù’, ASE 28 (2011) 117–36. 16  Cf. A. von Harnack, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten (Leipzig, 19243) 410–45; H. Karpp, ‘Christennamen’, in RAC 2 (1954) 1114–38; K.H. Kritzer, Selbstbezeichnungen der Christen in der frühchristl. nichtbibl. Literatur des I. und II. Jhrdts. (Diss. Salzburg, 1970: non vidi); A. Ferrua, Scritti vari di epigrafe e antichità cristiane (Bari, 1991) 12–25 (on the spelling of Christianus/-os, first published in 1933); T. Hegedus, ‘Naming Christians in Antiquity’, Studies in Religion 32 (2004) 173–90; A. Luij­ endijk, Greetings in the Lord (Cambridge MA, 2008) 38–40; P. Trebilco, Self-Designations and Group Identity in the New Testament (Cambridge, 2012); M. Bile and B. Gain, ‘Une nouvelle étymologie de χριστιανóς?’, RÉAug 58 (2012) 141–53, D.G. Horrell, Becoming Christian (London, 2013) 164–210 (‘The Label Christianoi: 1 Pet 4.16 and the Formation of Christian Identity’, first published in 2007). 17  Aristides 15; Ign. Magn. 4, Rom. 3; Athen. Leg. 1.3. 18 Harnack, Mission, 428, who is followed by Karpp, ‘Christennamen’, 1134, although also noting the connection of the name with Christ. 19 Bickerman, Studies, 3.96–9, largely accepted by E. Peterson, Frühkirche, Judentum und Gnosis (Freiburg, 1959) 64–87; C. Spicq, ‘Ce que signifie le titre du chrétien?’, Studia Theolo­

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Moreover, he sees in the choice of the word ‘Christian’ the wish of the Christians to avoid the term doulos, ‘slave’, as it would sound too much like the terminology of oriental gods. Instead, so Bickerman claims, they styled themselves Christiani as, ‘agents, representatives of the Messiah’. Both these views of Bickerman are unpersuasive. Firstly, recent studies of the verb have established that the verb means ‘a person carries a particular name, title, ethnic officially and in public’.20 Thus the passage in Acts tells us that in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians in public, perhaps (officially) by the Roman authorities. We may add that it would indeed be hard to understand why it took so long for ‘Christians’ to become the accepted self-designation of the early followers of Christ, if the followers themselves had coined the term. Secondly, Bickerman’s translation of ‘Christian’ will hardly do. From comparable early word formations – Caesariani (‘Caesar’s army’), 21 Pompeiani (Pompey’s followers’), 22 Pisoniani (‘Piso’s soldiers’),23 Ciceroniani (‘friend/cliens of Cicero’),24 Herodiani (‘followers of Herodes’),25 Augustiani (‘Nero’s claque’)26 and Galbiani (Galba’s troops’) 27 – we can see that at the narrated time of Acts the meaning of ‘Christian’ can hardly have been understood otherwise than as ‘follower of Christ’. Moreover, various passages in the New Testament show that early Christians called themselves ‘slaves of Christ’ (§  2). We really have no sufficient information to solve the problem definitively, but Peterson’s hypothesis that Jesus’ followers received their designation from the Roman authorities at least explains the fact that the Jewish-Hellenistic followers of Christ eventually adopted a Roman word-formation.28 If the precise origin of the term ‘Christian’ is still debated, we can perhaps be more certain about the way the name became the accepted self-designation of gica 15 (1961) 68–78; T. Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography and Roman History = Tria Corda 5 (Tübingen, 2010) 2; B. Shaw, ‘The Myth of the Neronian Persecution’, JRS (2015) 73–100 at 80. 20  C.P. Jones, ‘Epigraphica [I-III]’, ZPE 139 (2002) 108–16; Y. Broux et al., ‘ὡς χρηματίζει and the Importance of Naming in Roman Egypt’, ZPE 174 (2010) 159–66 at 164 (quotation). 21 ‘Hirtius’, Bell. Alex. 13.1, Bell. Afr. 14.3, 24.3, 59.1, Bell. Hisp.  34.1; Senatus consultum de Cnaeo Pisone patre 55 of AD 20, cf. W. Eck et al., Das senatus consultum de Cn. Pisone patre (Munich, 1996) 175–7. 22 ‘Hirtius’, Bell. Alex. 59, Bell. Hisp.  34.1. 23  Senatus consultum de Cnaeo Pisone patre 55, cf. Eck, Das senatus consultum de Cn. Pisone patre, 175–7. 24 Sen. Contr. 7.2.12: Buteo hoc colore: ‘vocetur’ inquit ‘ille Ciceronianus [ille] cliens, amicus’. 25  Mark 3.6, 12.13, cf. Bickerman, Studies, 3.22–33 (‘Les Hérodiens’, first published in 1938), improved upon by H.H. Rowley, ‘The Herodians in the Gospels’, JThS 41 (1940) 14–27; most recently, G. Ringshausen, ‘Das Rätsel der Ἡρῳδιανοί im Markusevangelium’, ZNW 106 (2015) 115–25. 26 Tac. Ann. 14.15.5; Suet. Nero 25. 27 Tac. Hist. 1.51.3. 28 Peterson, Frühkirche, 78.

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the followers of Jesus. Once again, we take our point of departure in a passage from the Martyrdom of Polycarp. After the proconsul had insisted that Polycarp should swear by the emperor’s Genius, the bishop answered, ‘If you delude yourself into thinking that I will swear by the emperor’s Genius, as you say, and if you pretend not to know who I am, listen and I will tell you plainly: “I am a Christian”’ (10: Χριστιανός εἰμι). This straightforward statement did not deter the proconsul from continuing his attempts to persuade, but finally he sent his herald to the centre of the arena to announce, ‘Three times Polycarp has confessed that he is a Christian’ (12).29 Evidently, this was the essential information which had been gathered in the course of the interrogation and it firmly established Polycarp’s guilt. In its direct or indirect form, this formula of ‘I am a Christian’ occurs in virtually all the Acta that have been recognised as authentic; it is only lacking in the reports of the martyrdoms of Montanus and Lucius and of Felix. Usually, the confession is placed right at the beginning of the proceedings, but in some cases the declamation is the climax of the hearing, following the refusal to participate in pagan ritual.30 The Christians even volunteered this confession without being asked, as Euplus well illustrates: ‘In the consulship of our lords Diocletian (for the ninth time) and Maximian (for the eighth time) on the 29th of April (304), in the most famous city of Catana, in the court room, in front of the curtain, Euplus shouted out: “I wish to die, for I am a Christian”’ (1). The statement ‘I am a Christian’ clearly is the answer to the simple question ‘Are you a Christian?’.31 This question enabled the Roman magistrates to minimise the rather embarrassing situation that they were trying people who were not really guilty of any obvious crimes. As the Christian Lucius said to the urban prefect Urbicus after he had ordered Ptolemaeus to be executed: ‘What is the charge? He has not been convicted of adultery, fornication, murder, clothes-stealing, robbery, or of any crime whatsoever; yet you have punished this man because he confesses the name of Christian’ (Ptolemaeus and Lucius 29  This translation follows a punctuation which differs from the traditional one, cf. J. den Boeft and J.N. Bremmer, ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae III’, VigChris 39 (1985) 110–30 at 111–3, accepted in the new edition by O. Zwierlein, Die Urfassungen der Martyria Polycarpi et Pionii und das Corpus Polycarpianum, 2  vols (Berlin and Boston, 2014). 30 Direct: Polycarp 10; Justin 3.4, 4 passim; Lyons 19–20, 50; Scillitani 9–10, 13; Apollonius 2; Perpetua 3.2, 6.4; Carpus 3.5, 23, 34; Pionius 8.2 and 4, 9.5 and 7, 15.7, 16.2, 18.6; Cyprian 1.2; Fructuosus 2.3; Maximilian 1.2–3, 2.6 and 9; Julius 1.3; Agape 3.2 and 7; Euplus 1.1; P. Maraval, La passion inédite de S. Athénogène de Pédachthoé en Cappadoce (BHG 197b) (Brussels, 1990) 75 (martyrdom under Diocletian); Chiesa, ‘Un testo agiografico’, 265 (martyrdom of Gallonius); A. Pietersma, The Acts of Phileas, Bishop of Thmuis (Geneva, 1984) 107 (ca. AD 306: Latin version). Indirect: Ptolemaeus and Lucius 11, 16; Lyons 10, 26, 50; Potamiaena and Basilides 5; Marianus 4.9, 5.2; Marinus 3; Marcellus 2.1; Abitinian Martyrs 5, 10, 13–18; P. van Minnen, ‘The Earliest Account of a Martyrdom in Coptic’, AB 113 (1995) 13–38 (a martyrdom of AD 305). Climax: Scillitani 9; Justin 3.4. 31  Cf. Pliny, Ep.  10.96.2: interrogavi ipsos an essent Christiani; Ptolemaeus and Lucius 10.

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15–16). The magistrates’ embarrassment with the situation clearly appears from their hesitation in putting martyrs to death. In order to reach their goal, which was apostasy and not destruction, they offered the martyrs delays ranging from three hours to three months.32 The magistrates’ embarrassment is shared by many a modern ancient historian. Why, indeed, were the Christians persecuted? In the best modern analysis of the problem, Geoffrey de Ste Croix (1910–2000) summarised his views on the reasons for the condemnation of the Christians by quoting with approval the following words of E.G. Hardy (1852–1925): ‘The Christians subsequently to, as before [my italics], the rescript of Trajan were punished generally for the name, i.e. […] for the inherent disloyalty to the state involved in their atheotês [atheism], and manifested in the obstinatio with which they clung to it.’ It must be stressed that these reasons are hard to find in early reports of martyrs’ processes, and Peter Brunt (1917–2005) therefore rightly questioned the validity of this view for the second century. As he observes, it leaves unexplained why Trajan did not order the tracking down of these elements so dangerous to the state: all he did was to require that the Christians sacrificed to the gods.33 This approach was indeed slavishly followed by all Roman magistrates whose behaviour we can observe in the earliest Acta martyrum. By making sure of the fact that the persons in front of them were guilty of being Christian, they could cut short the unpleasant task of interrogating and torturing civilised people.34 Lane Fox has well noted that this conclusion risks ‘becoming circular, as if Christians were persecuted because they were Christian.’ His own solution is that with the 32  For examples, see J. den Boeft and J.N. Bremmer, ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae’, VigChris 35 (1981) 43–56 at 47–8; add the Coptic martyrdom of Coluthus in E.A. Reymond and J.W. Barns, Four Martyrdoms from the Pierpont Morgan Coptic Codices (Oxford, 1973) 146. 33 G.E.M. de Ste Croix, Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy (Oxford, 2006) 151–52 (first published in 1974); P. Brunt, ‘Marcus Aurelius and the Christians’, in C. Déroux (ed.), Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History I (Brussels, 1979) 483–520. For the problem, see also P. Jobert, ‘Les preuves dans les procès contre les chrétiens (Ier – IVe ­siècles)’, Revue Historique 54 (1976) 295–320; J. Walsh and G. Gottlieb, ‘Zur Christenfrage im zweiten Jahrhundert’, in G. Gott­lieb and P. Barceló (eds), Christen und Heiden in Staat und Gesellschaft des zweiten bis vier­ten Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1992) 3–86; F. Vittinghoff, Civitas Romana, ed. W. Eck (Stuttgart, 1994) 322–47 (‘“Christianus sum” – das “Verbrechen” von Aussenseitern der römischen Gesellschaft’, first published in 1984). 34  Brunt, ‘Marcus Aurelius’, 515, states that the early Christians ‘must have appeared pretty worthless to pagans of high rank and education’. It is highly doubtful, though, that many ‘lower-class’ Christians appeared in front of the magistrates: Justin was a philosopher, Polycarp and Cyprian were clearly wealthy, and Carpus and Dioskoros (P.Oxy. 50.3429) were members of the boulê. In fact, a number of Christians were probably ‘middle-class’, cf. T. Schleich, ‘Missionsgeschichte und Sozialstruktur des vorkonstantinischen Christentums. Die These von der Unterschichtreligion’, Geschichte, Wissenschaft und Unterricht 33 (1982) 269–96; W.A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians (New Haven and London, 1983) 51–73; H.W. Pleket, VigChris 39 (1985) 192–6; G.H.R. Horsley, New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity V (North Ryde, 1989) 111; especially, A. Weiss, Soziale Elite und Christentum. Studien zu ordo-Angehörigen unter den frühen Christen (Berlin and Boston, 2015).

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conviction of Paul, ‘The Emperor’s justice had distinguished Christians from Jews, a point which was not lost on senators, the provincial governors of the future.’ This may be doubted. Would the Roman elite have had any interest in the execution of a Jew of modest status?35 However this may be, it is in any case certain that the only occasion when the followers of Jesus publicly used the self-designation ‘Christian’ was in confrontation with Roman magistrates. The inference seems therefore justified that the affirmative response ‘I am a Christian’ to the question of the Roman magistrates ‘Are you a Christian?’ became the main factor in the self-designation of Jesus’ followers as ‘Christians’.36 The importance of the persecutions in promoting the name ‘Christian’ seems to be confirmed by the non-literary evidence. In papyri, the term first appears in the earlier third century, becomes more popular only after AD 250 and is still rare as a self-identification in the fourth century.37 This is also the case with inscriptions,38 in which, perhaps not surprisingly, the term first turns up in Phrygia, an area where the difference in religiosity between pagans, Christians and Jews was much less pronounced than elsewhere in the Roman Empire. Surely, these dates can hardly be separated from the empire-wide persecution of Decius.39 It was only now that the term ‘Christian’ 35 

Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 428. Frühkirche, 86, makes the same observation without noticing the central place of the formula ‘I am a Christian’ in the martyrs’ processes. 37 Papyri: SB 16.12497, cf. P. van Minnen, ‘The Roots of Egyptian Christianity’, Archiv für Papyrusforschung 40 (1994) 71–85 at 74–7 (early third century but before AD 256); P.Oxy. 42.3035 (AD 256); P.Oxy. 43.3119 (AD 259–260?); SB 12.10772 (later third century?); E.A. Judge and S.R. Pickering, ‘Papyrus Documentation of Church and Community in Egypt to the Mid-Fourth Century’, JAC 20 (1977) 47–71 at 66–9; O. Montevecchi, Bibbia e papiri. Luce dai papiri sulla bibbia greca (Barcelona, 1999) 155–72; Luijendijk, Greetings in the Lord, 38– 40. Rarity of the term: M. Choat, Belief and Cult in Fourth-Century Papyri (Turnhout, 2006) 47. 38  SEG 58.1538 (AD 150–250); MAMA XI.164 (second or third century AD); MAMA XI.95 (ca. AD 200–225); TAM V.3.1840 (AD 229/230); W. Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions and Testimonia (Macon, 1997) nos. 9 (ca. AD 210, but E. Gibson, The “Christians for Christians” inscriptions of Phrygia [Missoula, 1978] 98, 107 suggests the fourth century), 10 (dated to before AD 212, but the absence of Aurelia/us is no absolute guarantee of a pre-212 date), 17 (AD 243), 19 (ca. AD 230); MAMA XI.122 (AD 253/4); for further epigraphical evidence, see Tabbernee, passim; M. Guarducci, Epigrafia Graeca, 4  vols (Rome, 1967–78) 4.433–34; Pietri, Christiana respublica, 3.1583–1602. On the spelling: Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, 89 f. 39  On Decius’ persecution, see, most recently, R. Selinger, Die Religionspolitik des Kaisers Decius: Anatomie einer Christenverfolgung (Frankfurt/M, 1994); J.B. Rives, ‘The Decree of Decius and the Religion of Empire’, JRS 89 (1999) 135–54; B. Bleckmann, ‘Zu den Motiven der Christenverfolgung des Decius’, in K.-P. Johne et al. (eds), Deleto paene imperio Romano. Transformationsprozesse des Römischen Reiches im 3. Jahrhundert und ihre Rezeption in der Neuzeit (Stuttgart, 2006) 57–71; W.G. Claytor, ‘A Decian Libellus at Luther College (Iowa)’, Tyche 30 (2015) 13–18; S. Corcoran, ‘From Unholy Madness to Right-mindedness: or how to Legislate for Religious Conformity from Decius to Justinian’, in A. Papaconstantinou et al. (eds), Conversion in Late Antiquity: Christianity, Islam, and Beyond (Farnham and Burlington, 2015) 67–94; P. Schubert, ‘On the Form and Content of the Certificates of Pagan Sacrifice’, JRS 106 (2016) 1–27. 36 Peterson,

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would come to everybody’s attention and would be adopted by the followers of Jesus in defiance of the Roman government. What may have originated as a term of derision, now became a term of honour, legitimised by the blood of those women and men who preferred to die for their faith instead of sacrificing to the Roman emperor.40

40  I would like to thank Ton Hilhorst, Peter van Minnen and Eric Rebillard for their comments on the various versions of my text and Orla Mulholland for her skilful correction of my English.

Chapter 2

The Social and Religious Capital of the Early Christians It was around 1980 that Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) launched the terms cultural and social capital in two small articles in his own journal, the Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales.1 Due to the limited number of Francophones in the Anglo-Saxon and Germanic worlds, he soon expanded upon these initial efforts in a much more detailed article that appeared first in German (1983) and subsequently in English (1986), his well-known ‘The Forms of Capital’.2 Yet it was not this article that popularised the notion of social capital in the wider world, but the Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam. He really started the ball rolling, after an initial boost through the work of the sociologist James Coleman (1926–1995),3 through his 1995 article with the catchy title ‘Bowling alone’, which proved to be of enormous influence.4 Its impact can easily be gauged from the fact that on May 9, 2006 a Google search of ‘social capital’ scored around 9.090.000 and ‘Robert Putnam’ 342.000 hits, which is considerable, although still a lot less than Germany’s most famous sociologist, the late Niklas Luhmann (1927–1998), who scored 1.560.000 hits.5 In fact, there are now several websites devoted to the notion of social capital with bibliographies and detailing fields where it might be of use. 6 This popularity does not mean that the notion itself can be defined in a crystal-clear manner. A page on – take note – the World Bank website defined it as 1  P. Bourdieu, ‘Les trois états du capital culturel’, Actes de la Recherche en Sciences So­c iales 30 (1979) 3–6 and ‘Le capital social’, ibid. 31 (1980) 2–3 2  P. Bourdieu, ‘Ökonomisches Kapital, kulturelles Kapital, soziales Kapital’, in R. Kreckel (ed.), Soziale Ungleichheiten (Göttingen, 1983) 183–98, translated as ‘The Forms of Capital’, in J.G. Richardson (ed.), Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (New York, 1986) 241–58. 3  J.S. Coleman, ‘Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital’, American Journal of Sociology, Suppl. 94 (1988) 95–120 and Foundations of Social Theory (Cambridge MA, 1990) 300–21 (‘Social Capital’). 4  R. Putnam, ‘Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital’, Journal of Democracy 6 (1995) 65–78; see also his ‘The Prosperous Community: Social Capital and Public Life’, American Prospect 13 (1993) 35–42; ‘The Strange Disappearance of Civic America’, ibid. 24 (1996) 34–48; Bowling Alone. The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York, 2000) and (ed.), Democracies in Flux: The Evolution of Social Capital in Contemporary Society (New York, 2002). 5  To put these numbers in perspective, note that Pierre Bourdieu had about 1.980.000 hits at that date. 6  See Wikipedia s.v.

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follows: ‘Social capital refers to the norms and networks that enable collective action. Increasing evidence shows that social cohesion – social capital – is critical for poverty alleviation and sustainable human and economic development’.7 This definition does not mention religious organisations, but Francis Fuka­ yama, in a 1999 paper prepared for a – note again – IMF conference, interprets the notion as follows: ‘social capital is an instantiated informal norm that promotes cooperation between two or more individuals. The norms that constitute social capital can range from a norm of reciprocity between two friends, all the way up to complex and elaborately articulated doctrines like Christianity or Confucianism’.8 It is clear from these and other definitions, which could be multiplied many times over, that leading modern institutions, such as the IMF and the World Bank, see ‘social capital’ primarily as a notion to apply to society as a whole in order to promote social cohesion. Yet such quotations only show the applications of the notion at the present moment. However, for a better understanding we should also look at the applicability of the notion to the past. That is what I want to do in my own contribution. I have chosen to discuss briefly the social capital of the early Christians, even though at least some of them did not want to be part of society as a whole. On the contrary, quite a few early Christians saw themselves as strangers in this world and were perceived as such by their contemporaries.9 As Caecilius reproaches Minucius Felix in the early third-century Octavius: ‘You do not go to our shows, you take no part in our processions, you are not present at our public banquets, you shrink in horror from our sacred games’ (12.5, tr. G.W. Clarke). In other words, many early Christians completely shied away from ancient civic life. Current American ideas, then, clearly do not apply to them, the less so as the early Christians did not move in the public sphere as such. However, that did not mean that Christian congregations lacked social capital for their members. In fact, I would like to mention four kinds of social capital that are relevant to the rise of the Christian church from a small Jewish sect to the dominating religion of the Roman Empire. Before I proceed with that discussion, let me first note that it may perhaps cause surprise to find the early Christian churches in a volume dedicated to ancient ‘associations’ (thiasoi or collegia).10 However, Pliny already talked about them as a hetaeria in a letter to Trajan,11 and Tertullian (Apol. 38–9) used a wide spectrum of terms such as factio, coetus and congregatio to denote the associa7 

The original page has disappeared, but the definition can be easily found by googling. (accessed 7-12017). 9  R. Feldmeier, Die Christen als Fremde (Tübingen, 1992) 105–32. 10  This chapter originally appeared in an issue of Hephaistos dedicated to associations. 11 Pliny, Ep.  10.96.7, cf. C. Marek, Pontus et Bithynia. Die römischen Provinzen im Norden Kleinasiens (Mainz, 2003) 117–25. Note that Philo, Hypothetica 5, uses the term for the Essenes. 8 www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/seminar/1999/reforms/fukuyama.htm#I

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tion character of early Christianity.12 It is perhaps this character as an association that made Lucian describe Peregrinus as a thiasarchês, ‘head of a thiasos’ in his De morte Peregrini (11);13 similarly, Celsus speaks of the Christians as thiasôtai (Origen, CC 3.23). Lucian’s description has been criticised as being wholly wrong,14 but the term thiasos was widely used to denote a religious association and certainly not limited to the Dionysiac ones; in fact, thiasoi of Jews,15 of Heracles,16 of the Mater Oureia (SEG 41.1329A.4), of the Agathodaimôn (SEG 48.1120), of Hekate (SEG 57.779), of the Theos Hypsistos (CIRB 1259) and of the followers of Sarapis (SEG 55.1463bis) are well attested.17 Lucian probably adapted his description to what he knew of Judaism, Christianity and the cult of the Theos Hypsistos, cults that, initially at least, clearly showed strongly overlapping features. His only partial knowledge of Christianity also appears from the fact that he presents Peregrinus as a prostatês, a patron. This title too occurs in several Jewish communities,18 but it is not attested for males in early Christian congregations.19 Given these pagan interpretations, several scholars at the turn of the twentieth century, in particular Georg Heinrici (1844–1915) and Edwin Hatch (1835–1889), already concluded that the early Christian congregations could be seen, from one point of view, as a religious association.20 This point of view has be become more popular in recent times,21 and can certainly 12  Also note K. Zamfir, ‘The Community of the Pastoral Epistles – a Religious Association’, in V. Gabrielsen and C.A. Thomsen (eds), Private Associations and the Public Sphere (Copenhagen, 2015) 206–40. 13  For Peregrinus, see this volume, Chapter  5. 14  H.D. Betz, ‘Lukian von Samosata und das Christentum’, Novum Test. 3 (1959) 226–37 (reprinted with “Nachtrag” in his Hellenismus und Urchristentum, Tübingen, 1990, 10–21) at 229–30; C.P. Jones, Culture and Society in Lucian (Cambridge MA, 1986) 122. 15  Cf. J. Scheid, ‘Communauté et communauté. Réflexions sur quelques ambiguïtés d’après l’exemple des thiases de l’Égypte romaine’, in N. Belayche and S. Mimouni (eds), Les communautés religieuses dans le monde gréco-romain (Turnhout, 2003) 61–74 at 66 note  31; add Corpus inscriptionum regni Bosporani [= CIRB] 1260–1, 1277–87, 1289; Philo, Probus 85 (Essenes); M.-O. Goulet-Cazé, Cynisme et christianisme dans l’Antiquité (Paris, 2014) 199. 16  IG II 2 2345; SEG 51.224; S.D. Lambert, ‘Thiasoi of Heracles and the Salaminioi’, ZPE 125 (1999) 93–130. 17  For its use in Christianity, see G.J.M. Bartelink, ‘Thiasos and thiasôtês chez les auteurs chrétiens’, Or. Christ. Per. 45 (1979) 267–78. 18  W. Ameling, Inscriptiones Iudaicae Orientis II, Kleinasien (Tübingen, 2004) 93; M.H. Williams, Jews in a Greco-Roman environment (Tübingen, 2013) 127, 132. 19  But note Phoebe in Paul’s Letter to the Romans 16.2. 20  C.F. Heinrici: ‘Die Christengemeinde Korinths und die religiösen Genossenschaften der Griechen’, ZWT 19 (1876) 464–526; ‘Zur Geschichte der Anfänge paulinischer Gemeinden’, ibid. 20 (1877) 89–130; ‘Zum genossenschaftlichen Charakter der paulinischen Christengemeinden’, Theologische Studien und Kritiken 54 (1881) 505–24. E. Hatch: The Organization of the Early Christian Churches: Eight Lectures Delivered Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1880 (London, 1881), cf. J. Kloppenborg, ‘Edwin Hatch, Churches and Collegia’, in B.H. Maclean (ed.), Origins and Method: Towards a New Understanding of Judaism and Christianity (Sheffield, 1993) 212–38. 21  J. Kloppenborg and S. Wilson (eds), Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World

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be accepted, although in that debate, there is, as far as I can see, little distinction being made between emic and etic views. We might think of these groups as associations, thiasoi or collegia, but I do not see the early Christians themselves using this terminology before Tertullian.22 Moreover, a more detailed investigation into this problem should note differences with pagan associations too, such as the exclusive character of the Christian cult, a much wider social recruitment (below) and the interregional connections of the congregations (below).23 Still, there can be little doubt that the Jesus groups resembled ancient associations in many respects. Yet the pluriformity of those groups as well as that of the associations should warn us for claiming simple similarities when we have so little evidence on the early Christian side. After these introductory remarks we will now take a look at the social capital of the early Christians of which I will discuss four kinds: their charity (§  1), their interconnectedness (§  2), their family aspect (§  3), and the processes of bonding and bridging (§  4). We will conclude with some observations on Christianity’s religious capital (§  5), but let us start with charity.

1. Charity In the ancient world, the Jews were exceptional because of their charity: witness observations by pagan authors such as Juvenal, Artemidorus and Julian the Apostate.24 This was not normal practice among the Greeks and Romans, as my compatriot Hendrik Bolkestein (1877–1942) was the first to analyse properly in a book that, hardly surprisingly, appeared during the depression of the 1930s.25 Bolkestein showed that Greco-Roman cities did not recognise a (London and New York, 1996); C. Colpe, ‘Genossenschaft C’, in RAC 10 (1978) 117–42 at 141–2; P.A. Harland, Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations (Minneapolis, 2003). For recent surveys, see R. Ascough, ‘Paul, Synagogues, and Associations: Reframing the Question of Models for Pauline Christ Groups’, Journal of the Jesus Movement in its Jewish Setting 2 (2015) 27–52 and ‘What Are They Now Saying about Christ Groups and Associations?’, Currents in Biblical Research 13 (2015) 207–44. 22  Cf. E.R. Urciuoli, ‘“Factio Christiana”. Nouvel examen du rapport entre les premiers groupes de croyants en Christ et les associations volontaires antiques’, Apocrypha 22 (2011) 253–64. 23  E. Rebillard, Religion et sépulture (Paris, 2003) 55 f. 24  Juvenal 3.296; Artemidorus 3.52; Cleomedes 2.1.91; Julian, Ep.  84 Bidez-Cumont 430d. For the Christian debt to Judaism in this respect, see the bibliography in M. Cohen, Poverty and Charity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt (Princeton and Oxford, 2005) 5–8; note also G.E. Gardner, The Origins of Organized Charity in Rabbinic Judaism (Cambridge, 2015). 25  H. Bolkestein, Wohltätigkeit und Armenpflege in vorchristlichen Altertum: ein Beitrag zum Problem “Moral und Gesellschaft” (Utrecht, 1939); see now also P. v.d. Horst, ‘Organized Charity in the Ancient World: Pagan, Jewish, Christian’, in Y. Furstenberg (ed.), Jewish and Christian Communal Identities in the Roman World (Leiden, 2016) 116–33.

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category of persons labelled ‘the poor’ in their moral code. If they thought of less well-off or poor persons, it would always be their worse-off fellow citizens. Now the ancient body of citizens was very much a closed shop, and if one were not a citizen, there would not be any support. This is the fundamental difference from the much more inclusive charitable activities of the ancient Christians, who were an open community that welcomed any new members, wealthy or poor.26 Yet unlike most contemporary Christian charities, they would not go out and look after the non-Christian poor. Their main targets were the ‘poor saints’ as Paul calls them in his Letter to the Romans (15.26), and the importance of charity can also be seen in the prominence of the theme at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles (2.44–5, 4.34–7). Widows are mentioned in particular (Acts 6.1, 9.39), but orphans already occur in James (1.27). Tertullian (Ad uxorem 2.4; Apol. 39.6) also mentions old servants, the shipwrecked or those condemned to the mines, isolated islands and prisons for their belief. Another intriguing text is the already mentioned De morte Peregrini, where Lucian presents Peregrinus as visited by ‘old crones, some widows and orphans’ (13). As it is hard to see what spiritual help these categories would be to Peregrinus, it seems more likely that we have here a fine example of the help that the early Christians gave to categories that were of very low standing in the pagan world, as old women, widows and orphans had a hard time in a world without social welfare.27 Another example will have been the Christian help during epidemics. Although our sources in this respect start to flow only in the third century, there seems little reason to doubt that also during the famous plague under Marcus Aurelius Christians will have nursed not only their fellow members but also others. Even if some pagans may have sneered at this altruism, its effect can hardly be doubted.28 Naturally, given the ideology of euergetism in the ancient world, the receivers of money and goods must have had their counterparts in the givers, who would thus accumulate symbolic capital as generous members of the community. The benefactress Dorcas, who is resurrected by the apostle Peter, is an evident example of such a woman having acquired a high standing in the congregation of Joppa (Acts 9.36).29 26  W. Schwer, ‘Armenpflege’, in RAC 1 (1950) 689–98; W. Reinbold, Propaganda und Mission im ältesten Christentum (Göttingen, 2000) 323–26; various studies by Peter Brown: Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Hanover NH, 2002: to be read with the review by B.D. Shaw, New York Review of Books 21–11–2002), Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD (Princeton and London, 2012) and Treasure in Heaven (Charlottesville, 2016). 27  J.N. Bremmer, ´The Old Women of Ancient Greece’, in J. Blok and P. Mason (eds), Sexual Asymmetry (Amsterdam, 1987) 191–215 and this volume, Chapters 3 and 5. 28  The importance of Christian help during epidemics, also for demographic reasons, is argued by R. Stark, ‘Epidemics, Networks, and the Rise of Christianity’, Semeia 56 (1993) 159–75 and The Rise of Christianity (Princeton, 1996) 73–94. 29  More in general, see also S. Destephen, ‘L’évergétisme aristocratique au féminin dans

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2. Interconnectedness Lucian’s pamphlet on Peregrinus is informative also in another respect, our second kind of social capital. He tells us that as soon as Peregrinus had been arrested and put into jail, congregations in Asia Minor sent representatives in order to help, defend and comfort him. Moreover, Lucian (13) notes their speed in action and their generosity in gifts. In other words, Christians felt themselves parts of a much wider community, a community that transcended the borders of the individual poleis. This becomes very clear from the intensive traffic in letters, books and writings between the Christians and from the many letters written and preserved in the period of early Christianity. People like Paul, the pseudo-Pauls, Clement and Ignatius surely expected their letters to be read and circulated. The well-known letter of the congregations of Lyons and Vienne about their persecution to those in Asia and Phrygia is an excellent demonstration of the close ties that the Christians had developed among themselves. This development was unique at the time, and there is nothing comparable in either contemporary Judaism or pagan religions.30 Given this importance of letters and literacy for the early Church, we could even call the early Christian congregations ‘textual communities’, a term introduced by the medievalist Brian Stock.31 It is therefore hard to accept Keith Hopkins’ (1934–2004) suggestion that early Christianity spread at an amazing rate despite the fact that most Christian communities were unable to read or understand a single Christian treatise,32 whereas everything we know seems to point to Christianity being a movement connected and maintained by the written word. Hopkins takes too little account of the fact that the major Jewish contribution to early Christianity must have positively influenced the level of early Christian literacy.33 And indeed, it would be impossible to think of Christian communities without a single literate person, as Hopkins imagined many to be, as we know from Justin Martyr (1Apol. 67) that the Christians read texts in their services: ‘On the day called the l’Empire romain d’Orient’, in B. Caseau (ed.), Les réseaux familiaux. Antiquité tardive et Moyen Âge (Paris, 2012) 183–203 (with excellent bibliography). 30  As is stressed by K. Waldner, ‘Letters and Messengers: The Construction of Christian Space in the Roman Empire in the Epistles of Ignatius of Antioch’, in I. Henderson and G. Oegema (eds), The Changing Face of Judaism, Christianity, and Other Greco-Roman Religions in Antiquity (Gütersloh, 2006) 72–86 at 73; see also J.S. Kloppenborg, ‘Literate Media in Early Christ Groups: The Creation of a Christian Book Culture’, JECS 22 (2014) 21–59; L.W. Hurtado, Destroyer of the Gods (Waco, 2016) 105–41, 235–52 (notes). 31  B. Stock, The Implications of Literacy. Written language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, 1983) 88–240. 32  K. Hopkins, ‘Christian Number and Its Implications’, JECS 6 (1998) 185–226. 33  See the considerations by H.Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church (New Haven and London, 1995) 1–41; I. Henderson, ‘Early Christianity, Textual Representation and Ritual Extension’, in D. Elm von der Osten et al. (eds), Texte als Medium und Reflexion von Religion im römischen Reich (Stuttgart, 2006) 81–100.

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day of the sun there is an assembly of all those who live in the towns or in the country (an interesting sociological observation!), and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read for as long as time permits. Then the reader ceases, and the president speaks, admonishing and exhorting us to imitate these excellent examples’. Only after these readings and exhortations the Eucharist takes place. This use of the written word must go back to the earliest times of Christianity, as the apostle Paul already says in the First Letter to the Thessalonians (5.27): ‘I adjure you by the Lord that this letter be read to all the brothers and sisters’. We can follow these exhortations to read in the Letter to the Colossians (4.16), the Book of Revelation (1.3) and the First Letter to Timothy (4.13) where the congregation is admonished ‘to give attention to the public reading of scripture, to exhorting, to teaching’. In brief, it is clear that reading must have been an indispensable part of the early Christian congregations. One of the best experts on early Christian literacy, Harry Gamble, has rightly stressed that we cannot fail to notice a difference with contemporary Jewish practice, which most carefully and exactly transcribed the Torah according to fixed conventions.34 We may add, though, that this Jewish practice most likely did not precede the fall of the Temple. The texts from Qumran have shown that different texts of the Torah already circulated before the beginning of our era, even though the differences were not of tremendous importance. Yet the fall of the Temple seems to have had the effect that the authority of the priests was transferred to the text of the Torah that now became literally sacred.35 Such a belief in the literal value of the text was not yet present in early Christianity. It could perhaps not even have been that way, given the fact that the earliest Christian books were informal, unconventional and undistinguishable. These earliest books were not works of art, such as the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages, but they were practical handbooks for the communities. As such, they were written not in a literary style of writing but in a script that approaches that of the documentary papyri. The books even liberally used abbreviations for the nomina sacra, just as documentary materials commonly used abbreviations. Gamble also notes that they used more reading aids than other manuscripts, such as punctuation, accents, breathing marks and, sometimes, fewer letters to the line.36 The fact that they were written in the codex form also testifies to their, originally, sketchy and ephemeral use. We do not have examples left of very early 34 H. Gamble, ‘Literacy, Liturgy, and the Shaping of the New Testament Canon’, in C. Horton (ed.), The Earliest Gospels (London and New York, 2004) 27–39. 35  A.S. van der Woude, ‘Pluriformity and Uniformity. Reflections on the Transmission of the Text of the Old Testament’, in J. Bremmer and F. García Martínez (eds), Sacred History and Sacred Texts in Early Judaism: a symposium in honour of A.S. van der Woude (Kampen, 1992) 151–69. 36  Gamble, ‘Literacy, Liturgy’, 34–35; L. Hurtado, The Earliest Christian Artifacts (Grand Rapids, 2006).

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papyrus or parchment notebooks, but the excavations of Vindolanda in the ’70s and ’80s of last century have given us ‘thin slivers of smooth wood which are written with pen and ink’. These so-called ‘leaf-tablets’ were used for letters but also for literary texts. It is here that we may see the birth of the codex. The few parchments, papyri and references we have suggest that in the beginning pagan and Christian circles made use of the codex. Small notebooks with sayings of Christ or apostolic letters may have been the preferred medium to carry the Christian message all over the Mediterranean. Yet the rise of the codex and its triumph over the papyrus scroll is hardly imaginable without a sizable number of reading and writing Christians, even though the definitive triumph of the codex did not take place before the conversion of Constantine.37 The Christian stress on reading may have even been an important factor in the rise of the phenomenon of the Holy Book that becomes visible in Late Antiquity.38

3.  Family aspects The third noteworthy kind of social capital is the family aspect of early Christianity. It is a rather amazing characteristic of early Christian life that the members of the congregation addressed one another as ‘brother’ or ‘sister’; Paul, especially, must have sounded rather like a contemporary American preacher with his frequent use of ‘brother’. It has been suggested that the usage derives from Jewish tradition,39 but earlier Jewish scripture does not mention ‘sisters’ on the same footing as ‘brothers’. Neither do we find many ‘sisters’ in pagan associations, although sometimes ‘brothers’ are present, if to a much lesser degree, as for example in the cult of Jupiter Dolichenus and the Theos Hypsistos.40 37  For the rise of the codex, see T.C. Skeat, ‘The Origin of the Christian Codex’, ZPE 102 (1994) 263–68; G. Cavallo, ‘Between Volumen and Codex: Reading in the Roman World’, in Cavallo and R. Chartier (eds), A History of Reading in the West (Cambridge, 1999) 64–89; G.H. Stanton, Jesus and Gospel (Cambridge, 2004) 165–91 (‘Why were early Christians addicted to the codex?’) at 174 (quotation); Bremmer, ‘From Holy Books to Holy Bible: an Itinerary from Ancient Greece to Modern Islam via Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity’, in M. Popovic´ (ed.), Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism (Leiden, 2010) 327–60 at 348–49; M. Walraff, Kodex und Kanon (Berlin and Boston, 2013). 38  G. Stroumsa, La Fin du sacrifice (Paris, 2005) 63–101; Bremmer, The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife (London and New York, 2002) 50 (influence of early Christianity on the birth of the written Avesta); note also C. Markschies, Das antike Christentum (Munich, 2006) 94–104. 39  W. Meeks, The First Urban Christians (New Haven and London, 1983) 87, who underrates the terminological innovations of the early Christians in an otherwise excellent discussion. 40  See Harland, Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations, 32; E. Ebel, Die Attraktivität früher christlicher Gemeinden (Tübingen, 2004) 203–13; P.A. Harland, ‘Familial Dimensions of Group Identity: “Brothers” (Adelphoi) in Associations of the Greek East’, JBL 124 (2005) 491–513; J. Erdtmann, ‘Mehr als Zechbrüder und Gründungsväter? Zu quasi-ver­ wandt­schaftlichen Verhältnissen und Beziehungen in hellenistisch-römischen Kultvereinen’,

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It is clear that this aspect struck pagan observers as something noteworthy. Lucian (De morte Peregrini 13) noted that the first lawgiver of the Christians, probably meaning Christ himself, had persuaded them that they would be ‘brothers’ after they had converted. The designation is also defended by Tertullian in his Apology (39.8–10), but he limits himself to the designation frater, whereas in the Octavius Minucius Felix has the opponent of Christianity state that: ‘… hardly have they met when they love each other, throughout the world uniting in the practice of a veritable religion of lusts. Indiscriminately they call each other brother and sister, thus turning even ordinary fornication into incest by the intervention of these hallowed names’ (9.2, tr. G.W. Clarke). The designation, then, must have helped the early Christians to feel part of an alternative family in a world in which descent was of the highest importance for one’s place in society.41 It is true that Judith Lieu has warned against ‘a rosy and a cosy picture of homeliness, into which the lonely, the oppressed, and the dehumanized were warmly welcomed’.42 Such a warning is of course always welcome, and it would be foolish to suppose that Christian congregations were devoid of the normal problems of everyday life. However, such a general admonition is less satisfactory when we actually have evidence that people preferred the Christian family, so to speak, to the family of their own blood. That we have such evidence is probably not surprising. After all, Jesus himself was reported to have said: ‘From now on, five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law’.43 Admittedly, Jesus’ words have to be seen in an eschatological, if not apocalyptic perspective. Yet the Acta martyrum furnish several examples that Christians did prefer their own congregations above their family members.44 The in N. Leisner and J. Erdtmann (eds), Ad familiares – Familie und Verwandtschaft in der griechisch-römischen Antike = Hephaistos 31 (2014 = Münster, 2015) 149–67. 41  For more evidence, see A. von Harnack, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums (Leipzig, 1924 4) 417–19; H. Pétré, Caritas. Étude sur le vocabulaire latin de la charité chré­ tienne (Louvain, 1948) 140–40. 42  J. Lieu, Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World (Oxford, 2004) 167, comparing H. Moxnes, ‘What is Family? Problems in Constructing Early Christian Families’, in id. (ed.), Early Christian Families: Family as Social Reality and Metaphor (London and New York, 1997) 13–41; similarly, J.S. Kloppenborg, ‘Egalitarianism in the Myth and Rhetoric of Pauline Churches’, in E. Castelli and H. Taussig (eds), Reimagining Christian Origins: A Colloquium Honoring Burton L. Mack (Valley Forge, 1996) 247–63. 43  Luke 12.52–3, note also Mark 10.29–30; Luke 14.26; Gospel of Thomas 101; S. Barton, Discipleship and Family Ties in Mark and Matthew (Cambridge, 1994). 44  K. Bradley, ‘Sacrificing the Family: Christian Martyrs and their Kin’, Ancient Narrative 3 (2003) 150–81, reprinted in his Apuleius and Antonine Rome: Historical Essays (Toronto, 2012) 104–25, whose discussion I here supplement and correct. For the genre of the Acta mar-

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Passion of Marian and James is the description of the martyrdom of a group of North-African Christians, who were arrested near Cirta in Numidia during the Valerian persecution and executed in the spring of AD 259.45 The description itself dates from the early fourth century, but it uses an earlier eyewitness report.46 It (8.2) contains an extensive report of a dream with a dialogue between the martyr Aemilian and his frater carnalis, who is not mentioned by name. When Aemilian was led out of prison, his brother asked him ‘in a taunting voice’ how he was getting on with the darkness and starvation of prison. One cannot escape the impression that the brothers did not get on very well. More interestingly, the brother also inquired whether all the martyrs would receive the gift of eternal life. It seems as if Aemilian used his dream to consider several pressing problems, but it is also clear that his conversion had driven a wedge between him and his brother. We have two more interesting cases where we can see how Christianity damaged the bond of brothers. In the Acts of Phileas, the report of the trial and execution of a bishop of Egyptian Thmuis about AD 306, we find the following scene in the older and more reliable Greek version. After Phileas had declined the judge’s offer of time for reflection, ‘the brother of Phileas cried out saying “Phileas requests amnesty”. Culcianus (the judge) summoned Phileas and said to him: “What, did you make an appeal?” He replied: “No, I did not. Pay no attention to this most unfortunate man. Rather, I am deeply indebted to the emperors and the (local) government because I have been made a coheir of Jesus Christ”’.47 Here we can see how the martyr’s conviction leads him to reject any help from his family. Our third example also comes from North Africa. In the winter of AD 303–4 a group of forty-nine Christians was surprised in a private house (below), where they celebrated the Sunday meal. We still have what looks like an official report of the first hearing of the martyrs. During the interrogation, which was combined with terrible tortures, ‘Fortunatianus, the brother of the most holy martyr Victoria, arrived on the scene. He was a quite distinguished Roman citizen, but at that time he was hostile to the most holy practice of the Christian religion. After having reproved the martyr (Dativus) as he hung on the rack with tyrum and the problem of their trustworthiness and authenticity, see this volume, Chapter  22.1. 45  I use the text and translation (albeit adapted) of H. Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford, 1972) 194–213, which is based on P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, La Passio SS. Mariani et Iacobi (Rome, 1900) 42–63. For a French translation, introduction and some notes. see V. Saxer, Saints anciens d’Afrique du Nord (Vatican City, 1979) 88–103 and P. Maraval, Actes et passions des martyrs chrétiens des premiers siècles (Paris, 2010) 211–27. For the date, see the excellent discussion by A.R. Birley, ‘A Persecuting Praeses of Numidia under Valerian’, JThS 42 (1991) 598–610 at 603. 46  R. Herzog and P.L. Schmidt (eds), Handbuch der lateinischen Literatur der Antike IV (Munich, 1997) 427–9 (by A. Wlosok, with the most recent bibliography). 47  A. Pietersma, The Acts of Phileas, Bishop of Thmuis (Geneva, 1984) 70–2.

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unholy words, he said: “This is the man, Sir, who in the absence of our father, while we were studying here, tried to seduce our sister Victoria. He lured her from this most splendid city of Carthage all the way out to the town of Abitina along with Secunda and Restituta. He never came into our house except to lead their young hearts astray with his proselytising”. But Victoria, the most distinguished martyr of the Lord, did not endure her associate and fellow martyr being assailed by the lying senator. With Christian candour she immediately said: “No one persuaded me to leave and it was not with him that I went to Abitina. By the testimony of citizens I can prove this. I did everything on my own initiative and by my own free will. Certainly I have been a member of the assembly and I have celebrated the Lord’s Supper with the brothers because I am a Christian” (7).48 During her interrogation, the proconsul Anulinus ‘said to her: “Have some regard for your situation. You see that your brother wants to provide for your welfare.” The martyr of Christ said to him: “My mind is made up. I’ve never changed. I was in the assembly and I celebrated the Lord’s Supper with the brothers because I am a Christian”’ (17).49 These three passages are eloquent testimonies to the problems between siblings caused by Christianity. Clearly, Christian brotherhood was sometimes preferred above the fratres carnales. The last passage also shows that Christianity appealed to rather young people, as we are told subsequently that Victoria had refused to marry the spouse selected for her by her parents (17). In fact, on the basis of modern evidence, Keith Hopkins had indeed postulated a higher incidence of the young as possible sources of Christian recruitment.50 However, we have very little information in this respect. Around the 160s (?) both Tatian (Or. 32.1, 33.1) and Celsus (Origen, CC 3.44) mention the presence of young boys and girls among the Christians. Towards the end of the second century, a presbyter in Asia Minor, perhaps in Iconium, published a kind of Christian novel, the Acts of Paul and Thecla.51 In the novel, a young girl, Thecla, sees many girls entering the house of Onesiphorus in order to listen to the apostle Paul (APTheclae 7). In the Book of the Laws of Countries, the Edessan philosopher Bardaisan rebukes his pupil Awida, who had started to put theological questions to his own friends, by saying ‘You should learn from somebody older than them’ (p.  5 Drijvers). Perhaps the best information is to be found in the Acts 48 

For the expression ‘I am a Christian’, see this volume, Chapter  1.3. For the text, see P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Note agiografiche 8 (Vatican City, 1935) 1–71, translated by M.A. Tilley, Donatist Martyr Stories (Liverpool, 1996) 33 (slightly adapted); H.R. Seeliger and W. Wischmeyer, Märtyrerliteratur (Berlin and Boston, 2015) 311–59; see also F. Dolbeau, ‘La “Passion” des martyrs d’Abitina: remarques sur l’établissement du texte’, AB 121 (2003) 273–96; A. Dearn, ‘The Abitinian Martyrs and the Outbreak of the Donatist Schism’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 55 (2004) 1–18. This passage has been overlooked by Bradley, ‘Sacrificing the Family’. 50  Hopkins, ‘Christian Number and Its Implications’, 205. 51  For its date and place, see this volume, Chapter  10.4. 49 

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of the Abitinian Martyrs. It is not only Victoria who was clearly already a Christian before her intended marriage, but we also hear of an adolescens Saturninus (15) and a puer Hilarianus (18). In another North African martyr story, the Passio SS Maximae, Donatillae et Secundae,52 describing a martyrdom of AD 304, we hear of the twelve-year old Secunda (4) and the fourteen-year old Maxima (2). It is probably hardly chance that we find these young people among North African Christians, which have left us so many reports of martyrdoms.53 Siblings could of course also be supportive. In the famous Passio Perpetuae,54 Perpetua mentions contact with her Christian brother, like her a catechumen (2.2), whom she comforts (3.8) and whom, just before her execution, she encourages to keep the faith (20.10). Everything points to a close relationship, probably strengthened by their shared conversion to Christianity. The Christian faith, then, could also bring siblings closer together. On the other hand, the relationship between Perpetua and her father had been seriously damaged because of her conversion.55 Such a gap between the martyr and the rest of her family is graphically illustrated by the Passio s. Irenaei episcopi, which narrates the martyrdom of a bishop of Sirmium in AD 304.56 When he was tortured ‘on the one side his children cried, embraced his feet and said: “father, have pity on yourself and on us”, whereas, on the other, the face of his sad wife prayed for his youth. He was hard pressed by the weeping and mourning of all his relatives, the groans of his servants, the wailing of his neighbours, and the crying of his friends, all of whom cried out to him and said: “have pity on your youth!”’ (3.1–2, tr. Musurillo, adapted). Yet Irenaeus stubbornly rejects all attempts to move him, and in the end he is beheaded. One can easily imagine that conversion and opting for martyrdom must have been a painful event in many a family in these early centuries. We may perhaps compare the agony of a modern family, when they realise that their son or daughter has opted to become a jihadist or suicide bomber. Unfortunately, strong ideologies cause deep rifts that are not always easy to understand or to sympathise with by those who have no real stake in the realities of the conflict. This language, that does not distinguish between older and younger siblings but also addresses the members of the congregation as ‘saints’ and ‘elect’,57 must have given the early Christians a feeling of being equal before God, even if not equal in the world. The sense of being equal is perhaps also evident in the choice 52 

Edited by C. de Smedt, AB 9 (1890) 107–16, tr. Tilley, Donatist Martyr Stories, 13–24. Note also the fifteen-year old Ponticus in Mart. Lugd. 53 and the 21 year old Pamoun in P.Oxy. 70.4759; see also this volume, Chapter  12.3. 54  See this volume, Chapters 22–26. 55  See this volume, Chapter  2 2.3. 56  See the new edition of F. Dolbeau, ‘Le dossier hagiographique d’Irenée, évêque de Sirmium’, Antiquité. Tardive 7 (1999) 205–14, reprinted with addenda in his Sanctorum societas, 2  vols (Brussels, 2005) 1.147–68. 57  Titus 1.1, 2 Tim 1.9–10, 2.10. 53 

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of the word ekklêsia, the technical term of the democratic Athenian assembly, for the congregation, even if the contemporary ekklêsiai were no longer democratised to the same extent as the Athenian one of the classical period. It is true that ekklêsia also meant ‘assembly’ in general and had Jewish roots as well,58 but we cannot escape the impression that, like the Stoics, some of the earliest Christians liked to use terms derived from the political sphere, such as politeuô, politeuma, leitourgia and chorêgia,59 even if this vocabulary was largely depoliticised. In any case, the political meaning seems to have been still present in the times of Paul: witness his First Letter to the Thessalonians, which begins with: ‘Paul, Silvanus and Timothy. To the ekklêsia of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ’. 60 Unfortunately, the recent New Revised Standard Edition’s translation ‘Church’ manages to conceal any existing relation to the Greek political term.

4.  Bonding and bridging We come to our fourth and last kind of social capital, the processes of bonding and bridging. The fact that in the beginning the early Christians did not yet have churches but met in private houses will have been an important contribution to the process of bonding people together.61 From Paul’s Letter to the Romans alone we can deduce the existence of about eight of such house churches in Rome and later testimonies confirm this picture.62 The best known house church still is the ‘Christian house’ in Dura Europos, on the Euphrates, but more recent excavations have also revealed two third-century house churches in Israel. 63 It is clear that this is also the situation presupposed by the Apocryphal Acts that purported to describe the missions of the apostles. In the apocryphal 58  S. Mimouni, ‘Comment désigne-t-on une communauté dans le monde juif au 1er siècle de notre ère’, in Belayche and Mimouni, Les communautés religieuses dans le monde gréco-romain, 21–28. 59 A. Hilhorst, ‘Termes chrétiens issus du vocabulaire de la démocratie Athénienne’, Filología Neotestamentaria 1 (1988) 27–34 at 29. 60  This is well argued by E.W. and W. Stegemann, The Jesus Movement (Edinburgh, 1999) 263 f. 61 For these small churches in the beginning, see H.-J. Klauck, Hausgemeinde und Hauskirche im frühen Christentum (Stuttgart, 1981); Markschies, Das antike Christentum, 177–80; C. Osiek and M.Y. MacDonald, A Woman’s Place: House Churches in Earliest Christianity (Minneapolis, 2006); E. Adams, The Earliest Christian Meeting Places: Almost Exclusively Houses? (London, 2013). For possible Jewish roots (house synagogues), see C. Claussen, Versammlung, Gemeinde, Synagoge (Göttingen, 2002) 37–9. 62  P. Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus (Minneapolis, 2003) 359–65. 63  U. Mell, Christliche Hauskirche und Neues Testament: Die Ikonologie des Bapisteriums von Dura Europos und das Diatessaron Tatians (Göttingen, 2010); J. Patrich, ‘The Early Christianization of the Holy Land – The Archaeological Evidence’, in O. Brandt and G. Castiglia (eds), Costantino e i Costantinidi: L’innovazione Costantiniana, le sue radici e i suoi

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Acts of John (46) of about AD 160, the apostle John not only preaches in the house of Andronicus on Sunday, but also performs a prayer, celebrates the Eucharist and lays hands on all those present. 64 In the somewhat later Acts of Paul and Thecla, Paul preaches in Iconium in the house of Onesiphorus (5–7) and in Ephesus in the house of Aquila and Priscilla. 65 In his more or less contemporaneous Apology (1.67), Justin mentions a Sunday service in a private location, but not in one central public Roman place. How would that have been possible anyway, given ancient means of transport? This meeting in houses will have been an important factor in contributing to the social cohesion of the early Christians. At the same time, it may have also fostered the pluralisation of theology, as it is quite amazing how many different kinds of Christian groups there were in second-century Rome, the city about which we are best informed: Marcionites, Valentinians, 66 Quartodecimans and so on. On the one hand, then, house churches did lend themselves to an intensified cohesion, but, on the other, the growing pluralisation of the Church may have led also to the tendency to preserve orthodoxy and combat heresy. Here is an area that still needs further research. The egalitarian nature of early Christianity meant that slaves and free people, even if not of the highest classes, were all members of the same organisation. This must have promoted a sense of bridging social distances that was also encouraged by the small groups in which the early Christians met.67 In other words, the close relationships within the congregations must have enabled lower-class persons to interact with people of higher classes, which thus contributed to their self-esteem and well-being. Pagan observers, such as Celsus (Origen, CC 1.27, 3.44), liked to stress that the Christians – all of them – belonged to the lowest strata of Roman society. This picture was happily embraced at the turn of the twentieth century by anti-Christian classicists, but it has increasingly been recognised for what it is, namely a caricature.68 Undoubtedly, there were developments over time in this respect. In the beginning of the Church, in Jerusviluppi, 2  vols (Vatican City, 2016) 1.265–93 at 268–72 (‘Christian Houses of Assembly (Domus Ecclesiae)’). 64  Note the same order in cc. 106–110, except for the laying of hands. 65  See R. Kasser and P. Luisier, ‘Le papyrus Bodmer XLI en édition princeps. L’épisode d’Éphèse des Acta Pauli en copte et en traduction’, Le Muséon 117 (2004) 281–384. 66  E. Thomassen, The Spiritual Seed: the Church of the “Valentinians” (Leiden, 2006). 67  For this terminology of bonding and bridging, see R. Wuthnow, ‘Religious Involvement and Status-Bridging Social Capital’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 41 (2002) 669– 84. 68  See the observations by T. Schleich, ‘Missionsgeschichte und Sozialstruktur des vorkonstantinischen Christentums. Die These von der Unterschichtreligion’, Geschichte, Wissenschaft und Unterricht 33 (1982) 269–96; Stegemann, The Jesus Movement, 288–316; Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus, 138–40; A. Weiss, Soziale Elite und Christentum. Studien zu ordo-Angehörigen unter den frühen Christen (Berlin and Boston, 2015): this volume, Chapter  1, note  34.

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salem, there must have been some poverty, as Paul collects money for the Jerusalem poor in the Diaspora, but in his Letters Paul does not mention cases of contemporary poverty. 69 This situation seems to have lasted until well into the first decades of the second century. It is understandable that as the church grew, so the number of poor must have increased. The Shepherd of Hermas (about AD 130?) well illustrates this development, as it mentions the number of the poor and exhorts the rich to look properly after them.70 We do not have sufficient information to see to what extent the many Christian communities conformed to the exhortations of Jesus and his more socially active followers. Surely, reality will have often been different from the lofty ideals of Christianity’s founder. Yet there must have been some bridging between the rich and the poor, free and slaves. The famous letter of Lyons of AD 177 mentions a slave Blandina who clearly had a close relationship with her Christian mistress,71 just like the slave Felicitas with Perpetua, who was from a higher social rank, in the Passion of Perpetua.72 The Martyrdom of Pionius (9) of 250 tells of a female slave Sabina who had been cast out on the mountains by her mistress, but saved by her fellow Christians.73 In fact, Paul’s Letter to Philemon (16) well illustrates the Christian ideal, as he recommends that the runaway slave Onesimus is taken back ‘no longer as a slave but as more than a slave, a beloved brother’. Another kind of bridging must have been that of the gender gap. There is plenty of evidence that early Christian women could move much more freely among men than their pagan counterparts. Yet here too we must be careful in distinguishing different periods. It seems clear from the Gospels that most of the women connected with Jesus belonged to the lower strata of Jewish society. The mention or suggestion of women of doubtful morals may well be an indication of the social cost of participation in the Jesus movement by women of the higher classes. This situation changed relatively quickly, as we find already ‘women of high standing’ among Paul’s followers in Acts (13.50, 17.12) and wellto-do business women in the Shepherd of Hermas (Mand. 5.2.2). As time went on, we can notice, on the one hand, a steady growth of the number of poor women, but also the gradual infiltration of Christianity into the higher female circles of the Empire. Elsewhere in this volume, I have collected evidence to suggest that one of the attractions of Christianity was that better educated and intellectually curious women were offered the opportunity of mixing with in69 Stegemann,

The Jesus Movement, 218–9, 296. From Paul to Valentinus, 90–9. 71  For Blandina, see E. Goodine and M. Mitchell, ‘The Persuasiveness of a Woman: The Mistranslation and Misinterpretation of Eusebius’ Historia Ecclesiastica 5.1.41’, JECS 13 (2005) 1–19. 72  For Felicitas, see this volume, Chapter  23. 73  See also Reinbold, Propaganda und Mission, 306–08. 70 Lampe,

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tellectual men.74 The Passion of Perpetua even gives a moving account of the close tie between the spiritual leader Saturus and the young woman Perpetua, both of whom were executed on the same day in 203 AD.75 In other words, even if we have little concrete information, everything we know about early Christianity indicates that the early congregations were relatively egalitarian and supplied important bridging and bonding opportunities. Yet there must have also been another side to this bridging and bonding. Clearly, Christianity’s isolation from the world must have had a negative influence on the social capital of those whose networks were well developed through important positions in the local communities. That is undoubtedly why, initially, we rarely hear of male members of the upper classes being Christians and why male aristocrats kept themselves away from Christianity until well into the third century.76

5.  Religious capital Having looked at the social capital of the early Christians, let us conclude with a few observations on their religious capital. Bourdieu himself had but little interest in religion. His publications are hardly more than a dozen in this field and clearly influenced by his French experience.77 So it is not surprising that he is not of much use as a source of inspiration in this respect. Does Google perhaps help? Not really. When originally writing this article, a search with ‘religious+capital’ resulted in 2900 hits, but virtually all of them referred to cities such as Benares, Ayacucho (the holy city of Peru) or Jerusalem. Much more successful was a search for ‘spiritual+capital’ with a score of 5400 hits, even though that number was also polluted by holy cities. According to the website of the John Templeton Foundation, ‘The specific term “spiritual capital” refers to that as74 Stark, Rise of Christianity, 95–128; this volume, Chapter  3. Unfortunately, E.A. Clark, ‘Thinking with Women: the Uses of the Appeal to “Woman” in Pre-Nicene Christian Propaganda’, in W.V. Harris (ed.), The Spread of Christianity in the First Four Centuries. Essays in Explanation (Leiden, 2005) 43–51 has limited herself to an analysis of discourse. 75  See this volume, Chapter  26. 76  W. Eck, ‘Christen im höheren Reichsdienst im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert? Zu zwei Thesen Th. Klausers’, Chiron 9 (1979) 449–64 and ‘Religion und Religiosität in der soziopolitischen Führungsschicht der Hohen Kaiserzeit’, in W. Eck (ed.), Religion und Gesellschaft in der römischen Kaiserzeit. Kolloquium zu Ehren von Friedrich Vittinghoff (Cologne, 1989) 15–51; T.D. Barnes, ‘Statistics and the Conversion of the Roman Aristocracy’, JRS 85 (1995) 135–47; M. Salzman, The Making of a Christian Aristocracy. Social and Religious Change in the Western Roman Empire (Cambridge, 2002); Al. Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (Oxford, 2011) 173–205; Weiss, Soziale Elite und Christentum. 77  But note P. Bourdieu, ‘La production de la croyance: contribution à une économie des biens symboliques’, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 13 (1977) 3–44, cf. D. Swartz, ‘Bridging the Study of Culture and Religion: Pierre Bourdieu’s political economy of symbolic power’, Sociology of Religion 57 (1996) 71–85.

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pect of social capital linked with religion and/or spirituality… In one sense, then, spiritual capital might be seen as a significant subset of social capital. According to Robert Putnam’s influential work, religion is by far the largest generator of social capital in the United States, contributing to more than half of the social capital in the country’.78 The term ‘spiritual capital’ may well take off in the near future but still seems to be under construction, so to speak.79 Things are somewhat different with the term ‘religious capital’, which has found its place in the work of the well-known rational-choice sociologists Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, who state: ‘Religious capital consists of the degree of mastery of and attachment to a particular religious culture’. 80 Yet this definition is not satisfactory. As with their definition of social capital (‘interpersonal attachments’),81 this definition too is excessively individualistic. It does not look at the organisations and surroundings in which these interpersonal attachments take place. Membership of a church, for example, may be attractive because of the pleasant persons one meets there, but also because of its atmosphere, the satisfaction of spiritual needs or the inspirational doctrines, whereas a football club clearly satisfies rather different needs. Probably, we can better speak of ‘religious capital’, in a context where religious organisations have religious doctrines or ideas that empower people and thus make it attractive to become or stay member of that organisation. If these ideas become less attractive, religious organisations will start to lose members and may even go ‘bankrupt’. It would make sense that any history of Christianity would come up with the importance of religious capital to early Christianity, but a search in this respect soon becomes disappointing. General histories usually describe, but rarely reflect on the reasons of its success. When we look at early Christian communities from this perspective, we may mention three aspects that I would count as typical of the religious capital of the early Christians in addition to its social capital. The first is the love of God. Any reader of the New Testament will be immediately struck by expressions, such as the fact that He is ‘the Father’ and the Christians his ‘children’. He loves his children and has chosen them. To quote Wayne Meeks, ‘the common language of the Pauline Leaders, which in these 78 http://www.templeton.org/spiritualcapital/background.html (unfortunately, the page is no longer accessible, as I noted in the summer of 2016). 79  See B. Verter, ‘Spiritual Capital: Theorizing Religion with Bourdieu against Bourdieu’, Sociological Theory 21 (2003) 150–74; P. Bourdieu, Il campo religioso, edited, translated and postfaced by R. Alciati, E.R. Urciuoli and E. Pace (Turin, 2012). 80  R. Stark and R. Finke, Acts of Faith (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 2002) 120–5 at 120; R. Finke and K. Dougherty, ‘The Effects of Professional Training: The Social and Religious Capital Acquired in Seminaries’, Journal of the Scientific Study of Religion 41 (2002) 103–20; see also S.H. Clain and C. Zech, ‘A Household Production Analysis of Religious and Charitable Activity’, American Journal of Economy & Society 58 (1999) 924–46. 81  Stark and Finke, Acts of Faith, 118.

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particulars is probably shared generally by the members, represents God as participating personally in the direct, feeling-charged community of the house churches’.82 One can easily see that this close connection with God or Christ, sometimes not easily distinguished, helped the early Christians through their hardships. The Acts of the Christian martyrs provide many eloquent testimonies to this belief.83 A second and highly precious good must have been the belief in salvation. It is true that the amount of belief in an afterlife varied considerably in pagan circles, and believers were probably long in a minority, perhaps even as late as the Byzantine Empire. Yet it is also true that Paul and his associates firmly believed in the resurrection and held this belief out as a consolation to the Thessalonian Christians (1 Thess. 4.13–8). The same belief, but perhaps more literally, is more than apparent in the Acts of the martyrs who happily underwent their execution in firm belief of their immediate salvation. In the case of the Spanish bishop Fructuosus, this belief was so intense that his parishioners saw the bishop, still bound to the stake, shoot like a rocket straight to heaven after being burned alive (Passio Fructuosi 5). Moreover, a pendant of this belief was that in damnation. Just as the early Christians believed in their going straight to heaven, so they firmly believed in their opponents going straight to hell. When the Roman governor told the aged Smyrnean bishop Polycarp: ‘Since you are not afraid of the animals, then I shall have you consumed by fire – unless you change your mind’. But Polycarp answered: ‘The fire you threaten me with burns merely for a time and is soon extinguished. It is clear you are ignorant of the fire of the everlasting punishment and of the judgement that is to come, which awaits the impious. Why then do you hesitate? Come, do what you will.’ (Martyrium Polycarpi 11.2). And when the already mentioned Perpetua was led into the arena and came into sight of the governor who was responsible for their execution, she and her fellow martyrs told him: ‘You condemned us, but God you!” (Passio Perpetuae 18.8). 84 Last but not least, as a corollary of their belief in the life everlasting, the Christians were prepared to die for their faith. Unfortunately, we can rarely make a proper analysis of the motives of Christians who were prepared to die for their faith in the same manner as we would do for today’s suicide bombers, who are considered as ‘martyrs’ by Al-Qaida and their kind. 85 It is only in the case of Perpetua that we can see how a young woman gradually accepts her fate and even starts to glorify in her martyrdom. It is perhaps not by chance that, in a society that so much appreciated spectacles, the Christians sometimes even turned their own death into a spectacle. Once again the martyr Acts present us 82 Meeks,

First Urban Christians, 170. See this volume, Chapter  1.1. 84  See also this volume, Chapter  25 on c. 17. 85  See this volume, Chapter  24.3. 83 

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with many an example, from the steadfast attitude of Polycarp (Martyrium Polycarpi 11) to Cyprian binding his eyes with his own hand (Acta Cypriani 5.5). Such behaviour so impressed the contemporaries that an onlooker could openly express his sympathy for the martyrs and be executed with them (Acta Eupli 1). As Tertullian (Ap.  50.13) already noted: semen est sanguis Christianorum.

Conclusion We need not speculate here if Christianity would have also won without Constantine and his vision.86 It is clear that at the beginning of the fourth century it was still expanding and gradually penetrating into the highest echelons of Roman society. This success has to be explained in comparison with the less successful and even failing cults of the competition. The notions of social and religious capital may be useful in this respect, as I hope to have illustrated. Unfortunately, the ancient world has left no records of a religious consumers’ association. This means that we have to make the comparisons ourselves. Why was Christianity more successful than the Mithraic, Isiac and other cults? Answers to this question have to take into account both the material and ideological properties of the ancient cults. Such a quest does not offer easy answers. The religious economy of the ancient world still poses many questions.87

86  Cf. J.N. Bremmer, ‘The Vision of Constantine’, in A. Lardinois et al. (eds), Land of Dreams. Greek and Latin studies in honour of A.H.M. Kessels (Leiden, 2006) 57–79. 87  Various versions have profited from audiences in Bremen (2004), Hamburg (2005) and Berlin (2006) as well as from comments by George H. van Kooten and Onno van Nijf. Stephen Harrison kindly corrected my English.

Chapter 3

Why Did Early Christianity Attract Upper-class Women? Any reader of the Acts of the early Christian martyrs will be struck by the prominence of women. Fierce Perpetua, noble Blandina and fearless Crispina are the best known, but the Neronian persecution already saw a number of female martyrs performing in mythological spectacles. What attracted them to Christianity? Did they all have the same motives for joining the Church, or did early Christianity offer a variety of possibilities to all kinds of women? Here I will concentrate on one particular group of women. Some of the best-known female martyrs, such as Perpetua and Crispina, were members of the upper class. Which aspects of the early Church must have been particularly appealing to them?1 The fullest exposition of the place of women in the early Church is still Harnack’s study of the mission and expansion of Christianity, in which he convincingly demonstrates the great importance of women; women were apparently even in the majority. Harnack, though, did not explain the reasons why it attracted so many women. In fact, he rather proudly stated in the preface to the fourth German edition that his work ‘so gut wie keine Hypothesen enthält, sondern Tatsachen zusammenstellt’. His collection of the evidence is indeed near-exhaustive.2 It is therefore not so much in enlarging the evidence as through interpreting the material that progress can be made in understanding why the early Church attracted women on a large scale. More recent studies of the rise of Christianity have not really advanced beyond Harnack in this respect. MacMullen only notes the fact that ancient men usually described women as credulous beings, and apparently accepts this picture as a sufficient explanation. He argues that ‘women, except at the absolute top of society, did in fact enjoy far less access to advanced education and wide reading than men; land women, except at the very bottom of society, did in fact enjoy far less liberty to stir about in the towns and gain a wide experience than men’. In his massive study of the 1  Female martyrs: A. Valerio, ‘Le figure femminili negli Atti dei martiri del II secolo’, Rassegna di Teologia 22 (1981) 28–44. Neronian persecution: H.C. Brennecke, ‘Danaiden und Dirken. Zu 1 Clem. 6,2’, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 88 (1977) 302–08 and, especially, T. Schmitt, ‘Des Kaisers Inszenierung: Mythologie und neronische Christenverfolgung’, ZAC 16 (2012) 487–515, who situates the reference in contemporary Rome. 2  A. v. Harnack, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums (Berlin, 1924 4) 589–611; R. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (Harmondsworth, 1986) 310; A. Di Berardino, ‘Women and Spread of Christianity in the First Centuries’, Augustinianum 55 (2015) 305–36.

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rise of Christianity, Robin Lane Fox also notes the stereotype of credulity but does not provide any explanation – a very Harnackian attitude.3 This view of women as credulous beings is of course old. David Hume (1711– 1776), for example, already noted: ‘What age or period of life is most addicted to superstition? The weakest and the most timid. What sex? The same answer must be given. The leaders of every kind of superstition, says Strabo, are the women. These excite men to devotion and supplications, and the observance of religious days’ (7.3.4, somewhat abridged). And indeed, in antiquity males, pagan and Christian alike, berated women for their religious gullibility. Similarly, during the Reformation, Catholics lamented the fact that it was much easier to entrap women into heresies than men.4 Such allegations may be dismissed out of hand. Firstly, the conversion to new religions is not a priori a sign of credulity. Secondly, this view does not ask why women were so prone to accept new cults. Thirdly, the most important point for our problem, new cults often drew their followers from the very top of society, which, in MacMullen’s view, was not credulous. In fact, the attraction of new cults and religions for upper-class women seems to have been a structural feature of women’s life in the Roman Empire. Juvenal (6, 511–91) pictures the rich woman who worships Cybele and Isis, and the latter goddess especially was popular among Roman upper-class females.5 Rich women are also often connected with Gnostic sects. The Acts of Peter (17) mentions that Simon Magus stayed with a rich woman, Eubola; Epiphanius preserved a letter from Ptolemaeus, a pupil of the Gnostic Valentinus, to the rich woman Flora,6 and Marcus, another pupil of Valentinus, directed his attention by preference to well-to-do ladies (Iren. Adv. Haer. 1.13.2–3). Mani also paid attention to women, who proved to be so important for his religion that the Manichaean tradition related the simultaneous conversion of his father Pattikios and an unnamed woman; surely these women were not among 3  R. MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire (New Haven and London, 1984) 39; Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 310 f. 4 Hume: The Natural History of Religion, Ch. III. Catholics: N.Z. Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (London, 1975) 65. Christians: Clemens Alex. Paed. 3.4.28–29; Origen, CC 3.55; MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire, 137 n.  33; M. Becker, Porphyrios “Contra Christianos” (Berlin and Boston, 2016) 394 f. Pagans: Plato, Leg. 909A; Menander F 237 K/A; Plut. Mor. 407C. 5  Cybele: note also P.Oxy. 42.3010, where a lover seems to pose as a Gallus; Martial 3.81 (a Gallus as cunnilingus). Isis: S.K. Heyob, The Cult of Isis among Women in the Graeco-Roman World (Leiden, 1975); F. Solmsen, Isis among the Greeks and Romans (Cambridge MA, 1979); F. Graf, ‘Ovide, les “Métamorphoses” et Ia véracité du mythe’, in C. Calame (ed.), Métamorphoses du mythe en Grèce antique (Geneva, 1988) 57–70. 6  Flora: Epiphanius, Haer. 33, 3–7, cf. G. Quispel, Ptolémée. Lettre à Flora (Paris, 19662). Both R.M. Grant, ‘A Woman of Rome: The Matron in Justin, 2 Apology 2, 1–9’, Church History 54 (1985) 461–72, and P. Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus (Minneapolis, 2003) 237–40, suggest that she was the woman referred to in Justin, 2Apol. 2.

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the poorest.7 Yet of all the religions in the Roman Empire, for a long time Judaism perhaps exerted the greatest influence. The Acts of the Apostles already mention prominent women in Pisidian Antioch who sympathised with Judaism (13.50); according to Flavius Josephus virtually all the women of Damascus sympathised (Bell. Jud. 2.20.2: surely an exaggeration), and in Rome itself Judaism extended its influence into the highest circles – witness Nero’s wife ­Poppaea.8 Christianity was no exception to this rule. The martyrdom of Ptolemaeus for converting the, unfortunately anonymous, wife of a high-class Roman was already mentioned by Justin (2Apol. 2.2). The second-century Apocryphal Acts abound with examples of respectable ladies joining the Church, such as the wife of the pro-consul in the Acts of Andrew (3), rich women like Chryse in the Acts of Peter (29–30), the concubines of the prefect of Rome (ibid. 33) and, finally, rich Artemilla, the wife of the pro-consul Hieronymus, and wealthy Eubula in the Acts of Paul (47). These examples are, admittedly, derived from fiction, but these Acts were probably directed at upper-class women, and the stipulation in the Traditio apostolica (21) that women must remove their golden jewelry before baptism, shows that the phenomenon of wealthy women converts was not fictitious. Tertullian (Ad Scap.  4) also mentions the presence of clarissimae feminae in the church of Carthage; Origen (CC 3.9) stresses that noble women embrace Christianity, and Porphyry (fr. 4 Harnack = 70F Becker) insinuates that the apostles had made magic signs to receive wealth from rich women.9 What did these religions and cults have to offer women that traditional Greek and Roman religion lacked? Max Weber, the first sociologist to focus attention on the prominent role of women in new religious movements, suggested that women are very receptive to religious groups with orgiastic, emotional and/or hysterical aspects. His observations would fit the cult of Cybele, but they are not very helpful towards understanding women’s interest in, for example, Judaism and Christianity. The early modern historian Keith Thomas shows himself to be more perceptive as regards this issue by noticing that ‘women seem to have played a disproportionate role in the history of mysticism and spiritual religion. Almost all the mediaeval sects from the Manichaeans to the Waldenses, the Donatists to the Cathars, received to a marked degree the support of women and 7  Cf. A. Henrichs and L. Koenen, ‘Ein griechischer Edition der Seiten 99, 10–120’, ZPE 44 (1981) 201–318 at 308 (on Cologne Mani Codex c. 117) with further references. Similarly, does the prominence of women in the Gospels not suggest a prominence of women in the early Christian congregations? 8  Poppaea: Josephus, Vita 16, AJ 20.195; Tac. Ann. 16.6; J. Reynolds and R. Tannenbaum, Jews and Godfearers at Aphrodisias (Cambridge, 1987) 50; M.H. Williams, ‘The Jewish Tendencies of Poppaea Sabina’, JThS 39 (1988) 97–111. Other female sympathisers: Josephus, AJ 18.82; E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, eds. G. Vermes et al., vol.  3.1 (Edinburgh, 1986) 162–63; R.S. Kraemer, ‘Non-literary Evidence for Jewish Women in Rome and Egypt’, Helios 13 (1986) 85–101. 9  For these and more examples, see Harnack, Mission und Ausbreitung, 604–5; Becker, Porphyrios “Contra Christianos”, 433–36.

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welcomed them, sometimes as influential patronesses, but more often ... as active members on a basis of practical equality ... Membership of the sects outside the Church or mysticism within allowed women self-expression, wider spheres of influence and an asceticism which could emancipate them from the ties of family life’.10 These factors enumerated by Thomas are also valid for antiquity. However, it is not always easy to see what each cult or religion had to offer in particular. The cult of Cybele was highly ecstatic and participation in its rites will certainly have helped to make life more exciting. But what about Isis? It was probably an attractive factor that women could attain to priesthood in her cult and thus converse on equal footing with male priests, just as in Hellenistic Jewry women could hold important functions in the synagogue.11 Patronage will also have played a role for Christian upper-class women. The Acts of Peter supply various interesting examples. Eubola gives all her wealth to widows and orphans (17), the mother of a senator gives Peter a substantial donation to be divided among the ‘virgins of Christ’ (29), and even a woman of doubtful morals, Chryse, offers him a vast amount of money (30). Once again, we can compare fiction with the historical reality. The Traditio apostolica frequently mentions the problem of poor widows, whose number had grown to 1500 in the middle of the third century (Eusebius, HE 6.43.11–12). Similarly, in Carthage, the only other early Christian congregation about whose composition we are relatively well informed, widows are frequently mentioned as objects of charity.12 Most probably, rich women were the main target of fund-rais10  M. Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie (Tübingen, 1972) 298, 364, rightly criticised by Davis, Culture and Society, 66; M. de Baar, ‘“En onder ’t hennerot het haantje zoekt te blijven”: De betrokkenheid van vrouwen bij het huisgezin van Jean de Labadie (1669–1732)’, Jaarboek voor vrouwengeschiedenis 8 (1987) 11–43 (on the female followers of Jean de Labadie); K. Thomas, ‘Women and the Civil War Sects’, Past & Present 13 (1958) 42–62 at 50; note, e.g., also the prominence of women, for the same reasons, in the movement of the Jewish pseudo-Messiah Sabbatai Sevi in the seventeenth century: G. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi. The Mystical Messiah (Princeton, 1973) 403–5. 11  Cybele: J.N. Bremmer and N.M. Horsfall, Roman Myth and Mythography (London, 1987) 105 n.  1. Isis: Heyob, The Cult of Isis; P. Martzavou, ‘Priests and Priestly Roles in the Isiac Cults. Women as Agents in Religious Change in Late Hellenistic and Roman Athens’, in A. Chaniotis (ed.), Ritual Dynamics in the Ancient Mediterranean; agency, emotion, gender, representation (Stuttgart, 2011) 61–84. Hellenistic Jewry: B.J. Brooten, Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue, Inscriptional Evidence and Background Issues (Chico, 1982); R.S. Krae­ mer, ‘Hellenistic Jewish Women: The Epigraphical Evidence’, in SBL 1986 Seminar Papers (Atlanta, 1986) 183–200; A. Momigliano, Ottavo contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico (Rome, 1987) 389–92. The reservations regarding Brooten’s views expressed by G. Mayer, Die jüdische Frau in der hellenistisch-römischen Antike (Stuttgart, 1987) 90–91, take insufficient account of the Hellenistic parallels, cf. H.W. Pleket ad SEG 33.1602; G.H.R. Horsley, New Documents illustrating Early Christianity 4 (Macquarie University, 1987) 219. 12  The aspect of patronage is rightly stressed by R.F. Stoops Jr., ‘Patronage in the Acts of Peter’, Semeia 38 (1986) 91–100. Widows: Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus, 127–28; G. Schöllgen, Ecclesia sordida? (Münster, 1984) 260–2 (Carthage); this volume, Chapter  2.3.

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ing for the poor, as sufficient rich men were lacking in the early Church. Yet these examples are few in number, and another factor seems to have been more important in attracting upper-class women to the Church. In the East, the disappearance of a clear distinction between private and public life had enabled women from upper-class families to move into the traditional male world of public life by becoming benefactors or fulfilling certain functions originally reserved for males, such as that of gymnasiarch. Female behaviour, though, remained constrained by the traditional ideology of the silent woman: women were to be seen but not heard, as MacMullen pithily formulated it. Similarly, in Rome itself upper-class women had acquired a certain amount of freedom and could now accompany their husbands on their provincial duties, but they, too, had not obtained any real influence.13 Membership of the Christian community, on the other hand, seems to have enabled rich women to be heard and to participate in meaningful intellectual discussions. Among Justin’s co-martyrs we find a woman, Charito, who was probably one of his pupils (Mart. Just. 4); Dionysius of Corinth wrote a theological letter to a certain Chrysophora, ‘a most faithful sister’ (Eusebius, HE 4.23.13); Hippolytus (Comm. in Daniel. 1.22) evidently presumed that women and maidens could read his work; Origen had many female pupils; and Tatian (Or. 33) counters the pagan reproaches against the Christians ‘talking rubbish at meetings of women and boys and girls’ by stating that the pagans should not jeer ‘at the women who philosophise among us’.14 In the Acts of the martyrs we find some more examples. The Passion of Perpetua is an eloquent testimony to the close relationship which could develop between a young upper-class woman and her theological instructor,15 and the group of Pionius, which contained at least two women, spends its time in ‘philologein and prayer’ in prison (11.7). Although literacy among women remained underdeveloped in antiquity, Bible-reading women were apparently so normal that in the early fourth-century Martyrdom of Agape, Irene and Chione (4.2) the Roman governor asks Chione: ‘Do you have in your possession any treatises, parchments or books of the impious Christians?’, and Chione answered, ‘We do not, Sir. Our present emperors have taken these from us’.16 Women might of course feel equally attracted to 13  On the East: R. MacMullen, ‘Women in Public in the Roman Empire’, Historia 29 (1980) 208–18; R. van Bremen, The Limits of Participation. Women and Civic Life in the Greek East in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods (Amsterdam, 1999); L.-M. Günther, Bürgerinnen und ihre Familien im hellenistischen Milet. Untersuchungen zur Rolle von Frauen und Mädchen in der Polis-Öffentlichkeit (Wiesbaden, 2014). Rome: E. Hemelrijk, Hidden Lives, Public Personae. Women and Civic Life in the Roman West (Oxford, 2015). 14  For Origen and more examples, see Harnack, Mission und Ausbreitung, 599 f. 15  For the Passio Perpetuae, see this volume, Chapters 22–26. 16  These Christian examples should be added to S.G. Cole, ‘Could Greek Women Read and Write?’, in H.P. Foley (ed.), Reflections of Women in Antiquity (London, 1981) 219–45; see also this volume, Chapter  14.3.

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other intellectuals. Valentinus had female followers with poetic pretensions, Plotinus had assembled a circle of women around him, and also Epicurus seems to have had female followers. In a similar way, the Reformation made especial headway among the literate women of the French cities, as Natalie Zemon Davies has shown: in all these cases, women entered new religious relations that brought them together on an intellectual level with men or likened them to men, although this new approach still left them unequal.17 Finally, there was one other aspect that attracted upper-class women to Christianity. In the late second-century Acts of Peter, the preaching of the apostle causes the concubines of the prefect Agrippa to leave their lover (33), and the wife of Albinus, ‘the friend of Caesar’, to separate from her husband (34), and in the slightly earlier Acts of Andrew, Maximilla rejects her husband, the proconsul Aegeates, on account of his lawless behaviour (2 ff.). These stories fit well with the report by Justin (2Apol.2) about the influential Roman’s wife, who had divorced her husband after conversion. In this connection, we may also wonder whether the absence of any mention by Perpetua in her ‘diary’ of the father of her child does not also imply deliberate rejection of a pagan husband.18 Apparently, the ascetic side of Christianity, which became so prominent in Late Antiquity, was already a factor of some importance in the second century. Most likely, the propaganda in the Apocryphal Acts was primarily directed to upper-class women, as they were the only ones who, in the event of a break with their husband, could immediately support themselves, due to the gradual decline of manus marriage in Republican times.19 On the other hand, Augustus’ lex Julia obliged divorcees and widows to remarry within five years, unless they had the ius trium liberorum. It is therefore unlikely that a total rejection of sexuality could immediately have become very popular, but the abolition of the law 17  Valentinus: Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus, 308–12. Plotinus: Porphyry, Plot. 9, cf. U. Hartmann, ‘Spätantike Philosophinnen. Frauen in den Philosophenviten von Porphyrios bis Damaskios’, in R. Rollinger and C. Ulf (eds), Frauen und Geschlechter (Vienna, 2006) 43–79. Epicurus: J. Hammerstaedt and M.F. Smith, The Epicurean Inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda: Ten Years of New Discoveries and Research (Bonn, 2014) 129–30. For some other intellectuals, see Momigliano, Ottavo contributo, 333 f. Reformation: Davis, Society and Culture, 65–95, 290–6; C. Jenkins Blaisdell, ‘Calvin’s Letters to Women: The Courting of Ladies in High Places’, Sixteenth Century Journal 13.3 (1982) 67–84; J.D. Douglass, Women, Freedom and Calvin (Philadelphia, 1985); K. Stjerna, Women and the Reformation (Oxford, 2007). 18  Rejection of sexuality: Y. Tissot, ‘Encratisme et Actes apocryphes’, in F. Bovon et al., Les Actes apocryphes des apôtres (Geneva, 1981) 109–19; G. Sfameni Gasparro, ‘Gli Atti apocrifi degli Apostoli e la tradizione dell’ enkrateia’, Augustinianum 23 (1983) 287–307; G.P. Corrington, ‘“The Divine Woman”? Propaganda and the Power of Chastity in the New Testament Apocrypha’, Helios 13 (1986) 151–62. Perpetua: see also the perceptive observations by M.R. Lefkowitz, Heroines and Hysterics (London, 1981) 54–8, and Women in Greek Myth (London, 1986) 103–5. 19  Cf. S.E. Looper-Friedman, ‘The Decline of manus-marriage’, Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis 55 (1987) 281–96.

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in AD 320 by Constantine the Great, virtually immediately after his rise to power, shows the pressure in this direction. Why were upper-class women supposed to be receptive to this stress on the rejection of wicked behaviour by the husband (presumably consorting with other women and boys) or sexuality altogether? Previous studies of the antisexual development in Late Antiquity have elucidated the pagan, Jewish and Christian roots of this fascinating problem and shown that virginity opened up to women the possibility of leading a more satisfying life.20 On the other hand, Paul Veyne has observed that the Principate effected a development in Rome from a conjugal relationship without emotional bonds to a kind of affectionate family, a development he explains from political changes: the rise of the monarchy had transformed the warring senatorial factions into obedient servants of the emperor. Admittedly, Veyne’s theory has come in for some deserved criticism. Saller and Shaw, for example, rightly object that he overrates the influence of the social hierarchy and is too schematic in denying affection to the Republican families.21 We may also add that his explanation is certainly simplistic. The diminishing of patria potestas, a distancing of the upper classes from other groups, and the new approach to marriage incorporating mutual tenderness, which we find in the writings of Musonius Rufus and Plutarch, are all factors which must have played a role as well. Yet when all is said, the development of Roman marriage as sketched by Veyne can hardly be doubted.22 The Roman movement towards a more intimate relationship in marriage coincided with Christian teachings also stressing sexual chastity and harmony within marriage. Peter Brown has termed the latter teachings a morality of the socially vulnerable. In his view, the faithfulness of women and slaves was very 20  On virginity, see especially P. Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, twentieth anniversary edition with a new introduction (New York, 2008). 21  P. Veyne, ‘La famille et l’amour sous le Haut-Empire romain’, Annales ESC 33 (1978) 35–63, reprinted in his La société romaine (Paris, 1991) 88–130. Contra: R.P. Saller and B.D. Shaw, ‘Tombstones and Roman Family Relations in the Principate: Civilians, Soldiers and Slaves’, JRS 74(1984) 124–56 at 134–9; see also L. Stone, The Past and the Present Revisited (London and New York, 1987) 378 f. However, Saller and Shaw as well as Benabou (next note) underrate the developments stressing the family in the Principate, such as the prohibition of homosexual prostitution, the growing antagonism to exposure, abortion and bigamy, the extension of legal marriage to all sections of society, the emphasis on marital harmony, and, not to be overlooked, the popularity of the name Gamos during the Empire (H. Solin, Glotta 62 (1984) 167–71). Many perceptive observations on the changes during the Empire are offered by A. Rousselle, ‘Gestes et signes de la famille dans l’Empire romain’, in A. Burguière et al. (eds), Histoire de la famille, 2  vols (Paris, 1986) 1.231–69. 22  Patria potestas: Y. Thomas, ‘A Rome, pères citoyens et cité des pères (IIe siècle av. J.-C. – IIe siècle ap. J.-C.)’, in Burguière et al., Histoire de la famille, 2.195–229. Philosophers: M. Foucault, Le souci de soi (Paris, 1984), to be read with the reviews by A. Rousselle, Annales ESC 40 (1985) 521–8 and Av. Cameron, JRS 76 (1986) 266–71; M. Benabou, ‘Pratique matrimoniale et representation philosophique: le crépuscule des strategies’, Annales ESC 42 (1987) 1255–66.

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useful to the males of the lower classes, who could ill afford the loss of a wife or servants. Yet Brown’s explanation is hardly supported by the over-representation of women in the early Church. If he was right, we would surely have found many more small proprietors as members of the early Church than our sources indicate. Most likely, the roots of these early Christian teachings should be sought in ascetic Jewish traditions – a problem which need not detain us here.23 Both pagan and Christian ideology, then, urged couples to be chaste and to love one another. However, these developments cannot always have made marriage easier to bear for women. Having been wedded in their earlier or, perhaps more likely, in their later teens to a husband at least ten years older, 24 upper-class women were now obliged to spend their life in a much more intimate relationship with their husband than previous generations of women, who at least had a sphere of their own and whose husbands could have other women or boys. The corollary of this development must have been that married life became more difficult to tolerate for those upper-class women who were unhappy with their husband. Apparently, the prospect of marriage eventually became so unattractive for a number of women that they rejected sexuality altogether and opted for virginity. For the latter development, we may compare the second half of the nineteenth century when growing bourgeoisation promoted the emergence of homosexual and lesbian identities – options that were unthinkable in antiquity. To sum up, intellectually, socially and sexually early Christianity offered possibilities to upper-class women that were not provided to the same degree by other cults. The courageous deaths of so many female martyrs are eloquent witnesses to the fact that for them Christianity was a religion worth living by and worth dying for. We would like to close this contribution with some remarks on those women who were at the bottom of the social scale: old women. There is plenty of evidence that they were of lowly rank in antiquity. This low estimation will explain why we already find old women mentioned in the new cults of Cybele and Sabazios in classical times; apparently, they were accepted in these cults and could make themselves useful there. Pseudo-Paul’s Letter to Titus (2.3) shows that old women had also joined the Christian movement at a very early stage. In fact, they may well have constituted a considerable part of the early Church, as the Acts of John (30–6) pay considerable attention to them. Another story in the same Acts, more recently brought to light in an Irish text, shows the apostle in dispute with old women and widows, 25 categories that must often have been 23  Contra: P. Brown, ‘Late Antiquity’, in P. Veyne (ed.), A History of Private Life, vol.  1 (Cambridge and London, 1987) 235–311 at 260 f. Jewish traditions: M. Simon, ‘L’ascétisme dans les sectes juives’, in U. Bianchi (ed.), La tradizione dell’enkrateia (Rome, 1985) 393–426. 24  For the age at marriage, see A.A. Lelis et al., Age of Marriage in Ancient Rome (Lewiston, 2003). 25  Cf. E. Junod and J.-D. Kaestli (eds), Acta lohannis, 2  vols (Turnhout, 1983) 1.114–5, 130–

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identical, as the Traditio Apostolica (30) stipulates that the members of the Church should invite widows to their homes, but only those of a more mature age. More than any other category, old women must have been in need of charity. Would upper-class women not have been their most likely patronesses?26

2. These texts from the Acts of John have to be added to Bremmer, ‘The Old Women of Ancient Greece’, in Blok and Mason, Sexual Asymmetry, 191–215; see also this volume, Chapters 4 (widows) and 7 (Acts of John). 26  A first version of this contribution was part of a larger paper on the rise of early Christianity read to Fergus Millar’s Oxford Ancient History Seminar in March 1987, the Dutch Society for Ancient Christian Studies in October 1987, and the Classical Association in April 1988. I thank Valentino Gasparini and Ton Hilhorst for various references and Robert Parker for correcting my English.

Chapter 4

Pauper or Patroness: the Widow in the Early Christian Church In memory of my mother-in-law, Mrs. E.V. Bartlett Having looked in the previous chapter at the upper-class women, we now turn to the widows in the early Christian church, many of whom were at the very bottom of society. We will not attempt here to present an exhaustive study, but we will concentrate on a few questions: what role did widows play in the rise of Christianity,1 how did the increasing institutionalisation of the church alter their position, and, last but not least, how did the growing stress on asceticism influence the place of widows in the early church? An analysis of the position of the widow can also show something of the enormous changes that took place, albeit gradually and virtually unnoticed, in the Roman Empire under the increasing influence of Christianity. Greeks and Romans had always been very negative about old women, 2 and permanent widows were usually older women. To what extent did Christianity make a difference in this respect?3

1  C.H. Turner, Catholic and Apostolic. Collected Papers, ed. H.N. Bate (London and Oxford, 1931) 316–51; A.V. Nazzaro, ‘La vedovanza nel cristianesimo antico’, Annali della Facultà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’ Università di Napoli 26 (1983–84) 103–32 and ‘Figure di donne cristiane: la vedova’, in R. Uglione (ed.), Atti del II convegno nazionale di studi su “La donna nel mondo antico” (Turin, 1989) 197–219; B.B. Thurston, The Widows. A Women’s Ministry in the Early Church (Minneapolis, 1989); R. Bruno Siola, ‘Viduae e coetus viduarum nella Chiesa primitiva e nella normazione dei primi imperatori cristiani’, in Atti dell’Accademia Romanistica Constantiniani: VIII convegno inernazionale (Naples, 1990) 367–426; J.R. Harrison, ‘Benefaction Ideology and Christian Responsibility for Widows’, in S.R. Llewelyn (ed.), New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity, vol.  8 (Grand Rapids, 1997) 106–16; V. Recchia, Lettera e profezia nell’esegesi di Gregorio Magno (Bari, 2003) 107–36; A. Standhartinger, ‘Wie die verehrteste Judith und die besonnenste Hanna: Traditionsgeschichtliche Beobachtungen zur Herkunft der Witwengruppen im entstehenden Christentum’, in F. Crüsemann et al. (eds), Dem Tod nicht glauben: Sozialgeschichte der Bibel (Gütersloh, 2004) 103–26; C. Back, Die Witwen in der frühen Kirche (Frankfurt, 2015). 2  See J.N. Bremmer, ‘The Old Women of Ancient Greece’, in J. Blok and P. Mason (eds), Sexual Asymmetry (Amsterdam, 1987) 191–215. 3  My study is also a contribution to this important question, which is posed by R. MacMullen, Changes in the Roman Empire (Princeton, 1990) 142–55, 327–35, although he does not discuss the widow.

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1.  Jesus and the first Palestine congregations We start in Palestine, with the New Testament. The life of widows in ancient Israel was in no way easy.4 Whereas in the ancient Near East women were entitled to inherit, the Jewish law made no such provisions. Consequently, the fate of the widow was a harsh one, as also appears from the constant appeals in the Old Testament for widows to be looked after. The fact that Jahweh especially was held responsible for the care of widows strongly suggests that human care was rather deficient. It probably was not very different in the time of Jesus. In the first century of our era, women generally were in many ways not highly regarded by the Jewish males of Palestine, and widows least of all.5 It is against this background that we have to analyse the activities of Jesus. Such an analysis is not that simple, since the sources, origins and milieu of the canonical gospels are still heavily debated. 6 Moreover, the interest in women in general, and widows in particular, varies from gospel to gospel. Widows occur only twice in Mark, which is generally considered to be the oldest gospel, but not at all in Matthew, who closely follows him, or in John, who seems to have used the same source as Mark. According to Mark, Jesus, during his teaching in the temple, once lectured the scribes because they ‘devour widows’ houses’. He also negatively contrasted the rich, who contributed much money to the treasury, with the poor widow who gave two mites, ‘her last penny’ (12.40–44).7 In Mark, then, Jesus seems to use the widows in a positive way in his teaching, but he does not engage in personal contacts with them.8 With Luke, it is different. He was the author of a history of the earliest Christian church from the birth of Jesus to Paul’s enforced stay in Rome. His work, which probably dates from the end of the first century, if not somewhat later, was originally meant as a whole, but at an early date it was divided into two parts, of which the first was classified as one of the gospels. Of all the evangelists, Luke pays the most attention not only to women but also to widows. 4  K. van der Toorn, ‘The Public Image of the Widow in Ancient Israel’, in J.N. Bremmer and L.P. van der Bosch (eds), Between Poverty and the Pyre. Moments in the History of Widowhood (London and New York, 1995) 19–30; Back, Witwen in der frühen Kirche, 23–56. 5  Palestine: L.J. Archer, Her Price is Beyond Rubies. The Jewish Woman in Graeco-Roman Palestine (Sheffield, 1990); A.-J. Levine (ed.), ‘Women Like This’. New Perspectives on Jewish Women in the Greco-Roman World (Atlanta, 1991); P.W. van der Horst, ‘Einige Beobachtungen zum Thema Frauen im antiken Judentum’, Berliner Theologische Zeitschrift 10 (1993) 77–93. New Testament: G. Stählin, ‘chêra’, in TWNT 9 (Stuttgart, 1974) 428–54; Back, Witwen in der frühen Kirche, 89–194. 6  See, provocatively, M. Vinzent, Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels (Leuven, 2014). 7  With full bibliography, M. Lau, ‘Die Witwe, das gazophylakion und der Tempel. Be­ obachtungen zur mk Erzählung vom “Scherflein der Witwe” (Mk 12, 41–44)’, ZNW 107 (2016) 186–205. 8  M. Fander, Die Stellung der Frau im Markusevangelium (Altenberge, 1989).

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He is the only one to mention Anna, a widow of about 84 years (2.36–8), and, unlike Matthew and John, he also mentions Mark’s story about the poor widow (21.1–4). It is only in his gospel that Jesus quotes the visit of the prophet Elijah to the Phoenician widow of Zarephath in order to illustrate the universality of his message (4.26), and relates the parable of the widow and the unjust judge to demonstrate the effect of continuous prayer (18.1–8).9 Finally, he shows us Jesus resurrecting the only son of the widow at Nain (7.11–7). This attention to widows and the prominent role Luke assigns to women during the crucifixion and resurrection suggest a great interest on his part in women in the movement of Jesus. The participation of women amongst the followers of Jesus was unparalleled in the traditional Jewish culture of that time. Admittedly, women could support rabbis materially but they could never become their pupils, unless they married one.10 On the other hand, women have frequently been interested, and visibly involved, in movements outside the religious establishment from antiquity to the present day. Of course, we cannot treat alike the appeal of all these movements, such as the following of Adonis, the movement of Jesus, the Valentinian gnostics, the Cathars, Labadists, Shakers, Mormons and Moonies. A proper analysis of the involvement of women in sects requires a study of their numerical influence, the prevailing ideas about women and the social position of women within such movements.11 In the case of Jesus, such a study-in-depth is hard to carry out, but women seem to have constituted a significant part of his followers. Jesus himself opposed divorce and opened up the possibility for women to act independently from their families. He also seems to have cultivated intellectual relationships with women. This is often an underrated factor, but many indications suggest that intellectual intercourse was an important factor in the appeal of early Christianity to women of the upper classes.12 Even though Jesus reduced the distance between men and women, they remained still unequal, none of the apostles being a woman.13 Why did Luke pay so much more attention than Mark to women as traveling companions of Jesus? Was it because the role of women aroused resistance in the early church?14 That would be too negative an approach to the social background of Christianity in the time of Luke, as seen in the Acts of the Apostles 9  U. Kellermann, ‘Die Klage der Witwe: Anmerkungen zu möglichen sozialen und rechtlichen Hintergründen von Lukas 18, 2–5’, Biblische Notizen 142 (2009) 105–15. 10  B. Witherington III, Women in the Ministry of Jesus (Cambridge, 1984) 117. 11  As is stressed by M. de Baar, ‘“En onder ’t hennerot het haantje zoekt te blijven”. De betrokkenheid van vrouwen bij het huisgezin van Jean de Labadie (1669–1732)’, Jaarboek voor Vrouwengeschiedenis 8 (1987) 11–43 at 15. 12  See this volume, Chapter  3. 13 Witherington, Women in the Ministry of Jesus, 125–31. 14  As is argued by B. Witherington III, Women in the Earliest Churches (Cambridge, 1988) 157.

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and the Epistles of Paul. These documents show that women occupied an important position in the first congregations and that widows were objects of care and even of dispute. By stressing their place in Jesus’ life Luke may well have wanted to encourage the identification of women and widows in the early Church with their very first predecessors. Even though we do not hear of widows among Jesus’ first followers, they were certainly present in the very first Christian congregation in Jerusalem. According to Luke (Acts 6), there soon arose a dispute between the ‘Hellenists’ and the ‘Hebrews’ (which means to say between those Jews who spoke Greek and those whose language was Aramaic)15 because the widows from the first group felt themselves neglected in the daily ministration. Unfortunately, Luke gives no further particulars so that it is hard to determine exactly who these widows were. It is possible that some of these women had returned from the Diaspora to die in Jerusalem; the Greek grave inscriptions of Jerusalem reveal relatively many names of women.16 We may assume that the majority of these widows were old, since the Jews of the first century were not against remarriage, and young widows would have been less of a problem for the first congregation. We also hear of poor widows during the activities of Peter when he raises a wealthy woman, Tabitha, in Joppa. She had made coats and garments for widows, who showed them to Peter when he came to the upper chamber where the deceased was laid out (Acts 9.36–43).17 From these two rare passages it appears that from the very beginning of Christianity widows were objects of care and – not to be forgotten – a cause of further organisation of the congregation.18

15  M. Hengel, Between Jesus and Paul (London, 1983) 1–29. For the complicated issue of the language situation in Palestine in Jesus’ time, see M. Hengel, The ‘Hellenization’ of Judaea in the First Century after Christ (London and Philadelphia, 1989); G. Horsley, New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity 4 (Macquarie, 1989) 5–40; W. Ameling, ‘Epigraphy and the Greek Language in Hellenistic Palestine’, Scripta Classica Israelica 34 (2015) 1–18; M.O. Wise, Language and Literacy in Roman Judaea: A Study of the Bar Kokhba Documents (New Haven and London, 2015). 16 Hengel, Between Jesus and Paul, 16; H.M. Cotton (ed.), Corpus inscriptionum Iudaeae/ Palaestinae. Volume 1: Jerusalem, Part 1: 1–704 (Berlin, 2010). 17  Stählin, ‘chêra’, 440 wrongly concludes from Peter’s calling of ‘the saints and widows’ (9.41) after the resurrection of Tabitha that the widows in Joppa already constituted a separate order (below). 18  H.G. Kippenberg, ‘The Role of Christianity in the Depolitization of the Roman Empire’, in S.N. Eisenstadt (ed.), The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations (Albany, 1986) 261–79, 527–32, considers the organisation of the weak an important factor in the rise of the Christian bishop.

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2.  The Greek world The picture becomes more detailed as soon as ‘missionaries’ spread the gospel outside Palestine. In the beginning, the followers of Jesus were most successful in the Greek world, the area to which therefore we will now turn. In his first Epistle to the Corinthians, which Paul wrote about 50 AD at Ephesus, he discussed a number of questions that were put to him (16.8). One of these concerns marriage and virginity. From his answer, it appears that several young widows were members of the Corinthian congregation and that their most important problem was the question whether they were allowed to remarry. For Paul, this constituted no problem, even though he thought it better not to do so (7.8–9, 39–40). It is highly interesting to note that remarrying was a problem at all because, like the ancient Jews, the ancient Greeks did not oppose the practice.19 In Classical Athens, the city for which we are best informed, remarrying was normal. This is also apparent from the comedies written by Philemon (F 90–91 K/A) and Menander (F 404–08 K/A) entitled ‘The Widow’, where a wedding would surely have been ‘the happy ending’.20 Yet this practice did not mean that every widow actually remarried, since 65% of Athenian widows seem to have remained unmarried, and this number is typical for the whole of pre-industrial society.21 Besides remarrying, there also existed other ideals. In Euripides’ tragedy Trojan Women (668), Andromache decries a woman who takes a new lover, and in his Suppliants (1059) Euadne jumps on the pyre out of love for her husband Kapaneus. Yet these women are typical of the adventurous tragedian and hardly reflect the ruling values of Athenian society. Admittedly, the second-century traveller Pausanias (2.21.7) is able to mention by name the very first woman who remarried after the death of her husband: Gorgophone, the daughter of Perseus. 19  Greeks: B. Kötting, Die Bewertung der Wiederverheiratung (der zweiten Ehe) in der Antike und in der frühen Kirche (Opladen, 1988) does not even discuss ancient Greece. For widows in Greece, see V. Hunter, ‘The Athenian Widow and her Kin’, Journal of Family History 14.4 (1989) 291–311; P. Walcot, ‘On Widows and their Reputations in Antiquity’, Symbolae Osloenses 66 (1991) 5–26; L.-M. Günther, ‘Witwen in der griechischen Antike – zwischen Oikos und Polis’, Historia 42 (1993) 308–25; J. Rudhardt, ‘La situation des veufs et des veuves en Grèce, selon l’Ancien et selon le Nouveau Testament’, in id., Les dieux, le féminin, le pouvoir. Enquêtes d’un historien des religions (Geneva, 2006) 139–60; R.V. Cudjoe, The Social and Legal Position of Widows and Orphans in Classical Athens (Athens, 2010). 20  The exception confirming the rule was that the bride of the highest Athenian magistrate, the archôn basileus, had to enter marriage as a virgin (Demosthenes 59.75). 21  Athens: W.E. Thompson, ‘Athenian Marriage Pattern: Remarriage’, California Studies in Classical Antiquity 5 (1972) 211–25. Number of widows: T. Gallant, Risk and Survival in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, 1991) 27. For the age of marriage, see R. Sallares, The Ecology of the Ancient Greek World (London, 1991) 148–51. In modern Greece a widow is usually less desirable on the marriage market: P.S. Cassia and C. Banda, The Making of the Modern Greek Family (Cambridge, 1992) 192 f.

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She, though, is not mentioned before the second century and so the notice need not be very old. In any case, remarrying was not a problem for the Greeks in the time of Pausanias because he mentions that in Naupaktos widows visited the temple of Aphrodite to beg for a new marriage (10.38.12). The question of the Corinthian congregation, then, seems to point in the direction of a more problematic attitude towards sexuality, such as we find with Paul himself. On the other hand, it is possible to think of a Roman influence on this point in this former Roman colony, since not to remarry was a respected, if little practised ideal amongst the Roman upper classes (§  3). Widows are also briefly mentioned as a source of concern in the epistle of James (1.27), but the most interesting passage occurs in 1 Timothy,22 one of the pastoral epistles ascribed to Paul, which was probably written in Asia Minor around 100 AD. This letter shows that the congregations in Asia Minor had been able to recruit a considerable number of women from the higher classes, who liked to flaunt their complicated hairstyles, jewels and expensive clothes (2.9). These women also wanted to give religious instruction and such a self-confident attitude tallies with the social position of these women from the urban elite. Compared with classical times, such women occupied a much more important position in public life; even among the Hellenistic Jews, women had advanced considerably – sometimes even to become head of the synagogue. Although these women in no way threatened the position of their wealthy husbands in public life, the small Christian congregations may have felt their financial power. That is perhaps why the male author of 1 Timothy thought it necessary to impress upon women their (modest) place, just as pagan philosophers continued to preach the ideal of the virtuous and modest wife, whose most important role was to be pious and quiet.23 Among these wealthy women, there were several widows, and their number was sufficient for ‘Paul’ to dedicate a long passage to their position (1 Tim. 5): 3 Honor widows who are really widows. 4 If a widow has children or grandchildren, they should first learn their religious duty to their own family and make some repayment to their parents; for this is pleasing in God’s sight. 5 The real widow, left alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day; 6 but the widow who lives for pleasure is dead even while she lives. 7 Give these commands as well, so that they may be above reproach. 8 And whoever does not provide for relatives, and especially for family members, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

22  M. Tsuji, ‘Zwischen Ideal und Realität: zu den Witwen in 1 Tim 5.3–16’, NTS 47 (2001) 92–104; M. Sommer, ‘Witwen in 1 Tim 5. Eine subkulturelle Annäherung aus der Perspektive der Schriften Israels und ihrer Auswirkungen auf das frühe Christentum’, ASE 32 (2015) 287–307. 23  Upper-class Greek women: R.A. Kearsley, ‘Women in Public Life’, in New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity 6 (1992) 24–7. Jewish women: this volume, Chapter  3, note  11. Pagan philosophers: S. Treggiari, Roman Marriage. Iusti Coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian (Oxford, 1991) 185–97.

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Let a widow be put on the list if she is not less than sixty years old and has been married only once; 10 she must be well attested for her good works, as one who has brought up children, shown hospitality, washed the saints’ feet, helped the afflicted, and devoted herself to doing good in every way. 11 But refuse to put younger widows on the list; for when their sensual desires alienate them from Christ, they want to marry, 12 and so they incur condemnation for having violated their first pledge. 13 Besides that, they learn to be idle, gadding about from house to house; and they are not merely idle, but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not say. 14 So I would have younger widows marry, bear children, and manage their households, so as to give the adversary no occasion to revile us. 15 For some have already turned away to follow Satan. 16 If any believing woman has relatives who are really widows, let her assist them; let the church not be burdened, so that it can assist those who are real widows. (tr. NRSV) 9

This passage is a key passage in the study of the social position of the widow because in addition to its ideology it well illustrates the most important variables that play a continuous role all through history: young/old, poor/rich, with/ without children, with/without relatives. In talking about enrolment, ‘Paul’ naturally dismisses the young widow: by her behaviour she is too high a risk for the young church and that is why she had better remarry. The remaining widows have to satisfy a number of conditions before they can be ‘enrolled’. They must be widows of sixty years and older, widows, then, who have unmistakeably passed the menopause.24 They must also have performed works of charity and practised hospitality. These conditions clearly imply that these widows cannot have been very poor – exactly what might be expected in the strict class-society of the ancient world. Yet what does it mean to be ‘enrolled’? Were these women already members of the clergy? Did they already constitute the ‘order of widows’ about which we hear so much in the next century (§  3, 4)?25 Later developments may sometimes, if only rarely, be discerned in earlier, less explicit texts. No passage from the earlier second century yet mentions explicitly the ‘order of widows’, although the ‘enrolment’ in 1 Timothy 5 presupposes that at that time Christian congregations already knew of older, exemplary widows who were an object of special honour. This probably appears also from a somewhat later letter by the bishop Ignatius of Antioch. When on his way to Rome to face execution, he was able to send a number of letters from the Troad. In addition to exhortations to the church of Smyrna (6.2) and its bishop, Polycarp (4.1), not to neglect the widows, he ends his letter to Smyrna (13.1) with a greeting to ‘the families of my brothers with their wives and children, and to the 24  In ancient Athens, the famous lawgiver Solon only considered sixty-year old women as really old: Demosthenes 43.62. We find the same age limit also in the Acts of John 30. 25  This has often been postulated, see the surveys by Thurston, The Widows, 44–55; W. Venter, ‘The Position of the Widow in the Early Church according to the Writings of the Apostolic Fathers’, Ekklesiastikos Pharos (published in Johannesburg) 72 (1990) 11–29 at 13–5. For the order, see now Back, Witwen in der frühen Kirche, 242–83.

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virgins who are also called widows’. Since virgins did not yet constitute a separate category in his time,26 this passage also seems to point to exemplary widows who had renounced sexuality and, therefore, deserved to be mentioned separately. We also read of older widows playing a special role in offering prayers in the apocryphal Acts of Peter (19–21), which seems to have originated in Asia Minor in the 170s or 180s. To conclude, in the Greek world we do not yet find a real ‘order of widows’ in this period, but the older, more respectable widows already occupied a special position in the early stages of the church. The concern for widows is also found in the Acts of Paul (4), which probably originated in Asia Minor in the 190s (Chapter  10.4), where a father sold his possessions and ‘brought the price to the widows’, after Paul had resurrected him and his son. In the Acts of Peter we hear of a certain Marcellus who was the ‘refuge’ of all the widows in town (8). Peter heals some blind, old widows (21), and when he has resurrected the son of a senator, the mother wants to distribute some of her property to her newly freed slaves, but Peter tells her to distribute the remainder among the widows (28). In the apocryphal Acts of John, which originated in Asia Minor in the 160s, John heals the old women of Ephesus. According to the author of these Acts, from these women, many of whom will have been widowed, only four were healthy (30–7). Not every Christian, though, was pleased with the special treatment of widows, which so strongly contradicted prevailing values. The anonymous author of a popular Apocalypse of Peter, which perhaps originated in Egypt about AD 135, understood this negative feeling well and therefore included in his description of Hell the following warning passage: In another place situated near them, on the stone a pillar of fire (?), and the pillar is sharper than words – men and women who are clad in rags and filthy garments, and they are cast upon it, to suffer the judgment of unceasing torture. These are they that trusted in their riches and despised widows and the woman (with) orphans ... in the sight of God (9, tr. Ch. Maurer).

On the other hand, widows were surely not always as pious as ‘Paul’ in his epistle to Timothy had wished. In a fragment of the Acts of John, the apostle is pictured being surrounded by widows and old women, who lived off alms from the church. When they accused John of keeping back the majority of the gifts that he had received and of enriching himself at their expense, he miraculously changed hay into gold ... which he subsequently hid in an inaccessible place.27 Finally, the special position of widows did not go unnoticed among those outside the church. In a book which he wrote around AD 165 about the self-immolation of the philosopher Peregrinus (12), the pagan satirist Lucian mentions 26 

R. Metz, La consécration des vierges dans l’église romaine (Diss. Strasbourg, 1954) 43–8. E. Junod and J.D. Kaestli, Acta Iohannis, 2  vols (Turnhout, 1983) 1.114–15; this volume, Chapter  7.3. 27 

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that in prison he was visited by ‘old crones, widows and orphans’, categories typical of the most vulnerable in ancient society.28 Lucian clearly satirises their prominent position among the Christians, but he did not realise that he was witnessing a slow revolution in the ancient value-system, which soon would develop into a tidal wave.

3.  The Roman world Unlike the Greeks, the Romans respected widows who did not remarry after the death of their husband, and the woman with only one husband, the so-called univira, was greatly praised.29 Yet practice was different, and in the first century BC, the century for which we are informed best, the Roman elite divorced and remarried with a frequency that looks highly modern; young widows too remarried where possible.30 If, however, the more well-to-do among the latter preferred to remain unmarried, they were able to so, since the Roman heritage system was much more favourable to women than the Greek one. Yet legal and social pressure was such that remarriage was the norm, both for widows and widowers.31 Widows played an important role in the visions of Hermas, a member of the Roman congregation, in the later first half of the second century.32 Hermas’ Shepherd shows that despite the presence of many wealthy members the early Roman house-churches still knew a great number of persons in need, especially widows; the evident great supply of widows may well explain why Hermas’ visions did not disapprove of remarriage after the death of a husband. In his visions, the members of the congregation are continuously exhorted and admonished to support widows. Moreover, evidently not all money collected from the congregation reached its intended goal. This must explain why Hermas saw in his visions a mountain with snakes and other wild animals, which were meant for those deacons who had embezzled money destined for widows: some of the deacons, who did the day-to-day work of charity whilst the bishop had the final 28 

See this volume, Chapter  5. Univira: M. Lightman and W. Zeisel, ‘Univira: an Example of Continuity and Change in Roman Society’, Church History 46 (1977) 19–32; Kötting, Bewertung der Wiederverheiratung, 15–9; id., Ecclesia peregrinans, 2  vols (Münster, 1988) 1.245–55; P.W. van der Horst, Ancient Jewish Epitaphs (Kampen, 1991) 103–5; Treggiari, Roman Marriage, 232–7. 30  J.F. Gardner, Women in Roman Law & Society (London, 1986) 50–6; K.R. Bradley, Discovering the Roman Family (New York and Oxford, 1991) 156–76; Treggiari, Roman Marriage, 500 f. 31  M. Penta, ‘La viduitas nella condizione della donna romana’, Atti della Academia di Scienze Morali e Politiche di Napoli 91 (1980) 341–51; Treggiari, Roman Marriage, 500–2, J.-U. Krause, Witwen und Waisen im Römischen Reich, 4  vols (Stuttgart, 1994–95). 32  The mention of widows in 1 Clemens 8.4 is clearly derived from the Old Testament and cannot be used as an indication for the position of widows in the church of that time. 29 

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responsibility, clearly lived in style at the expense of the congregational funds.33 Around 170, however, the financial situation of the Roman congregation had clearly improved and Soter, the then bishop of Rome, could extend his works of charity even to passing Christian brothers and sisters.34 From the first Western church order, the Traditio Apostolica, which is traditionally ascribed to a certain Hippolytus in Rome around 215,35 it appears that at that time Roman widows were still in need of charity; in fact, around 250 bishop Cornelius proudly mentioned that the congregation supported 1500 widows and other needy persons.36 According to the church order, widows occupied an important position in the church, but they could not become members of the ‘order of widows’ by the laying on of hands, only through prayer: clearly, they were not properly ordained (10). Their main duty seems to have been frequent fasting and praying, together with the virgins, who also constituted a separate group (23). The continuous necessity of charity is illustrated by the requirement that new members of the church, the catechumens, were only admitted to baptism if they had supported the widows (20). Clearly, though, some members did not give the widows their proper due, whereas others apparently showed too much interest in them: gifts for widows had to be handed over to them the very same day (24), and members of the congregation were only allowed to invite older widows to dinner: they had to leave the house before nightfall (30). In addition to Rome, we are also reasonably well informed about Carthage, the largest city after Rome in the Western half of the Mediterranean. The writings of Tertullian (ca. 160–220), especially, are informative in this respect. In the two books of his treatise Ad uxorem, ostensibly addressed to his wife but in fact meant to benefit the Carthaginian church as a whole, he discusses the problem of remarriage of the younger widow after the death of her husband. He points out that the motives for remarriage are often very pedestrian, such as sexual attraction, ambition, greed and fear of a lower status (1.4.6) – again, those addressed are clearly the more well-to-do widows. We clearly should not underes33  Vis. II.4.3; Mand. IV.4 (remarriage), VIII.10; Sim. I.8, V.3.7, IX.26.2 (deacons) and 27.2 (bishops); Justin Martyr, 1Apol. 67.7 (deacons); M. Leutzsch, Die Wahrnehmung sozialer Wirklichkeit im ‘Hirten des Hermas’ (Göttingen, 1987) 73–74, 135, 161. 34 Eus. HE 4.23.10. Leutzsch, Die Wahrnehmung, 246–51 rightly stresses that these data are insufficient to reconstruct the size of the Christian congregation in the city of Rome. 35  Serious objections have been raised against both the accepted time and place of origin of the church order. I still follow the traditional ascription, but the matter deserves further investigation, cf. M. Metzger, ‘A propos des réglements ecclesiastiques et de la prétendue Tradition Apostolique’, Revue des Sciences Religieuses 66 (1992) 249–61 (with further bibliography); see also P. Bradshaw, The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship (London, 1992) 80–110. 36 Eus. HE 6.43. For the importance of charity for the development of the Christian church in Late Antiquity, see now P. Brown, Through the eye of a needle: wealth, the fall of Rome, and the making of Christianity in the West, 350 - 550 AD (Princeton, 2012) and Treasure in Heaven (Charlottesville, 2016).

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timate the wealth of these widows because a century later a widow, Lucilla, could secure the election of one of her servants to the bishopric of Carthage through a massive gift of alms for the poor, although, incidentally, the money never reached them.37 According to Tertullian, widows should also preferably remain widows and in particular not remarry with pagan husbands (2.1.4). In order to remain good widows, they had to avoid lazy, gossipy, inquisitive and dipsomaniacal friends (1.8.4). He evidently quotes here ‘Paul’s’ instructions to Timothy, but subtly leaves out the verse about the remarriage of young widows! Naturally, there were also poor widows who had reason enough to look for a new husband. Tertullian severely dissuades them from remarrying and says, with an allusion to the feeding of the prophet Elijah by ravens (1 Kings 17), that God is still ‘an educator of ravens’ (De exhortatione castitatis 12.2; De monogamia 16.3). One doubts whether ravens were enough. Although Tertullian later became much stricter on this point (Adversus Marcionem 1.29.4), he still did not exclude remarriage completely. Yet he did advise widowers to remain unmarried and rather than marry a wealthy woman they should choose one, or even more, spiritual wives from among the widows, ‘whose beauty exists in faith, trousseau in poverty, distinction in age’ (De exhortatione castitatis 12). Naturally, Tertullian hoped to kill two birds with one stone: widowers would remain unmarried and poor widows would receive financial support. Yet we may wonder how widowers received this advice. Tertullian also presents us with the first, more detailed information about the ‘order of widows’. Widows over sixty who had married only once and raised children had the official duty to comfort, advise and support other women; their motherhood made them better qualified as advisors. As a sign of their dignity, these widows were allowed to sit in the front of the church next to the bishop, elders and deacons. It is not right, therefore, when Peter Brown writes about this ‘order’: ‘most of these were helpless creatures, destitute old ladies only too glad to receive food and clothing from the hands of their clergy’. None of the admittedly rare notices we have gives any reason to think that prominent widows in the church were not also prominent in the world.38

37 B.D. Shaw, ‘African Christianity: Disputes, Definitions, and “Donatists”’, in M.R. Greenshields and T.A. Robinson (eds), Orthodoxy and Heresy in Religious Movements: Discipline and Dissent (Lewiston, 1992) 5–34 at 25–26, reprinted in his Rulers, Nomads and Christians in Roman North Africa (Aldershot, 1995) Chapter  10. 38 Tert. De virginibus velandis 9–10; Ad uxorem 1.4.4; De exhortatione castitatis 11; De pudicitia 13, cf. G. Schöllgen, Ecclesia sordida? Zur Frage der sozialen Schichtung frühchristlicher Gemeinden am Beispiel Karthagos zur Zeit Tertullians (Münster, 1984) 305–7; P. Brown, The Body and Society (New York, 1988) 147.

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4.  Syria and Egypt Rules similar to those in the Roman Traditio Apostolica can also be found in the Didascalia Apostolorum. This is a contemporaneous Syrian church order which was originally written in Greek but of which only translations, e.g. Latin and Ethiopian, have survived. Fortunately, though, an important part of the original order was incorporated into a later church order, the Constitutiones Apostolicae (see below),39 in which widows occupy a much more important position than in the West. Admittedly, a second marriage is considered to be illegitimate, the third a case of lack of self-control, the fourth a case of whoring, but despite these firm ideas the order was realistic enough to allow young widows to remarry. Again, we find the widows as objects of charity, but the order also warns against greedy widows (Const. Apost. 3.7.3). Moreover, the order abounds with exhortations to prevent women making too many social calls. The widow should keep in mind that she is an ‘altar of God’. This comparison of the widow with an altar was rather popular in Christian literature. Yet whereas earlier authors compared the widow with an altar in order to stress that she is also in need of ‘sacrifice’ (charity), this order stresses that ‘an altar of God does not wander around but always remains in one place’ (viz. inside the house: Const. Apost. 3.6.3).40 A different, but not less important point of concern was the gossiping of the widows – a subject that deserves a closer analysis.41 It is known from sociolinguistic and anthropological research that gossiping is a typical criticism that men make of women; men themselves think that they never gossip but always discuss important matters.42 Unfortunately, we do not know exactly why gossip is so often negatively spoken about, but research among Muslims in Spanish Morocco can give us some idea. In these Spanish enclaves, women often discuss the behaviour of males, and their evaluations include tales that make some men more moral and respectable than others. In this way, gossip can indeed lead to friction within and between families and sometimes to outbursts of unrest. We may assume that the early Christians were also afraid of unrest and that it was for that reason that they so often warned strongly against gossip. In any case, 39 M. Metzger, Les Constitutions Apostoliques 1–3 (Paris, 1985–87) 1.15 (bibliography). For important observations on the original shape of this church order, see G. Schöllgen, ‘Die Kapiteleinteilung der syrischen Didaskalie’, in Tesserae. Festschrift für Josef Engeman = JAC, Suppl. 18 (1991) 373–9. 40  C. Osiek, ‘The Widow as Altar: The Rise and Fall of a Symbol’, The Second Century 3 (1983) 159–69. 41  . For gossip in antiquity, see V. Hunter, ‘Gossip and the Politics of Reputation in Classical Athens’, Phoenix 44 (1990) 299–325; M.B. Kartzow, Gossip and Gender. Othering of Speech in the Pastoral Epistles (Berlin, 2009). 42  For an interesting sociolinguistic approach, see D. Tanner, You just Don’t Understand. Women and Men in Conversation (New York, 19912) 96–122.

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the letter from ‘Paul’ to Timothy (§  2), shows that gossip was already giving the early Christians cause for concern.43 The remarks regarding visits by widows to other women seem important evidence for the sociability of the women of that period. Admittedly, the daily life of women of the higher classes in later imperial times is not very well documented, but more attention to the Christian texts can shed some additional light in this respect. Other passages of the Didascalia also point to mutual visits by women. According to the church order a bishop sometimes does better to choose a deaconess (see below) as his assistant because she has better access to houses in which both Christian and non-Christian live (Const. Apost. 3.16.1). This networking of women must have been an important key to the success of the Christian mission,44 since we hardly hear anything about preaching in public in the first centuries of Christianity.45 The fact that the great majority of the early Christians were female will also have been the result of these pastoral visits; Manichaean women worked as missionaries in a similar way.46 Indeed, there is a growing awareness among sociologists of religion that ‘social networks are crucially important in giving people opportunity to cultivate their contacts with small religious movements’.47 Despite all the exhortations, widows did function as members of the Christian clergy, if lowly ones; they were even allowed to join the ‘order of widows’ at the age of fifty. It is also striking that the widows of the Syrian ordo viduarum seem to have had more authority than those in the West. Of course, they had to pray and perform good works, but they were explicitly forbidden to instruct or to baptise: evidently, in a number of cases they had appropriated these tasks.48 43  E. Evers Rosander, Women in Borderland. Managing Muslim Identity where Morocco meets Spain (Stockholm, 1991) 211–27 (with thanks to Marjo Buitelaar). The classic study of gossip is M. Gluckman, ‘Gossip and Scandal’, Current Anthropology 4 (1963) 307–16; note also P. Holenstein and N. Schindler, ‘Geschwätzgeschichte(n). Ein kulturhistorisches Plä­ doyer für die Rehabilitierung der unkontrollierten Rede’, in R. von Dülmen (ed.), Dynamik der Tradition (Frankfurt, 1992) 41–108, 271–81. 44  Reports, though, about the influence of aristocratic women on the conversion of their husbands have to be carefully scrutinised, cf. K. Cooper, ‘Insinuations of Womanly Influence: An Aspect of the Christianization of the Roman Aristocracy’, JRS 82 (1992) 150–64; H. Sivan, ‘Anician Women, the Cento of Proba, and Aristocratic Conversion in the Fourth Century’, VigChris 47 (1993) 140–57. 45  R. MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire (New Haven and London, 1984) 25– 42. 46  A. Henrichs and L. Koenen, ‘...Ein griechischer Edition der Seiten 99,10–120’, ZPE 44 (1981) 201–318 at 308. 47  J.A. Beckford, ‘Socialisation in Small Religious Movements’, in L. Laeyendecker et al. (eds), Experiences and Explanations. Historical and sociological essays on religion in everyday life (Leeuwarden, 1990) 139–59 at 144. For social networks in early Christianity, see the studies in Semeia 56 (1992). 48  For widows in the Didascalia, see R. Gryson, Le ministère des femmes dans l’Église ancienne (Gembloux, 1972) 65–75; A. Faivre, Naissance d’une hiérarchie. Les premières étapes du cursus clerical (Paris, 1977) 131–35; C. Methuen, ‘Widows, Bishops, and the Struggle for

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Instruction by widows also took place in Egypt because the Alexandrian church father Origen (ca. 185–254) continuously stresses that widows should only instruct women and in no way officiate in the company of men. His objections seem to indicate an important position for widows in Egypt and this impression is confirmed by an Egyptian church order, the so-called Canones Hippolyti, which probably dates from the years 336–340. According to this order, widows should not be ordained, but they held a prominent position regarding prayer (32), visiting the ill, fasting (9) and the handing out of alms to orphans and the poor (5); despite all these different duties they were not allowed to become part of the clergy.49 Nevertheless, in the East widows seem to have occupied a more important position than in the West.50 Considering the independence of widows in these regions and the clerical objections to their preaching, it is not surprising that in the beginning of the third century the Syrian clergy instituted a new order, that of the deaconesses, which in the church orders received full clerical support.51 According to the Didascalia, the deaconesses not the widows were allowed to give instruction. About a century later, the widows are still mentioned in the Constitutiones ­Apostolicae, a church order from about 380, but their role appears to have declined considerably: they received communion after the deaconesses and the virgins (Const. Apost. 8.13.14). The deaconesses were even preferably chosen from the virgins, and widows were considered only if virgins were unavailable (Const. Apost. 6.17.4). A remark made by John Chrysostom, around 400, shows that in his time the ‘order of widows’ no longer existed.52

5.  The Christian Empire The rise of the deaconesses did not mean a flagging of attention to the widow in the fourth century. On the contrary. Two new developments were the cause of a completely new situation. First, the Roman Empire received its first Christian emperor, Constantine the Great (313–335),53 and the Christians gradually took Authority in the Didascalia Apostolorum’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 46 (1995) 197–213. For preaching women, see also Gregory of Nazianze, Ep.  5.4, C. 2.2.6.54 (= PG 37.1546). 49  Origen: Gryson, ibidem, 53–64, but note the convincing objections of Thurston, The Widows, 96 against Gryson’s all too sceptical approach. Canones Hippolyti: R.-G. Coquin, Les canons d’Hippolyte (Paris, 1966); Faivre, Naissance d’une hiérarchie, 73. 50  In the Testamentum Domini, a Syrian church-order of the second half of the fifth century, widows still occupy a very important position, see Faivre, Naissance d’une hiérarchie, 106–10. 51 A.G. Martimort, Les diaconesses (Rome, 1982); J. Ysebaert, ‘The Deaconesses in the Western Church of Late Antiquity’, in G.J.M. Bartelink et al. (eds), Eulogia. Mélanges Antoon A.R. Bastiaensen (Steenbrugge and The Hague, 1991) 421–36. 52  John Chrysostom, PG 51, 323D. 53  In the fourth century, the influence of the emperor on conversions increased dramatical-

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over the political power in the Empire. Second, the place occupied by sexuality in the life of Late Antiquity changed considerably due to the rise of asceticism and the increasingly negative attitude of the Christian clergy towards the body. Although the emperors directed their attention to the here and now and the clergy was more interested in the life hereafter, both authorities would repeatedly come into conflict, not least over the position of the widow. Of these two new developments, the rise of asceticism is still difficult to explain. The most important study of this problem is undoubtedly Peter Brown’s fascinating and subtle The Body and Society, of which I may perhaps summarise the main lines as follows.54 With Paul, a negative appreciation of sexuality starts to come to the fore in Christianity, because in his eyes marriage was no more than ‘second best’. This stress on abstention remains an important current in Christianity, even though it does not immediately become the dominant one. In this respect the choices made by the cultivated urban centres clearly differed from those of the radical communities in the hinterland of Syria and Asia Minor. Towards the end of the third century, though, we see the birth of a sort of compromise, by which the majority opts for a more puritan life-style whilst a small minority completely renounces sexuality. In the fourth century, the ‘admired few’ of the various geographical areas realise this attitude towards sexuality in rather different ways. In Egypt the spiritual elite leaves the village community and proceeds to live in the desert where they combat the lusts of the flesh and, perhaps even more, the desires for food.55 In Cappadocia and Pontus, the ‘admired few’ remain in the city but it is especially women who ‘steal the ascetic show’. In the West, Ambrose elevates virginity to an absolute ideal, also for the clergy, and Augustine puts the crown on this development by suggesting that sexual renunciation is always to be preferred, even though only a few will be able to practise such a mortification of the flesh. All others should cohabit only in shame and without joy. In the end, according to Brown, the Christians were not obsessed by the body; on the contrary, they had lost all interest in it. In the ancient world, the body was ‘a link in the great chain of being’, the link between the sphere of the natural and that of the supernatural. For the Christians the body was gradually ly: M.R. Salzman, ‘Aristocratic Women: Conductors of Christianity in the Fourth Century’, Helios 16 (1989) 207–20. 54  . Brown, The Body and Society; add to his bibliography H. Cancik, ‘Zur Entstehung der christlichen Sexualmoral’, in A.K. Siems (ed.), Sexualität und Erotik in der Antike (Darmstadt, 1988) 347–74. Important reviews of the first edition are Av. Cameron, The Tablet, 22 April 1989; F. Naerebout, Leidschrift (Leiden) 7 (1989) 85–99; F.E. Consolino et al., ‘Sessualità, castità, ascesi nella società tardoantica. Una discussione a proposito del libro di Peter Brown’, Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 28 (1992) 105–25; C. Kannengiesser, Religious Studies Review 19 (1993) 126–9 (with additional bibliography). 55  See also Bremmer, ‘Symbols of Marginality from Early Pythagoreans to Late Antique Monks’, Greece & Rome 39 (1992) 205–14.

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reduced to something of no importance and unworthy of attention. The will now became the final goal of purely introspective attention. Brown expresses this development also in social terms: people turned away from the city, and everything and everybody turned the gaze inwards. Brown’s book is the best we have about the thought and practice of Late Antiquity regarding sexuality. Yet it is not wholly satisfactory because it does not take into account sufficiently the political take-over by the Christians and because any theoretical reflection is absent. Nowhere does Brown give us any clear idea as to which factors directed this development. By concentrating on the Christian evidence Brown also neglects important testimonies of late antique thinking concerning sexuality, such as the ancient novel. A definitive and more satisfactory explanation will surely have to begin with philosophical groups, such as the Stoics and Epicureans, which had already started to reflect about the body in earlier Hellenistic times. Subsequently, developments in Rome will have to be taken into account. Paul Veyne has explained the development towards a more affectionate relationship between husband and wife in the Roman upper class as deriving from the political changes occasioned by the rise of the monarchy.56 That may well be too one-sided an explanation, but it certainly seems probable that the loss of political influence caused the higher classes to spend more time in the private sphere; for different reasons a more affective relationship also developed among the lower, urban-centered, nuclear families of the western empire.57 Another factor to be taken into account are the indications of a more restricted atttitude towards the body already visible before Constantine, such as the prohibition of homosexual prostitution, the growing resistance against bigamy, abortion and the exposure of babies; in addition the institution of legal marriage was extended to the whole of the Roman empire and the importance of marital harmony received increasing attention. Perhaps we should connect these developments with the growing pressure by hostile tribes and governments on Rome’s frontiers. In short, a theory about the birth of ancient asceticism will have to take into account a great variety of factors.58 However this may be, the stress on an ascetic attitude towards sexuality caused church fathers not only to publish frequently on the advantages of virginity but also to show an intense interest in widows tout court in the last decades of the fourth century and the first decades of the fifth.59 This is an impor56 P. Veyne, La société romaine (Paris, 1991) 88–130 (first published as ‘La famille et l’amour sous le Haut-Empire romain’, Annales ESC 33, 1978, 35–63). 57  B. Shaw, ‘The Cultural Meaning of Death: Age and Gender in the Roman Family’, in D.I. Kertzer and R.P. Saller (eds), The Family in Italy from Antiquity to the Present (New Haven and London, 1991) 66–90. 58  For Veyne and the development towards asceticism, see also my observations in Chapter  3. 59  For a list of all fourth-century treatises on virginity, see Th. Camelot, ‘Les traités “De virginitate” au IVe siècle’, Études carmélitaines 31 (1952) 189–97. The literature on the problem

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tant shift in comparison with earlier centuries. If, when writing about widows, earlier authors employed distinctions, such as young/old, poor/rich or with/ without children, now these variables started to lose their relevance and widows became important independent of age, social status or number of children. Numerous letters, pamphlets and treatises now became directed to widows with the advice not to remarry but permanently to renounce sexuality. We can find this advice in the works of all important church fathers from the period around 400: Ambrose (ca. 333–397) in Milan,60 John Chrysostom (ca. 350–407) in Antioch and Constantinople,61 Jerome (ca. 347–420) in Rome and Palestine,62 and Augustine (354–430) in North Africa. 63 All these males praised widowhood and virginity highly but they praised virgins most of all. This is also illustrated by the frequent allusions to the last verse of Matthew’s parable of the sower: ‘But some fell on good soil, and produced a crop that was thirty, sixty and even a hundred times as much as he had planted’ (13.8, tr. The Living Bible). Initially, the yields had been referred to widowhood, virginity and, understandably in times of persecution, martyrdom. In the second half of the fourth century, references to martyrs had gradually lost their relevance and they were replaced, naturally in last position, by those who married. After the virgins, widows now gained the sixtyfold reward. 64 Even though the church fathers wanted to promote the importance of widowhood, they did not agree at each and every point. Whereas Jerome considered is immense, but see now in addition to Brown especially Av. Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire (Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford, 1991) 165–81; M. van Uytfanghe, ‘Encratisme en verdrongen erotiek in de apocriefe “apostelromans”. Omtrent de christelijke problematisering van de sexualiteit’, Handelingen der Koninklijke Zuidnederlandse Maat­ schappij voor Taal- en Letterkunde en Geschiedenis 45 (1991) 175–94 (with excellent biblio­ graphy). 60 Ambrose, De viduis, cf. A.V. Nazarro, ‘Il De viduis di Ambrogio’, Vichiana 13 (1984) 274–98 and ‘Metafore e immagini agricole del De Viduis di Ambrogio’, Vetera Christianorum 28 (1991) 277–89. 61 John Chrysostom, Oratio ad viduam juniorem, cf. Jean Chrysostome, A une jeune veuve. Sur le mariage unique, ed. B. Grillet and G.H. Ettlinger = Sources Chrétiennes 138 (Paris, 1968); the sermon Vidua eligatur (PG 51.321–38) on 1 Tim 5.9, and the fifteenth sermon on 1 Tim. 5.11. For Chrysostom’s ideas about sexuality, see also E.A. Clark, Ascetic Piety and Women’s Faith. Essays on Late Ancient Christianity (Lewiston, 1986) 229–64. 62 Jerome, Epp.  5 4, 123; E.A. Clark, Jerome, Chrysostom, and Friends (New York and Toronto, 1979) 1–34; E. Paoli, ‘Autour de Paula (347–404): subsidia prosopographica’, ZPE 103 (1994) 241–9. 63 Augustine, De bono viduitatis. It is distressing to note that this treatise was still reprinted in 1951 to offer comfort to German war-widows, cf. A. Maxsein, Aurelius Augustinus: Das Gut der Witwenschaft (Würzburg, 1952) vii. 64  For a detailed discussion of these allusions, see A. Quacquarelli, Il triplice frutto della vita cristiana: 100, 60 e 30 (Matteo XIII - 8, nelle diverse interpretazioni (Rome, 1953); P.F. Beatrice, ‘Il sermone “De centesima, sexagesima, tricesima” dello Ps. Cipriano e la teologia del martirio’, Augustinianum 19 (1979) 215–43; N. Adkin, ‘Athanasius’ Letter to Virgins and Jerome’s Libellus de virginitate servanda’, Rivista di filologia e di istruzione classica 120 (1992) 185–203.

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remarrying widows hardly better than whores (Ep.  123), the later Augustine was much less rigid in his views. 65 One of his letters, which was discovered only fairly recently, is typical of him. It dates from the last years of his life and is therefore one of the very last testimonies regarding widowhood in the period we have studied. Augustine’s letter is an answer to a request for advice by a deacon named Felix. A widow, Innocentia, had promised to God that her dying daughter would remain a virgin forever if she should recover. The girl did indeed recover, but the mother started to have regrets and wanted to dedicate herself to God instead of her daughter. Augustine resisted her wish and advised the mother not to remarry (apparently she was still young enough) and to try persuading her daughter to remain a virgin. Yet he was not a fanatic. If the daughter felt unable to continue in the unmarried state, she should marry – and Augustine refers to ‘Paul’s’ epistle to Timothy in support of his views. Although Augustine, then, was no longer an extremist in this period of his life, he left no doubts about his own values. If the daughter remained a virgin, she would be ranked above the widow; if the widow remarried, the non-remarrying widow would be ranked above the married woman. 66 Was this propaganda for sexual renunciation a question of rhetoric, or did the exhortations of the church fathers really have an effect upon the social reality? The question can be answered if we depart from an important change in the position of widows that was caused by the ‘take-over’ of the Christians. Already before his definitive victory over his rival Licinius in 324, the emperor Constantine decided in 320 that non-married men and women should have the same rights as those who married. These measures partially lifted the marital legislation of the emperor Augustus, who had forbidden adultery and given certain privileges to married couples. 67 Upper-class widows could now remain unmarried without having to pay any penalty for their choice. Constantine’s consideration for widows is also illustrated by another law in which he determined that owners of houses in which counterfeit money was produced remained punishable if they lived in the neighbourhood, but should the house owner be an innocent widow she would be exempt from punishment. 68 Widows seem to have made ample use of the liberty offered them by the emperor, since males evidently tried forcing them in remarrying through rape. 65  For the later Augustine’s views about sexuality, see R. Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge, 1990) 57–62; K. Thraede, ‘Zwischen Eva und Maria: das Bild der Frau bei Ambrosius und Augustin auf dem Hintergrund der Zeit’, in W. Affeldt (ed.), Frauen in Spätantike und Frühmittelalter (Sigmaringen, 1990) 129–39. 66 Augustine, Ep.  3*, tr. R.B. Eno, St. Augustine. Letters Volume VI (1* –29 *) (Washington, 1990) 31–7. 67  On the (lack of) effectiveness of this legislation, see Treggiari, Roman Marriage, 294–8; see also E. Fantham, ‘Stuprum: Public Attitudes and Penalties for Sexual Offences in Republican Rome’, Echos du Monde Classique 10 (1991) 267–91. 68  Codex Theodosianus (CTh) 8.16.1 (marriage), 9.21.4 (counterfeit money).

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This must have been the reason that in 354 the emperor Constantius forbade the abduction of holy virgins and widows in the severest of terms. In 364 Jovian, the successor of Julian the Apostate, even made approaching women with less than honourable intentions liable to capital punishment. Evidently, much pressure was brought upon widows because in 380 the emperor Theodosius thought it necessary to issue an edict prohibiting the forcing of widows to remarry. An episode from the life of the church father Basil the Great (ca. 330–379) shows that the measure was in no way superfluous. The bishop had taken into his house a young widow who had refused to remarry. Subsequently his house had been searched on the orders of an assessor (a sort of assistant) of a judge and he himself had been dragged to court, where he was threatened with a severe flogging. When this became known in the town an enormous riot developed in which women played a prominent role by using their hairpins as weapons, and it was only through Basil’s intervention that the lynching of the judge was prevented. In 420 the penalty for raping virgins was relaxed and limited to confiscation of property and exile, widows no longer being mentioned – a fine illustration of the rise and decline of the attention given to widows. 69 Some widows were unable or unwilling to resist the pressure to remarry but solved the problem in an ingenious manner. Jerome relates that wealthy widows sometimes married socially inferior husbands, who in this way became totally dependent on them. These husbands, according to Jerome, were even unable to protest if their wives had lovers: if they did they would be thrown out without mercy (Ep.  127.3). Other wealthy widows preferred to remain unmarried and were indeed very pleased at being able to do so. Jerome has again given a lively picture of their manner of living. If you saw them on the street in their carrying-chairs, preceded by a crowd of eunuchs,70 you would think, he claims, that ‘they haven’t really lost husbands but are looking for them’. He adds scornfully that these widows are visited in their houses by the clergy, who kiss them on the forehead and stretch out their hands – not to bless but to receive money. He ends his vignette with the words: ‘because they have experienced the authority of their husbands, they prefer the license of widowhood; they call themselves chaste and “nun”, and after a copious dinner they retire to dream of the apostles’ (Ep.  22.16). Widows did not only use their liberty to remain unmarried nor did they always try to maintain it by marrying a socially inferior partner.71 In an edict, 69  CTh 3.11.1 (380), 9.25.1 (354), 2 (364, also mentioned by Sozomen, HE 6.3) and 3 (420); J. Evans-Grubbs, ‘Abduction Marriage in Antiquity: A Law of Constantine (CTh IX.24.1) and its Social Context’, JRS 79 (1989) 59–102 at 76 f. Basil: Gregory of Nazianze, Or. 43.56 f. 70  Note also his advice in Ep.  130.13 on which eunuchs to take on as servants. 71  For the liberty which Christianity offered to women, see also L. Cracco Ruggini, ‘La donna e il sacro, tra paganesimo e cristianesimo’, in Uglione, Atti del II convegno nazionale, 243–75.

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which was read out in the churches of Rome on 30 July 370, the emperors decided that clerics were forbidden to visit the houses of widows. The cause of this prohibition is apparent from another ruling: the clergy were not allowed to accept gifts or legacies from these women. In 390 it was decided that women could only become deaconesses if they were at least sixty years old (with an appeal to ‘Paul’s’ letter to Timothy) and had legal heirs.72 Widows were only permitted to leave money to their own family not to ‘a church, a cleric, or the poor’. Curiously, the law was withdrawn after two months: evidently, the church had put forward powerful protests. But why had it been necessary to issue the law at all?73 The measure was certainly not superfluous from the point of view of the male members of the Roman upper class. The letters of Jerome clearly show that rich senatorial widows not only regularly refused to choose new husbands but also frequently used their fortune for the benefit of the church and the poor, and thus injured the financial interests of their own aristocratic families. Fabiola built a guesthouse for travellers in Ostia (Ep.  77.10); Paula spent so much money on the poor and a monastery in Bethlehem that she robbed her own children of their inheritance and, instead, left them with large debts (Ep.  108); Furia was encouraged by Jerome to give all her possessions to the Lord (Ep.  54), and Marcella would have given all she had to the poor if her mother had not objected (Ep.  107).74 Other widows supported important clerics with their wealth: Olympias benefitted not only Gregory of Nyssa but even the patriarch of Constantinople, Nectarius.75 In a way, these wealthy widows had taken over the role of the male aristocrats, who had always been accustomed to establish and consolidate their positions within the ancient cities by making gifts and initiating large building projects. In contrast to this male euergetism, these widows directed their attention to the poor and monks. They did not build baths, temples or theatres but monasteries and guesthouses for the poor.76 These activities, how72  I note in passing that an ‘order of widows’ no longer is mentioned. We may therefore conclude that, apparently, the order had also disappeared in the West, the region probably aimed at in this edict. 73  CTh 16.2.20 (370), 16.2.27, 28 (390); see also R. Lizzi, ‘Una società esortata all’ ascetismo: misure legislative e motivazioni economiche nel IV–V secolo d. C.’, Studi Storici 30 (1989) 129–53. 74  For these women, see J.N.D. Kelly, Jerome (London, 1975) 91–99 (Marcella and Paula), 191 (Furia), 210–2 (Fabiola); E.A. Clark, The Origenist Controversy (Princeton, 1992) 26–30; S. Rebenich, Hieronymus und sein Kreis: prosopographische und sozialgeschichtliche Untersuchungen (Stuttgart, 1992); C. Krumeich, Hieronymus und die christliche feminae clarissimae (Bonn, 1993). 75  John Chrysostom, Life of Olympias 4. 76  Male euergetism: P. Veyne, Bread and Circuses: historical sociology and political pluralism (London, 1990). Female: C. Pietri, ‘Evergétisme et richesses ecclésiastiques dans l’Italie du IVe à la fin du Ve s.: l’exemple romain’, Ktema 3 (1978) 317–37, repr. in his Christiana respublica, 3  vols (Paris, 1997) 2. 813–33; F.E. Consolino, ‘Santo o patrone? Le aristocratiche tardo antiche e il potere della carità’, Studi storici 31 (1990) 969–91; K.J. Torjesen, ‘In Praise of Noble Women: Asceticism, Patronage and Honor’, Semeia 57 (1992) 41–64.

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ever, subverted the family fortunes of the high aristocrats and, not surprisingly, the emperors attempted to protect their political supporters against the erosion of their fortunes by means of edicts.77 Yet it was not only the male aristocratic elite that felt unhappy about the widows. The behaviour of these wealthy women, who received priests at home and even gave religious instruction to males, as Jerome relates in the case of Marcella (Ep.  127),78 must also have disturbed certain clerics. It is indeed precisely in the early 380s that we find a Roman priest, Ambrosiaster, deploring the possibility of a one-sided divorce which Julian the Apostate had allowed women and stressing that women should be submissive to males in general and bishops in particular.79 In the first decade of the fifth century, Palladius mentions various wealthy widows who were clearly enemies of John Chrysostom in Antioch.80 These all too independent women evidently constituted a direct threat to the authority of the patriarchal priests in the East and the West.

6. Conclusions What can we now conclude from our study? First, that we must be careful using the term ‘widow’ without any further qualifications: until the end of the fourth century the church continuously distinguished between old and young, rich and poor, and with or without children. Second, the widow was an important source of attention for the early Christians, whose stress on charity resulted in many widows joining the early church. Third, the accession of widows probably translated itself into extra attention being given to widows in Luke, both in his gospel and in Acts. Fourth, because of their numbers the widows could exploit their position by requesting access to the clergy. Fifth, an unforeseen consequence of so many widows joining must have been a considerable strengthening of the church organisation: the 1500 widows of Pope Cornelius simply could not have been well looked after without an efficient organisation. Sixth, when more and more people joined the church, widows lost their numerical influence and no longer were needed as patronesses; moreover, in order to undermine 77 Cf. the important study of J.W. Drijvers, ‘Virginity and Asceticism in Late Roman Western Elites’, in Blok and Mason, Sexual Asymmetry, 241–73; A. Giardina, ‘Carità eversiva: le donazioni di Melania la giovane e gli equilibri della società tardoromana’, Studi Storici 29 (1988) 127–42. 78 Jerome himself also opposed these teachings but had no objections against women teaching each other. For a balanced appraisal of Jerome’s attitude towards women, see A. Arjava, ‘Jerome and Women’, Arctos 23 (1989) 5–18. 79  A. Arjava, ‘Divorce in Later Roman Law’, Arctos 22 (1988) 5–21; D.G. Hunter, ‘The Paradise of Patriarchy: Ambrosiaster on Woman as (not) God’s Image’, JThS 43 (1992) 447–69. 80 Palladius, Dialogus de vita s. Joannis Chrysostomi 5, cf. A.-M. Malingrey, ‘Vierges et veuves dans la communauté chrétienne d’Antioche’, Roczniki Humanistyczne [Lublin] 27.3 (1979) 77–85.

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their position the clergy instituted a new order, that of the deaconesses, which in the course of time outstripped that of the widows. Finally, we have seen that at the end of antiquity a revolution had taken place within the traditional system of values. Where old women once had been the object of scorn and mockery, older widows especially could now fill important positions in the church. Moreover, whereas Greek and Roman women were once assumed to marry and to remarry, if not in theory then certainly in practice, it was now sexual renunciation and the refusal that gained social prestige. This new attitude clearly offered the wealthier women an unprecedented liberty. Widows of the lower classes, on the other hand, who had not hitherto received any attention or esteem, now became, if they remained unmarried, the object of a flood of praises among the leading intellectuals of the time. Never was the position of the widow so high in the Western world as in this short transitional period between antiquity and the Middle Ages.81

81  Versions of this chapter were given in the spring of 1992 to the Groningen Ancient History Seminar and to the Belle van Zuylen Institute, Amsterdam (31-8-1993). I thank Jan den Boeft, Theo Korteweg and Hans Roldanus for their observations on various versions, and Ken Dowden for his skilful revision of my English.

Chapter 5

Peregrinus’ Christian Career One of the most fascinating figures for the history of Christianity and Judaism in the middle of the second century undoubtedly is the pagan philosopher Peregrinus of Parion, a port situated in Mysia on the eastern entrance of the Hellespont.1 His spectacular suicide in AD 165 led the social satirist Lucian to dedicate a ‘debunking’ pamphlet, De morte Peregrini, to his life. It would transcend the available space to write a commentary on the whole of the pamphlet, however interesting that would be, and therefore I will limit myself to the chapters that discuss Peregrinus’ career as a Christian (11–13, 16) or that suggest a Christian influence (40). My principal aim is to ask what Lucian’s views, if taken seriously, tell us about the nature of Peregrinus’ congregation and Lucian’s knowledge thereof. Lucian had traveled widely between Greece and Samosata in Commagene, where he was born around AD 120. He was also well read and had a keen eye for the more outrageous figures of his time. He thus may be an interesting case by which to ascertain what knowledge a contemporary pagan intellectual had of the new religion.2 1 

For all testimonia, see P. Frisch, Die Inschriften von Parion (Bonn, 1983) 47–96. For a study of Peregrinus with detailed bibliographies, see M.-O. Goulet-Cazé, ‘Peregrinus surnommé Proteus’, in R. Goulet (ed.), Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques Va (Paris, 2012) 199–230; add C. Deeleman, Lucianus’ geschrift De morte Peregrini (Diss. Utrecht, 1902), which contains informative surveys of the literature before 1900; D. Plooij and J. Koopman, Lucianus, de dood van Peregrinus (Utrecht, 1915), which is much more useful than J. Schwartz, Lucien de Samosate: Philopseudès et De morte Peregrini (Paris, 1951), but overlooked by all the more recent notable contributions, of which see H.D. Betz, ‘Lukian von Samosata und das Christentum’, Nov. Test. 3 (1959) 226–37, reprinted, with ‘Nachtrag’, in Betz, Hellenismus und Urchristentum (Tübingen, 1990) 10–21; C.P. Jones, Culture and Society in Lucian (Cambridge MA, 1986) 117–32; M.J. Edwards, ‘Satire and Verisimilitude: Christianity in Lucian’s Peregrinus’, Historia 38 (1989) 89–98; D. Clay, ‘Lucian of Samosata: Four Philosophical Lives (Nigrinus, Demonax, Peregrinus, Alexander Pseudomantis)’, in ANRW II.36.5 (Berlin, 1990) 3406–50 at 3430–38; J. König, ‘The Cynic and Christian Lives of Lucian’s Peregrinus’, in B. McGing and J. Mossman (eds), The Limits of Ancient Biography (Swansea, 2006) 227–54; O. Overwien, ‘Lukian als Literat, Lukian als Feind: Das Beispiel des Peregrinos Proteus’, RhM 149 (2006) 185–213; C. Heusch, ‘Proteische Verwandlung. Die ­Figur des Peregrinus Proteus im Spiegel der zeitgenössischen Literatur’, Gymnasium 114 (2007) 435–60; H.-G. Nesselrath, ‘Lukian von Samosata’, in RAC 23 (2010) 676–702 at 692– 93; M.-O. Goulet-Cazé, Cynisme et christianisme dans l’Antiquité (Paris, 2014) 195–206. I use the text by P. Pilhofer et al., Lukian, Der Tod des Peregrinos (Darmstadt, 2005). My translations follow or adapt those by A. Harmon (Loeb). 2 

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Lucian starts his treatise with a description of Peregrinus’ suicide, which the latter staged himself during the Olympian Games of AD 165. In this beginning we already hear different voices: there is praise by a fellow Cynic, Theagenes (4), but also blame by an unknown bystander who related that, in his youth, Peregrinus had been caught in flagrante ‘in Armenia’ (9),3 had committed himself to paederasty (9),4 and had even strangled his father (10), parricide being perhaps the worst crime in Greek culture.5 Consequently, he had to leave Parion and to wander from city to city. This is of course information from Lucian, which has to be taken with a pinch of salt, as Parion erected a statue for Peregrinus,6 presumably shortly after his death. It is immediately after this introduction, which clearly suggests an extremely roguish and criminal character, that Lucian continues in Chapter  11 with Peregrinus’ conversion to Christianity. It is interesting to see that Lucian already calls the followers of Jesus by the name of ‘Christians’, as this particular name was not yet generally accepted at his time.7 Apparently, Peregrinus was one of those contemporary wandering philosophers, who moved through the Mediterranean. Wandering was a well-known characteristic of Cynicism, 8 and Peregrinus may already have been attracted to that movement before his conversion, as he became a Cynic later. However that may be, it is in the aftermath of his parricide that he became attracted to, as Lucian ironically remarks,9 the ‘wondrous wisdom of the Christians’ in Palestine by associating himself with τοῖς ἱερεῦσιν καὶ γραμματεῦσιν αὐτῶν, ‘their priests and scribes’. Although these titles do occur separately in pagan associations, their combination is not attested there: pagan examples of these titles therefore hardly provide a persuasive parallel.10 Betz notes that priests may be assumed for early Christianity and that Christian scribes are already mentioned in Matthew (13.52, 23.34), but neither category is mentioned in second-century Christianity,11 whereas the New Testament always uses the combination οἱ ἀρχιερεῖς καὶ οἱ γραμματεῖς.12 It is only once that 3  Is this a mistake made by Lucian, whose town of birth, Samosata, was not that far from ancient Armenia, whereas Parion was nowhere near? Cf. K.J. Rigsby, ‘Peregrinus in Armenia’, CQ 54 (2004) 317 f. 4  In the course of time, paederasty had become less and less accepted, see Lucian, Amores, 28. 5  J.N. Bremmer, ‘Oedipus and the Greek Oedipus Complex’, in idem (ed.), Interpretations of Greek Mythology (London 19882) 41–59 at 45–53. 6 Athenagoras, Leg. 26.4–5. For the possible appearance of the statue, see R.R.R. Smith, ‘Cultural Choice and Political Identity in Honorific Portrait Statues in the Greek East in the Second Century A.D.’, JRS 88 (1998) 56–93. 7  For the name ‘Christian’, see this volume, Chapter  1.3. 8  S. Montiglio, ‘Wandering Philosophers in Classical Greece’, JHS 120 (2000) 86–105. 9 Jones, Culture and Society, 121 note  19. 10  Contra Pilhofer, Lukian, 59. 11  Contra Betz, ‘Lukian’, 229 note  5. 12  Matthew 2.4, 16.21, 20.18 etc.

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we find οἱ ἱερεῖς καὶ γραμματεῖς τοῦ ἱεροῦ in an enumeration of Jewish offices in Flavius Josephus,13 but the closest parallel is perhaps to be found in the Prot­ evangelium of James. This probably Syrian Christian treatise derives from the later second century and displays a clear Jewish concern with purity.14 In it, we read of the ἀρχιερεῖς καὶ τοὺς ἱερεῖς καὶ τοὺς γραμματεῖς (6), but the Jewish context of these terms in the Protevangelium makes it hazardous to see it as a contemporary Christian parallel. In fact, we know that, at the time, the scribes functioned as copyists of Torah scrolls and as teachers of children, whereas the priests remained authorities on Jewish law also after the destruction of the Temple in AD 70.15 It is perhaps their contemporary relevance that makes that these titles were apparently taken over by the leaders of the Christian congregation. In any case, it strongly suggests that Peregrinus had joined one of the Judaeo-Christian congregations that existed, not surprisingly, in Palestine and Syria.16 The association with the Christians was clearly a success, as in no time Peregrinus became an important person in the congregation: προφήτης καὶ θιασάρχης καὶ ξυναγωγεὺς (11). How do we analyse these terms? Betz suggests a certain hierarchy in these terms, but this is hardly obvious. Moreover, like Plooij and Koopman, Schwartz and Jones, he is inclined to see a Christian phenomenon behind this mention of a ‘prophet’.17 However, the term should not be taken out of context but looked at as part of the enumeration. When we approach the problem from that angle, it is immediately clear that Lucian uses prophêtês in the meaning of ‘manager of an oracle’,18 as the other two terms also suggest the leadership of a religious institution. A thiasarchês was the head of a thiasos, a term most often used for a Dionysiac association,19 but thiasoi of Jews and several other pagan gods are well attested.20 Curiously, thiasarchês seems to be a hapax legomenon and occuring only here, and also the related verb thiasarcheô

13 Jos.

AJ 12.142. T. Nicklas, Jews and Christians? (Tübingen, 2014) 191–95. 15 P. Trebilco, Jewish Communities in Asia Minor (Cambridge, 1991) 50, 210 note   45 (priests); C. Hezser, The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine (Stuttgart, 1994) 467–75 (scribes), 480–89 (priests). 16  Cf. R. Kimelman, ‘Identifying Jews and Christians in Roman Syria-Palestine’, in E.M. Meyers (ed.), Galilee through the Centuries (Winona Lake, 1999) 301–33. 17  Contra Plooij and Koopman, Lucianus, 67; Schwartz, Lucien, ad loc., and Jones, Culture and Society, 122. 18  Bremmer, ‘Prophetes IV’, in Der Neue Pauly X (Stuttgart & Weimar, 2001) 421–2; add the personal name Prophetes in F. Rumscheid, ‘Inschriften aus Milas im Museum Bodrum’, Epigraphica Anatolica 37 (2004) 43–61 at 43–47; A. Busine, ‘The Officials of Oracular Sanctuaries in Roman Asia Minor’, Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 8 (2006) 275–316, passim. 19  A.-F. Jaccottet, Choisir Dionysos. Les associations dionysiaques ou la face cachée du dionysisme, 2  vols (Zürich, 2003) vol.  2, passim, cf. index s.v. 20  See this volume, Chapter  2 , Introduction. 14 

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seems to occur only once.21 Finally, a synagôgeus was the founder or chairperson of a religious or professional association.22 The term does occur in a context of affinity to Judaism, although not in connection with a synagogue,23 but need not necessarily do so.24 Jones states that Lucian sees ‘Christianity through Greek eyes’ and points out that these terms have no place in early Christianity.25 That is certainly true, but Lucian is not concerned here with an exact description of the structure of a Christian congregation. He evidently wants to show Peregrinus’ prominent position within the Christian community by quoting prominent positions in religious institutions familiar to his readership.26 It is highly interesting that Peregrinus uses his position to interpret and explain some of the books of the Christians as well as to write many himself. The interpretation will have taken place in the Sunday services, as Justin Martyr (1Apol. 67) relates: ‘On the day called the day of the sun there is an assembly of all those who live in the towns or in the country, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read for as long as time permits. Then the reader ceases, and the president speaks, admonishing and exhorting us to imitate these excellent examples’. This reading of the Scriptures and early authoritative followers of Christ, such as Paul, is attested in the earliest Christian writings, as the apostle Paul already says in the First Letter to the Thessalonians (5.27): ‘I adjure you by the Lord that this letter be read to all the brothers and sisters’. We can follow these exhortations to read in the Letter to the Colossians (4.16), Revelation (1.3) and the First Letter to Timothy (4.13) where the congregation is admonished ‘to give attention to the public reading of scripture, to exhorting, to teaching’. Apparently, it was the most important person in the congregation who commented on the Scriptures, which is exactly the position ascribed to Peregrinus by Lucian. The fact that Peregrinus also wrote books can have only added to his prominence. These need not have been big books, but perhaps more like the many letters written by people like Paul, pseudo-Pauls and Ignatius. Another possibility would be apologies, as a fragmentary papyrus perhaps preserves a reference to ‘[Pere]grinus’ Apologies’.27 However this may be, unfortunately, none of these writings has survived. 21  Orientis Graeci inscriptiones selectae 529.5 = Inscriptiones antiquae orae septemtrionalis Ponti Euxini I.2 425.11. 22  F. Poland, ‘Synagogeus’, in RE IVA.2 (1932) 1316–22; SEG 57.1701. 23  As is rightly stressed by Goulet-Cazé, Cynisme, 200. 24  F. Sokolowski, Lois sacrées de l’Asie Mineure (Paris, 1955), no.  8 0.10 (Sabbatistai), but see also I. Delos 1641 b 6; I. Perge 294 and 321; I. Istros 193 (= SEG 1.330); SEG 24.1055 (Moesia), 34.695 (Tomis). 25 Jones, Culture and Society, 122. 26  This is not understood by Pilhofer, Lukian, 58–60, 102. 27 Pilhofer, Lukian, 98–100. Add to his rather incomplete bibliography: G.F. TSereteli, Papyri russischer und georgischer Sammlungen I (Tiflis, 1925) no.  22; Corpus dei papiri filosofici 1.1.1 (Florence, 1989) no.  2; R. Otranto, Liste antichi su papiro (Rome, 2000) no.  15; P.P. Fuentes González, ‘Nigrinus’, in Goulet, Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques IV (Paris,

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Peregrinus’ prominent position went so far that ‘they looked at him like a god and used him as a lawgiver and called him prostatês, thus after him whom they also worship, the man who was crucified in Palestine because he introduced that new mystery cult into the world’. It is, I think, absolutely unthinkable that a Christian community could have worshipped Peregrinus as a god.28 Lucian possibly uses the expression here to indicate that the faithful saw him in the line of the great philosophers, such as Plato and Pythagoras, who attracted the term ‘divine’ in the course of time.29 On the other hand, and perhaps more likely, we know that some sophists could elicit from the audience strong emotions, and in the case of the sophist Prohairesios the public licked his chest (!), kissed his hands and feet but also called him ‘god’ after a successful performance.30 Perhaps Lucian’s ‘report’ has to be seen in this light. It is certainly more difficult to understand why Peregrinus should have been made use of as a ‘lawgiver’, but, perhaps, he received the title in imitation of Christ (below). Prostatês is the title of the highest civic magistrates in many cities in the Hellenistic period.31 It also occurs in several Jewish communities,32 and Lucian will probably have used the term in its meaning ‘leader’.33 It seems not improbable that the title refers here to the fact that the Jewish priests of this period still could have an important leading function in society before being displaced by the rabbis in this respect in later antiquity.34 Yet however important Peregrinus was, he was only second after Jesus, ‘whom they still worship, the man who was crucified in Palestine because he introduced that new cult into the world’. The concluding part of the first ‘Christian’ chapter shows that Lucian knew of Jesus and his crucifixion, but it also gives an insight as to how he looked at Christianity. He calls Christianity a ‘new

2005) 712–17 at 713–14. For a recent photo, see G.W. Houston, Inside Roman Libraries (Chapel Hill, 2014) 54. I am most grateful to Peter van Minnen for his great help with this documentation. 28  But see Hermas, Vis. 1.7, cf. A. Hilhorst, ‘Erotic Elements in the “Shepherd” of Hermas’, in H. Hofmann and M. Zimmerman (eds), Groningen Colloquia on the Novel IX (Groningen, 1998) 193–204 at 199 f. 29  D.S. du Toit, Theios anthropos: zur Verwendung von theios anthrôpos und sinnverwandten Ausdrücken in der Literatur der Kaiserzeit (Tübingen, 1997). 30  Eunapios 489, cf. M. Korenjak, Publikum und Redner. Ihre Interaktion in der sophistischen Rhetorik der Kaiserzeit (Munich, 2000) 96–100; M. Becker, Eunapios aus Sardes (Stuttgart, 2013) 456 f. 31  R. Fabiani, ‘agistrates and Phylai in Late Classical and Early Hellenistic Iasos’, in R. van Bremen and J.-M. Carbon (eds), Hellenistic Karia (Bordeaux, 2010) 467–82 at 472–76 (with most recent bibliography). 32  W. Ameling, Inscriptiones Iudaicae Orientis II, Kleinasien (Tübingen, 2004) 93, overlooked by Pilhofer, Lukian, 61–62; M.H. Williams, Jews in a Greco-Roman environment (Tübingen, 2013) 127, 132. 33 For prostatês as a leader, see Strubbe on I. Pessinous 170. 34 Hezser, Social structure, 482 f.

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cult (kainên teletên)’,35 which means that he considers it a type of mystery cult. This terminology is not totally strange, as Celsus too compared Christianity to ‘the other teletai’ (Origen, C. Cels. 3.59). And indeed, several Christians, orthodox and heterodox, had been struck by the similarity of some elements of the Christian ritual, such as baptism and the Eucharist, with those of the mysteries.36 Undoubtedly, it is this resemblance that made early Christians inveigh against the mysteries, those of Eleusis of course but also less famous ones.37 It is somewhat surprising that Lucian considers Christianity still new, although it had been around for at least a century. Does this suggest that his knowledge of it was still fresh? In Chapter  12 we hear that Peregrinus’ prominence attracted the attention of the Roman authorities: ‘Then he became arrested for that reason and was thrown into prison’. Which ‘reason’ is not quite clear, and it is not excluded that some Christians have censored the text, as has happened also in some other passages.38 As attempts to have Peregrinus released from prison proved to be unsuccessful, he was well looked after in prison. He was visited by γρᾴδια, χήρας τινὰς καὶ παιδία ὀρφανά, ‘old women, some widows and orphaned children’.39 The combination of old women and widows also occurs in the apocryphal Acts of John, where the apostle is pictured being surrounded by widows and old women, who lived off alms from the church and accused John of keeping back the majority of the gifts he had received and of enriching himself at their expense.40 Widows and old women were important groups in the early Church, and Lucian’s information is a welcome confirmation of the Christian sources in this respect.41 Those in charge of the congregation even had bribed the guards to let them sleep inside with Peregrinus. Betz has some doubts about this bribery,42 but

35  The text of this subordinate clause is less certain than we would like, cf. T. Schirren, ‘Lukian über die kainê teletê der Christen (Peregrinus 11)’, Philologus149 (2005) 354–59, but his idea that teletê refers to the crucifixion is unpersuasive. 36 Ignatius, Ephes. 12.2; Justin, 1Apol. 29.2; Irenaeus, Haer. 1.21.3; Clement Alex. Strom. 3.27.1.5, C. Auffarth, ‘“Licht vom Osten”: Die antiken Mysterienkulte als Vorläufer, Gegenmodell oder katholisches Gift zum Christentum’, Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 8 (2006) 206–26; J.N. Bremmer, Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World (Berlin and Boston, 2014) 156–61. 37 Justin, 1Apol. 54 and 66.4, Dial. C. Tryph. 70, 78; Tert. Cor. 15, Bapt. 5, Praescr. haer. 40. 38  Cf. Plooij and Koopman ad loc. 39  For this type of asyndeton (A, B, and C) in Greek, see J.D. Denniston, The Greek Particles (Oxford, 1954) 289–90 (with thanks to Stefan Radt). Like Harmon (Loeb), Pilhofer, Lukian, 23 translates with ‘alte Witwen und Waisenkinder’, and, curiously, sees these as deaconesses (62–3). 40  Cf. E. Junod and J.D. Kaestli, Acta Iohannis, 2  vols (Turnhout, 1983) 1.114 f. 41  See this volume, Chapter  4. 42  Betz, ‘Lukian’, 231.

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bribing wardens was very normal in antiquity,43 as it still is in many a poor country. In fact, visits of imprisoned fellow Christians are well attested in the Acta martyrum.44 In addition, ‘all kinds of foods were brought to him, their holy scriptures were read, and ... he was called a new Socrates by them’. Material help to the imprisoned was quite common among the early Christians and must have been one of the means to keep up morale. We hear of this charity already in the Letters of Ignatius, in Tertullian and in the Letters of Cyprian. Tertullian even warned against too great a care, as apparently some people preferred to go to jail in order to be well looked after.45 As the Roman government hardly provided food to its prisoners,46 it was only natural that the Christians made up for this deficiency. In the Passio Perpetuae (17.1) the prisoners celebrated the agapê, a special meal that enhanced early Christian sociability, but which was already on the way out in Perpetua’s time.47 Lucian’s mention of food may well have included such a special meal.48 In addition to this material assistance, the Christians read logoi hieroi to him. In Philo, these refer to the Torah and divinely inspired words or thoughts, whereas in the Church Fathers they refer to the Old and New Testament.49 In the case of Peregrinus we probably have to think of the Scriptures too. The late Keith Hopkins (1934–2004) suggested that early Christianity spread at an amazing rate despite the fact that ‘many or most Christian communities (and a fortiori even more house cult-groups) simply did not have among them a single sophisticated reader or writer’.50 Yet this passage is one more argument against this assumption.51 Everything we know seems to point to Christianity being a movement connected and maintained by the written word. This use of the written word must go back to the earliest times of Christianity, as appears from the 43 J.-U. Krause, Gefängnisse im Römischen Reich (Stuttgart, 1996) 305–8; this volume, Chapter  9.1. 44  P. Pavón, ‘Régimen de vida y tratamiento del preso durante los tres primeros siglos del Imperio’, in C. Bertrand-Dagenbach et al. (eds), Carcer. Prison et privation de liberté dans l’Antiquité classique (Paris, 1999) 105–13 at 111–12 (‘Las visitas’). 45 Ignatius, Trall. 12, Ephes. 2, Magn. 15, Smyrn. 9.12; Tertullian, Ad martyras 1.1, De ie­ iunio 12.3 (warning); Cyprian, Ep.  5.1, 7.1.1, 12.2, 14.2. 46  Pavón, ‘Régimen de vida’, 110–11 (‘La alimentación’). 47 Tertullian, Ad martyras 2, De oratione 28, De baptismo 9.4, De ieiunio 17; E. Dekkers, Tertullianus en de geschiedenis der liturgie (Brussels and Amsterdam, 1947) 48; H. Pétré, Caritas (Louvain, 1948) 64–5; W.-D. Hauschild, ‘Agapen I’, in TRE 1 (Berlin and New York, 1977) 748–53. 48  Betz, ‘Lukian’, 14 also refers to Acts 16.34, but that is a different meal. 49  A. Henrichs, ‘Hieroi Logoi and Hierai Bibloi: The (Un)written Margins of the Sacred in Ancient Greece’, HSCPh 101 (2003) 207–66 at 241–42; J.N. Bremmer, ‘From Holy Books to Holy Bible: an Itinerary from Ancient Greece to Modern Islam via Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity’, in M. Popovic´ (ed.), Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism (Leiden, 2010) 327–60. 50  K. Hopkins, ‘Christian Number and Its Implications’, JECS 6 (1998) 185–226 at 213. 51  In this paragraph, I repeat and elaborate a point made in this volume, Chapter  2.2.

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many exhortations to read from the Scriptures, which we quoted above. And it is highly interesting that Peregrinus himself wrote letters to ‘almost all the famous cities’ (41) before his death. He called these letters and their carriers ‘underworld messengers’ and ‘underworld runners’, a terminology that seems to have been inspired by the Letters of Ignatius, which Peregrinus had probably read during the Christian phase of his life.52 Hopkins also took too little account of the Jewish contribution to early Christianity, which must have positively influenced the level of early Christian literacy.53 It is true that the Dead Sea Scrolls are the main surviving texts from the period before the destruction of the Temple, but it seems highly unlikely that the Qumran community was the only one or the only religious movement that put its thoughts and ideals into writing:54 we only need to think of the Second Temple Jewish literature that was written in the same time as the New Testament. Moreover, the reading of the Torah and the Septuagint will have required a certain amount of literacy as well. Christian literacy, then, will have been more widespread than Hopkins suggested. In fact, Christian literacy and its pervasive use of letter writing must have been an important contribution to the rise of orthodoxy,55 as only in this way could a certain standard of unanimity be maintained.56 52 Ignatius, Smyrn.11 and Polyc. 7, cf. K. Waldner, ‘Ignatius’ Reise von Antiochia nach Rom: Zentralität und lokale Vernetzung im christlichen Diskurs des 2. Jahrhunderts’, in H. Cancik et al. (eds), Zentralität und Religion (Tübingen, 2006) 95–121 at 118. Pilhofer (ad loc.) objects that Lucian hardly will have read the letters of Ignatius. This might be true, but Peregrinus could have done so, as he clearly familiarised himself with important Christian writings. 53  See the considerations by H.Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church (New Haven and London, 1995) 1–41; note also I. Henderson, ‘Early Christianity, Textual Representation and Ritual Extension’, in D. Elm von der Osten et al. (eds), Texte als Medium und Reflexion von Religion im römischen Reich (Stuttgart, 2006) 81–100; J.S. Kloppenborg, ‘Literate Media in Early Christian Groups: The Creation of a Christian Book Culture’, JECS 22 (2014) 21–59; U. Schnelle, ‘Das frühe Christentum und die Bildung’, NTS 61 (2015) 113–43. 54  Contra: C. Hezser, Jewish literacy in Roman Palestine (Tübingen, 2001) 426 and ‘Jewish Literacy and the Use of Writing in Late Roman Palestine’, in R. Kalmin and S. Schwartz (eds), Jewish Culture and Society under the Christian Roman Empire (Leuven, 2003) 149–95 at 151–2; see also P.S. Alexander, ‘Literacy among Jews in Second Temple Palestine: Reflections on the Evidence from Qumran’, in M.F.J. Baasten and W.Th. van Peursen (eds), Hamlet on a Hill: Semitic and Greek Studies Presented to Professor T. Muraoka on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday (Leuven, 2003) 3–24. 55  H.-J. Klauck, Ancient Letters and the New Testament (Waco, 2006). 56  For interesting reflections on Christian literacy, see also several studies by Guy Stroumsa: ‘Early Christianity – A Religion of the Book?’, in M. Finkelberg and G. Stroumsa (eds), Homer, the Bible and Beyond (Leiden, 2003) 153–73; La fin du sacrifice: les mutations religieuses de l’antiquité tardive (Paris, 2005) 63–101, ‘Reading Practices in Early Christianity and the Individualization Process’, in J. Rüpke and W. Spickermann (eds), Reflections on Religious Individuality: Greco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian Texts and Practices (Berlin, 2012) 175–92 and ‘On the Status of Books in Early Christianity’, in C. Harrison et al. (eds), Being Christian in Late Antiquity: a Festschrift for Gillian Clark (Oxford, 2014) 57–73.

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It is most remarkable that the Christians even called Peregrinus a ‘new Socrates’. The bestowing of this title has been doubted by Plooij and Koopman, but they overlooked the fact that Christian martyrs are more often associated with Socrates. In fact, the Smyrnean martyr Pionius compared himself not only to Socrates but also to Aristides and Anaxarchus, other pagan ‘saints’.57 Socrates was of course not only innocently condemned to death but also a famous philosopher. We can see here one of the stratagems of the early Church in regards to the pagan opposition: by relating its own martyrs to pagan examples of virtue they removed them from the criminal sphere and claimed the moral high ground.58 In prison, Peregrinus was visited not only by the members of his congregation, but, as Chapter  13 relates, people came even ‘from the cities of Asia Minor’, and all contributed substantial amounts of money. Lucian is clearly impressed by these signs of compassion and interest. He adds that the Christians immediately come into action in such a case. We may perhaps speculate that such imprisonments were still fairly uncommon and therefore the cause of such a focus of people and means on one particular person. On the other hand, Lucian won’t overlook the possibility to slander Peregrinus and thus adds that he was making quite an income from his imprisonment. It is more interesting that he continues with: ‘these poor creatures have convinced themselves that they will be completely immortal and live for ever, which is the reason why most of them despise death and voluntarily give them themselves up’. It is clear from these words that Lucian himself had little sympathy for the Christian point of view. At the same time, though, he shows himself reasonably well informed about Christian doctrine and practice. It is not surprising that he had noted the Christian belief in the ‘life ever after’, as the persecutions had promoted the belief in immortality.59 Moreover, the reactions of philosophers, such as Marcus Aurelius and Celsus, and the Greek novels show that empty tombs and the resurrection exerted great fascination on pagan intellectuals, as Glen Bowersock has argued in an innovative study. 60 In other words, many pagans had noted that the Christians believed in the immortality

57  Martyrium Pionii 17, cf. J. den Boeft and J.N Bremmer, ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae III’, VigChris 39 (1985) 110–30 at 120–2. 58 E. Benz, ‘Christus und Socrates in der alten Kirche’, ZNW 43 (1950/1) 195–224; K. Döring, Exemplum Socratis (Wiesbaden, 1979) 143–61; T. Baumeister, Martyrium, Hagio­ graphie und Heiligenverehrung im christlichen Altertum (Freiburg, 2009) 22–28 (‘“Anytus und Meletus konnen mich zwar töten, schaden jedoch können sie mir nicht”. Platon, Apologie des Sokrates 30c/d bei Plutarch, Epiktet, Justin Martyr und Clemens Alexandrinus’, first published in 1983). This literature has been overlooked by Clay, ‘Lucian’, 3437 note  74. 59  J.N. Bremmer, The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife (London and New York, 2002) 70. 60  G. Bowersock, Fiction as History: Nero to Julian (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1994) 99–119.

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of the soul and the body, which was a revolutionary Christian innovation. 61 This new belief probably contributed to the Christian proclivity for voluntarily martyrdom, and the available evidence seems to show that indeed a considerable number of Christians became martyrs of their own accord. 62 Lucian continues with the observation that ‘their first lawgiver persuaded them that they would be all brothers from one another ’ after having rejected the Greek gods and worshiped aneskolopismenon ekeinon sophistên, ‘that crucified sophist’. 63 The ‘lawgiver’ clearly is Christ, whose transmission of the law is often portrayed in early Christianity.64 The designation ‘brother’ is also defended by Tertullian in his Apology (39.8–10), and the somewhat later Octavius by Minucius Felix has the opponent of Christianity state that: ‘… hardly have they met when they love each other, throughout the world uniting in the practice of a veritable religion of lusts. Indiscriminately they call each other brother and sister, thus turning even ordinary fornication into incest by the intervention of these hallowed names’ (9.2, tr. G.W. Clarke). Although accusations of Christian atheism are still relatively rare at the time,65 the rejection of the Greek gods well fits the fact that in the same years we already see the Christians called ‘atheists’ in the descriptions of the deaths of Polycarp and the Lyonese martyrs.66 However, it is rather surprising that Lucian calls Christ a ‘sophist’. Unfortunately, we cannot be certain about the exact connotation of the term in this context, as it is sometimes used favourably and sometimes unfavourably by Lucian. If we look at the contemporary sophists, who were rhetors and teachers of younger

61  As is persuasively argued by V. Schmidt, ‘Lukian über die Auferstehung der Toten’, VigChris 49 (1995) 388–92. 62  For voluntary martyrdom, see C. Butterweck, “Martyriumssucht” in der Alten Kirche? Studien zur Darstellung und Deutung frühchristlicher Martyrien (Tübingen, 1995); J.-L. Voisin, ‘Prosopographie des morts volontaires chrétiens (en particulier chez Eusèbe de Césarée)’, in M.-F. Baslez and F. Prévot (eds), Prosopographie et histoire religieuse (Paris, 2005) 351–62; A.R. Birley, ‘Voluntary Martyrs in the Early Church: Heroes or Heretics?’, Cristianesimo nella Storia 27 (2006) 99–127; A. Dearn, ‘Voluntary Martyrdom and the Donatist Schism’, SP 39 (2006) 27–32; G.E.M. de Ste. Croix, Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy (Oxford, 2006) 153–200 (the chapter was composed in the 1950s, but never published; the notes have been well updated); C. Moss, ‘The Discourse of Voluntary Martyrdom: Ancient and Modern’, Church History 81 (2012) 531–51. 63  For some observations, if not always plausible, on aneskolopismenon (the verb is also used in Chapter  11), see J. Schwartz, ‘Du Testament de Lévi au Discours véritable de Celse’, Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses 40 (1960) 126–45 at 126–9. 64  Contra: Pilhofer ad loc., cf. R. Hvalvik, ‘Christ Proclaiming His Law to the Apostles: The Traditio Legis-Motif in Early Christian Art and Literature’, in J. Fotopoulos (ed.), The New Testament and Early Christian Literature in Greco-Roman Context (Leiden, 2006) 404–37. 65  J.J. Walsh, ‘On Christian Atheism’, VigChris 45 (1991) 255–77. 66  Cf. J.N. Bremmer, ‘Atheism in Antiquity’, in M. Martin (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Atheism (Cambridge, 2006) 11–26 at 21 f.

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pupils,67 often moving from one place to the next, 68 it is not difficult to see that Lucian could have interpreted Jesus’ activities in this particular and, probably, unfavourable manner. 69 Lucian concludes Chapter  13 with noting that they have all things in common and that their gullibility leads them to be robbed by charlatans. In Acts of the Apostles (2.42–47, 4.32–37) Luke presents the same image, and this Brüderlichkeitsethik confirms one of Max Weber’s insights, viz. that when people first come together on the basis of religious views, they are more closely associated with one another than with their ‘normal’ associates, such as relatives or neighbours, and thus will help each other in case of material needs.70 Yet none of our sources points to such a sharing of goods in the later second century. As Lucian seems quite well informed about the Christians, as we have seen so far, it is not impossible that, directly or indirectly, he had received some idealising information about the Christians. However this may be, Lucian clearly intends to mock the Christians because of their gullibility and he notes that they fall victim to any ‘charlatan and huckster’ that comes among them.71 From the Didache (12) we learn that the Christians themselves were also aware of this risk and even had coined the word Christemporos, ‘he who uses Christ to make a gain’. This first phase of Peregrinus’ Christianity is concluded with his release from prison by ‘the governor of Syria, a man who enjoyed philosophy’ (14). Pilhofer (ad loc.) wonders how a Syrian governor can free a prisoner in Palestine, but the answer is simple: the Roman province was called Syria Palaestina (Samaria, Judea, Idumea) since Hadrian.72 Unfortunately, Lucian does not provide a name for the governor, but the publication of new military diplomas has enabled Werner Eck to plausibly identify the ‘governor of Syria, a man fond of philosophy’ with Sergius Paullus, who was the legatus Augusti pro praetore of Syria in AD 144 and whose philosophical interests are well established.73 67  On the sophists, see most recently G.W. Dobrov, ‘The Sophist on his Craft: Art, Text, and Self-Construction in Lucian’, Helios 29 (2002) 173–92; B. Puech, Orateurs et sophistes grecs dans les inscriptions d’époque impériale (Paris, 2002); B.E. Borg (ed.), Paideia: The World of the Second Sophistic (Berlin and New York, 2004); T. Whitmarsh, The Second Sophistic (Oxford, 2005). 68 C. Lüth, ‘Anstößige Intellektuelle: Die Sophisten als Fremde und Wanderlehrer’, in U. and P. Riemer (eds), Xenophobie, Philoxenie: vom Umgang mit Fremden in der Antike (Stuttgart, 2005) 157–76. 69  See also L. Pernot, ‘Christianisme et sophistique’, in L.C. Montefusco (ed.), Papers on Rhetoric IV (Rome, 2002) 245–62 at 246–50; B. Wyss, ‘Der gekreuzigte Sophist’, Early Christianity 5 (2014) 503–28. 70  M. Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie I (Tübingen 1920) 536–73. 71  The same combination in Lucian, Dialogues of the Dead, 5. 72  M. Avi-Yonah, in RE, Suppl. XIII (Munich, 1973) 322 f. 73  W. Eck and A. Pangerl, ‘Eine Konstitution des Antoninus Pius für die Auxilien in Syrien aus dem Jahr 144’, ZPE 188 (2014) 255–60; W. Eck, ‘Sergius Paullus, der Liebhaber der Philo­ sophie in Lucianus Peregrinus Proteus’, RhM 137 (2014) 221–24.

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The action of the governor does suggest that Peregrinus had been imprisoned in Caesarea Maritima, the capital of the province and the seat of the Roman governor’s praetorium. In fact, this city could well have been the place where Peregrinus had settled. It was big, prosperous and typically the place where a person like Peregrinus might have expected an audience for his teachings.74 We virtually have no information about its Christian congregation(s?) in the middle of the second century, but in the third century there (still?) was a lot of contact between a scholar like Origen and the Jewish rabbis. We do not, though, get the impression of the existence of a Judaeo-Christian type of church in Caesarea in that time.75 After his release from prison Peregrinus returned to Parion, where he appeared as a Cynic in front of the local assembly: ‘He wore his hair long by now, had dressed himself in a dirty cloak, had slung a satchel over his shoulder and had a walking stick in his hand’ (15). Subsequently, he acted as a philosophe provocateur in Egypt, Rome and Greece – a worthy imitator of the Cynic Diogenes. Several scholars have seen a close connection between the Cynics and Jesus,76 but that debate need not detain us here. In fact, there is little indication that in the middle of the second century Christians converted to Cynicism or vice versa.77 Peregrinus is our only example.78 It is true that both groups had a negative view of worldly wealth, but the Christians had a negative image of the Cynics,79 and we know of the persecution of Christians by Cynics, such as Justin by the Cynic Crescens.80 In the end we cannot get into the mind of Peregrinus, however much we would have liked that. In his report of Peregrinus’ philosophic career, Lucian locates his apostasy after the renunciation of his goods. In fact, he suggests a certain connection between the two, as Peregrinus now needed the Christians to live a prosperous life. This period of his career seems to have come to an abrupt halt when it was 74  L.I. Levine, Caesarea under Roman Rule (Leiden, 1975); K.G. Holum et al. (eds), Caesarea Papers 2 (Portsmouth RI, 1999); Y. Turnheim and A. Ovadiah, Art in the Public and Private Spheres in Roman Caesarea Maritima: Temples, Architectural Decoration and Tesserae (Rome, 2002); W. Eck, Judäa – Syria Palästina (Tübingen, 2014) 150–62. 75  See the studies of M. Murray (Jews), R.S. Ascough (Christians) and R.A. Clements (Origen and the Jews) in T.L Donaldson (ed.), Religious Rivalries and the Struggle for Success in Caesarea Maritima (Waterloo, 2000). 76  See the surveys by P.R. Eddy, ‘Jesus as Diogenes? Reflections on the Cynic Jesus Thesis’, JBL 115 (1996) 449–469; H.D. Betz, Gesammelte Aufsätze IV. Antike und Christentum (Tübingen, 1998) 32–56 (‘Jesus and the Cynics: Survey and Analysis of a Hypothesis’, first published in 1994). 77  See the survey by S.G. Wilson, ‘Rivalry and Defection’, in L. Vaage (ed.), Religious Rivalries in the Early Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity (Waterloo, 2006) 51–71. 78  C.P. Jones, ‘Cynisme et sagesse barbare: le cas de Pérégrinus Proteus’, in M.-O. Coulet-Cazé and R. Coulet (eds), Le Cynicisme ancien et ses prolongements (Paris, 1993) 305–17. 79  See G. Dorival, ‘L’image des Cyniques chez les Pères grecs’, in Coulet-Cazé and Coulet, Le Cynicisme ancien, 419–43. 80 Justin, 2Apol. 3, cf. Dorival, ‘L’image des Cyniques’, 421 f.

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discovered that he ate from forbidden food (16). The nature of this food has been variously explained. Some suggest that Peregrinus had eaten from the food of Hekate on the crossroads.81 This is very unlikely, as it would imply a Cynic type of acting during his enjoying of Christian support. Others think of the eating of sacrifical meat, which was already a bone of contention in the time of Paul.82 As a third possibility, it has been suggested that the reference may be ‘to non-kosher food, the more so since the Christians whith whom he had been in contact in Palestine may well have been Judaeo-Christians who kept the Jewish laws, a phenomenon that was still very common in the second century’.83 This suggestion would well fit our conclusion that Peregrinus joined a kind of Judaeo-Christian congregation, but, unfortunately, Lucian does not offer a certain clue, and we have to leave the precise reason open. With Peregrinus’ apostasy we have come to the end of his Christian episode. However, there is perhaps one more connection with Christianity. After Peregrinus’ spectacular self-immolation at the stake during the Olympic Games of 165 AD, Lucian continues as follows his report: ‘As I was going away to the panegyris,84 I met a grey man, who, by Zeus, looked reliable with his beard and dignified appearance. About Proteus (as Peregrinus was called later in his career) he told, among other things, that after his cremation he saw him in white clothing only a short time before and that he had just now left him walking cheerfully about the Echo Colonnade, wearing a wreath of wild olive.’ And he continued: ‘To top it off, he added the vulture, swearing that he himself had seen it flying up from the pyre, which I myself had only just let fly, while it was laughing about the stupidity and foolishness of the people’ (40). This is a fascinating and sophisticated passage, in which Lucian seems to make fun of more than one group of people. Just before this encounter, in Chapter  39, he had told that after Peregrinus’ death he had helped to spread some false rumours to those people who seemed stupid enough to believe them: ‘that when the pyre was lit and Proteus had thrown himself upon it, there first happened a big earthquake while the ground bellowed. Then a vulture flew up from the midst of the flames and went off to heaven, loudly saying with a human voice: “I left the earth, but I go to the Olympus”’. 81  Harmon, Loeb, and Schwartz, Lucien, ad loc. For these suppers of Hekate, see S.I. Johnston, ‘Crossroads’, ZPE 88 (1991) 217–24. 82  Acts 15.29, 21.25; 1 Cor 8.7, cf. Pilhofer ad loc., who follows here Wilhelm Nestle’s edition of De morte Peregrini (Munich, 1925). 83 P.W. van der Horst in his review of Pilhofer et al. in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2005.11.16. 84  A fair was a standard part of Greek festivals, cf. L. de Ligt and P.W. de Neeve, ‘Ancient Periodic Markets. Festivals and Fairs’, Athenaeum 66 (1988) 391–416; M. Wörrle, Stadt und Fest im kaiserzeitlichen Kleinasien (Munich, 1988) 209–15; Ch. Chandezon, ‘Foires et panégyries dans le monde grec classique et hellénistique’, REG 113 (2000) 70–100; R. Basser, ‘Is the Pagan Fair Fairly Dangerous? Jewish-Pagan Relations in Antiquity’, in Vaage, Religious Rivalries, 73–84.

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These fictitious details clearly draw on traditional motifs. Caesar’s and Jesus’ death were also accompanied by an earthquake, of which bellowing is a standard part,85 and oaths regarding the trustworthiness of the ascension are attested in the cases of Augustus and Drusilla.86 The vulture, already in antiquity an unpleasant bird, 87 is clearly a way of making fun of the custom of releasing an eagle from the flames of an imperial cremation in the case of emperors and, albeit somewhat later, of peacocks in the case of empresses. This is contested by Christopher Jones, who argues that the eagle was also associated with the souls of private persons.88 Yet we do not hear of such a custom in the case of private cremations, and there can be little doubt that the imperial ascension was by far the most impressive version of this tradition.89 Lucian was clearly not the only one who had his thoughts about the imperial deification, which was still practised in his time: his contemporary Justin Martyr too questions the witness that saw ‘the burning Caesar’ rise to heaven from the flames of his pyre.90 The words spoken by the vulture have long been recognised as probably coming from a lost tragedy. But it is important to note that the most likely speaker of these lines is Heracles,91 and this is the more fitting as Peregrinus himself had said that ‘one who has lived like Heracles should die as Heracles’ (33).92 Yet by stating that he himself had made up all these details Lucian also undercuts the testimony of the old man that he had seen Peregrinus walking around. Like with Jesus and Mohamed, the deceased was not met on the place of his death or disappearance but at some, sometimes considerable, distance.93 Christopher Jones has argued that the material is fully pagan and should be explained in reference to the appearance of ‘Plutarch’s description of Romulus appearing after his death in shining armor and with cheerful face’.94 Although the ‘cheerful face’ is not in Plutarch’s text,95 the wreath is clearly derived from the wreath of the Olympic victors, and the Roman model of Julius Proculus, who claimed 85 

Caesar: Verg. G. 1.475; Ovid, Met. 15.798. Jesus: Matthew 27.51. Augustus, 100; Cassius Dio 56.45.2, 59.11.4 (Drusilla). 87  W. Speyer, ‘Geier’, in RAC 9 (1976) 430–68 at 452–4. 88 Jones, Culture and Society, 129. 89  For the imperial apotheosis, with extensive bibliography, I. Gradel and P. Karanastassi, ‘B. Roman apotheosis’, in Thesaurus cultus et rituum antiquorum 2 (Los Angeles, 2004) 186– 212 at 196–7, 203 (eagle and peacock). 90  Justin Martyr, 1Apol. 21.3. 91  See R. Kannicht and B. Snell, Tragicorum Graecorum fragmenta, Vol.  2 : fragmenta adespota (Göttingen, 1981) 92 on fragment 290a. 92  For the Cynic canonisation of Heracles, see R. Höistad, Cynic Hero and Cynic King: studies in the Cynic conception of man (Uppsala, 1948). 93  As argued by E. Bickerman, Studies in Jewish and Christian History 3 (Leiden, 1986) 78, now reprinted as Studies in Jewish and Christian History: A New Edition in English including The God of the Maccabees, introduced by Martin Hengel, edited by Amram Tropper, 2  vols, Leiden 2007. 94 Jones, Culture and Society, 129, comparing Plutarch, Life of Romulus 28.1. 95  It has indeed disappeared in Jones, ‘Cynisme’, 315. 86 Suetonius,

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to have met Romulus after his death,96 is not impossible. On the other hand, it is difficult to see why Lucian would have wanted to make fun of the return of Romulus, who hardly played a role in the contemporary world of the Second Sophistic. That is why influence of the New Testament seems more likely. In his already mentioned fascinating discussion of the attraction of the resurrection in contemporary society, Glen Bowersock also included Lucian’s description of Peregrinus’ resurrection, which, as he notes, perfectly fits this interest.97 Lucian’s description, then, not only mocked Roman imperial practice but also Christian belief in the resurrection. It is time to come to a conclusion. It seems clear that Lucian was not uninformed about Christianity, as he demonstrates knowledge of a number of details about its doctrines and its practices. He probably knew just as much, if not more, about Christianity as many modern intellectuals about, say, Mormons, Pentecostals or Christianity itself. That is all we can reasonably ask of him.98 Unfortunately, we do not know anything about his knowledge of the Jews. He may have encountered them in his home city Samosata,99 or elsewhere, but he clearly did not find them interesting enough to write about. There is then no reason to doubt him when he mentions that the Palestinian Christians had ‘priests and scribes’, which suggests, as we have seen, a Judaeo-Christian congregation. These communities have recently attracted much attention, as contemporary Jews and Christians reflect about the parting of the ways with its fateful consequences.100 The Christian career of Peregrinus will be looked for in vain in these studies. Perhaps it deserves a place.101

96  For this episode, see J.N. Bremmer and N. Horsfall, Roman Myth and Mythography (London, 1987) 45 f. 97 Bowersock, Fiction as History, 99–119 at 115 f. 98  The judgement of G. Bagnani, ‘Peregrinus Proteus and the Christians’, Historia 4 (1955) 107–12 at 111, ‘Lucian’s ignorance of Christianity and Christian doctrine is really monumental’, seems to me misguided. 99  J. Rist, ‘Paul von Samosata und Zenobia von Palmyra: Anmerkungen zu Aufstieg und Fall eines frühchristlichen Bischofs’, Römische Quartalschrift 92 (1997) 145–61 at 154–7. 100 From the enormous literature, see D. Boyarin, Border Lines. The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia, 2004); J.D.G. Dunn, The partings of the ways: between Christianity and Judaism and their significance for the character of Christianity (London, 20062); D. Jaffé, Le Talmud et les origines juives du christianisme: Jésus, Paul et les judéo-chrétiens dans la littérature talmudique (Paris, 2007). 101  I am most grateful to Werner Eck and Ton Hilhorst for information and comments, and to Kristina Meinking for correcting my English.

Chapter 6

The Domestication of Early Christian Prophecy In 1975, the best study of earliest Christian prophecy complained of the ‘weitgehenden Stillstand der Propheten-forschung in unserem Jahrhundert’,1 and the situation has not really changed for the better in the twenty-first century.2 A conference in Regensburg in 2013 on the Ascension of Isaiah (AscIs) was a good occasion, therefore, to look once again at the subject. Admittedly, the number of sources is very limited so one more ploughing can promise only marginal yields. Yet the subject is so important for the AscIs that a discussion of prophecy should not be absent. Perhaps we may reach a few new insights if we pose the following questions, which do not seem to have been systematically investigated yet: who prophesied, where, when, what and how? We will try to discuss these questions in a chronological order and keep account of local differences, but in order to keep this article within certain limits I will concentrate on the Christian sources between ca. AD 50 and 200. I will first present a systematic answer to our questions by analysing the material at three moments in time, namely around AD 50 (§  1), 100 (with a few somewhat later developments: §  2) and 170, the start of the rise of Montanism (§  3), then draw some conclusions (§  4) and finally apply the questions and conclusions to Enrico Norelli’s analysis of ecstatic prophecy in the AscIs (§  5).

1.  The situation in Paul’s time Let us start our survey with our first question: who are the prophets? From the Letters of the apostle Paul and Acts we learn a number of details, although our information is much more limited than we would like. The first aspect that strikes a student of prophecy is that both men and women prophesy. Paul speaks of male prophets and, albeit only once, of female prophesying (1 Cor 11.5). However, it is perhaps not by chance that he mentions female prophesying only 1 

G. Dautzenberg, Urchristliche Prophetie (Stuttgart, 1975) 15. Cf. W. Klein et al., ‘Propheten/Prophetie’, in TRE 27 (1977) 473–517; but see also U. Luz, ‘Stages of Early Christian Prophetism’, in J. Verheyden et al. (eds), Prophets and Prophecy in Jewish and Early Christian Literature (Tübingen, 2010) 57–75 as well as F. Hahn and H. Klein, Die frühchristliche Prophetie. Ihre Voraussetzungen, ihre Anfänge und ihre Entwicklung bis zum Montanismus (Neukirchen-Vluyn, 2011). 2 

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in a passage in which he reproaches them for doing so with uncovered head. Acts (21.8–9) also records both male and female prophets:3 the four virgin daughters of Philip ‘the evangelist’.4 Such a plurality cannot have been unusual: in Antioch there were several prophets (Acts 11.28, 15.32, 31.1), and their number in Corinth seems even to have been considerable, as Paul exhorts the Corinthians to let only two or three of them address the congregation at a time (1 Cor 14.29). Where do we hear of prophets? They clearly belong to the big cities, such as Corinth and Antioch (above), Thessalonica (1 Thess 5.20), Caesarea (Acts 21.9) and Jerusalem (Acts 11.27), the centres where early Christianity first gained ground. According to Paul, the prophets have to apply their gifts within the congregation (1 Thess 5.20; Rom 12.6), as they seem indeed to have done. What do the prophets say? As we could expect, prophets know about the future. Agabus (Acts 21.11) forecasts the arrest of Paul and a great period of hunger (Acts 11.28: surely not the most impressive feat, even if Acts suggests otherwise, since in antiquity and long afterwards famines were always around the corner). Prophets also know the divine mysteries (Eph 3.5). In addition, and perhaps not always less importantly,5 they teach and edify the congregation, which in this way is exhorted and comforted (1 Cor 14.3, 31; Acts 15.32). Finally, prophecy and prayer go closely together (1 Cor 11.4–5, 14.13–9). The authority of the prophets’ words rests on the close connection with the Spirit (1 Cor 12.11; Ephes 3.5; Acts 21.11). Given these functions, it is not strange that Paul considers prophecy to be of the highest importance (1 Cor 14.1, 5, 39). 6 Consequently, he mentions prophets immediately after the apostles but before the other categories of teachers and presbyters (1 Cor 12.28–9); in Antioch they seem even to have occupied the first place because of the absence of apostles (Acts 13.1, 15.32). Prophets probably maintained this position also in the immediate post-Pauline years, on the evidence of the Letter to the Ephesians (2.20, 3.5, 4.11). It will be this close association of apostles and prophets that gives to the latter travels like those of the apostles: Judas and Silas are mentioned in both Jerusalem and Antioch (Acts 15.22, 32), and Agabus travels from Jerusalem via Antioch and Judaea (probably again Jerusalem) to Caesarea (Acts 11.27–8, 21.10). At the same time, this very prominent position required that the prophetic contributions should be above 3  I realise that Acts may have been written later (AD 120? 150?), but it seems very difficult in this respect to separate the narrated time from the time of composition. 4  For the tradition that Philip and his daughters moved to Hierapolis and were buried there, see W. Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions and Testimonia (Macon, 1997) 502–8. 5  Contra: Dautzenberg, Urchristliche Prophetie, 22. 6 See also G. Dautzenberg, ‘Prophetie bei Paulus’, Jahrbuch für Biblische Theologie 14 (1999) 55–70. For Paul’s prophetic self-conscience (even if he avoids the title for himself), see T. Nicklas, ‘Paulus – der Apostel als Prophet’, in Verheyden et al., Prophets and Prophecy, 77–104.

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discussion. That is why Paul formulated several criteria: prophecy should be ‘according to the proportion of faith’ (Rom 12.6) and include love (1 Cor 13.2). Last but not least, how did prophets prophesy? Paul’s exhortations in 1 Corinthians (14.1–25) to prophesy clearly and comprehensibly make sense only if there was a tradition of non-comprehensible, ecstatic prophecy. That is probably also the reason why he keeps prophecy separate from glossolalia. On the other hand, three other notices strongly suggest that Paul is here introducing an innovation. Firstly, when the first Christians were filled with the Holy Ghost and started to speak in tongues, Peter quoted the words of the prophet Joel that in the last days everyone will prophesy (Acts 2.16–21). Secondly, when Paul had laid his hands on converts in Ephesus, ‘they spoke with tongues and prophesied’ (Acts 19.6). Finally, in his Contra Celsum (7.9) Origen quotes Celsus on prophets in Syria and Phoenicia (§  2) who pronounce ‘apocalyptic’ prophecies and add ‘unknown, incoherent and totally obscure words’ of which the meaning escapes every reasonable person, presumably some kind of glossolalia.7 In short, prophecy could be distinguished from glossolalia but can hardly be separated from it. And as the second activity is unthinkable without some kind of ecstasy, however limited it may have been, prophecy must regularly have had ecstatic aspects too.

2.  The situation around AD 100 As the date and place of origin of many early Christian writings is highly uncertain,8 I will adhere in the following to the majority consensus on these issues. However, we must always remain conscious of the fact that new discoveries could yet bring about corrections, although major surprises are hardly to be expected. We may thus date to the period around the turn of the century, about AD 90–110, the Letters to Timothy and Peter, 1 John, Revelation, Didache and 1 Clement. To what extent has the situation changed in relation to that of about half a century before? We again start with the question of who the prophets were. Prophecy is sometimes only mentioned as existing, without any further details, but as sanctioned by ‘the laying on of the hands of the presbytery’ (1 Tim 4.14), a clear indication of its still institutional setting. We learn more from Revelation, although the 7 G. Buschmann, Das Martyrium des Polykarp (Göttingen, 1998) 53 considers these prophets to be Montanists, but that idea had already been refuted by P. de Labriolle, La Crise Montaniste (Paris, 1913) 99–100, cf. K. Aland, Kirchengeschichtliche Entwürfe (Gütersloh, 1960) 104–48 (‘Bemerkungen zum Montanismus und zur frühchristlichen Eschatologie’) at 113. 8  This is well stressed by M. Vinzent, Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels (Leuven, 2014).

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‘apocalyptic’ language of the author makes it difficult to recover the institutional reality behind his prophecies. Yet it is clear that the author presupposes the presence of prophets. Does this mean that we have to take his expressions ‘prophets and saints’ (11.18) or ‘saints and prophets’ (16.6) and ‘saints, apostles and prophets’ (18.20) as indicating clearly distinct groups within the congregation? The mention of apostles makes this highly unlikely. Yet in his study of early Christian prophecy, Aune claims that prophets ‘appear to have constituted a “school” or “order” within the churches of western Asia Minor’, but in the same book he also, and more persuasively, observes that proof for the existence of prophetic schools in early Christianity is absent!9 The innovation of Revelation within the Christian movement is the fact that ‘John’ thought it necessary to write down his visions and send them to contacts in the seven congregations of western Asia Minor – perhaps in imitation of the apostle Paul. We learn more about prophets from the Didache. At least that is what one would initially think. However, for two reasons it seems extremely difficult to use this treatise to reconstruct a reality behind it. First, before its stipulations on the prophets it limits the visits of apostles. But how can we still expect apostles around AD 100?10 Second, the normal hierarchy of the church, namely bishops and deacons, is already in place and they perform ‘the service of prophets and teachers’ (15.1). Clearly, prophets have become the exception. In any case, the treatise, whose date presupposes only wandering male prophets (11.2, cf. 6.8– 10), does not envision wandering women prophets. On the other hand, the notice in the Didache neatly fits Celsus’ description of begging prophets in Phoenicia and Palestine who wander through towns and villages handing out apocalyptic (in our sense of the word!) oracles. Celsus claims that he himself was an eyewitness to these prophets and had showed them up as frauds. We need not immediately believe this claim, and Origen indeed does a good job of refuting his opponent.11 Yet even if Celsus had read of them, the value of his information remains considerable, as it is the only late source that still actually mentions wandering prophets. Unfortunately, the period from which his information derives is obscure and could be anywhere in the second century. Female prophets still operated at this time, since ‘John’ rails against a certain woman from Thyateira, ‘who calls herself a prophetess’ (Rev 2.20–3). The prophetess must have been a formidable lady with quite a following, since ‘John’ mentions her ‘lovers’ and ‘children’, and reproaches her for having seduced his ‘servants to commit fornication’. We need not enter here in a discussion of the 9  D. Aune, Prophecy in Early Christianity and the Ancient Mediterranean World (Grand Rapids, 1983) 207 and 197, respectively. 10  For the date, I follow the majority opinion, see H. van de Sandt and D. Flusser, The Didache (Assen and Minneapolis, 2002) 48, 52. 11 Origen, Contra Celsum 7.9, 11.

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labelling strategy of ‘John’,12 but we should observe a historical continuity: between 170 and 263–64, Montanism with its female prophets dominated the whole Church at Thyateira.13 The existence of this female prophet is highly interesting, since in 1 Corinthians (14.33b-36) Paul explicitly forbids prophecy to women. Now Dautzenberg has presented strong arguments that these verses are an interpolation from the time when the Pauline Epistles were first collected into one edition14 – presumably at the end of the first century.15 It might be added that the occurrence of prophetesses would have been hard to understand if the apostle had from the very beginning strongly opposed female prophets. Apparently, the late interpolation could no longer stop what had become a firmly entrenched possibility in the tradition of the early church. The consecration of prophets by presbyters in 1 Timothy (4.14) suggests an initially continuing presence of prophets. Indeed, both Revelation and the mention of Thyateira demonstrate that Christianity and its prophets had spread from the great centres of antiquity to the smaller cities of Asia Minor. This development is confirmed by the polemics surrounding the rise of Montanism. In this propaganda war, mention is made of two pre-Montanist prophets, Ammia and Quadratus, who both probably lived in Philadelphia some time before, say, AD 150;16 the tradition that the daughters of Philip were buried in Hierapolis points in the same direction.17 Another site must have been somewhere in the province of Syria, since Lucian (De morte Peregrini 11) relates that the Christians called Peregrinus a ‘prophet, thasiarch and convener’ – a strange mix of Christian and pagan titles – and that the governor of the province of Syria released him from his prison. The event is related early in Peregrinus’ career, and new evidence suggests that the governor was Sergius Paullus, the legatus Augusti pro praetore of Syria in AD 144 and a man with clear philosophical interests.18

12  See the perceptive remarks on the Christian strategy of deviance labelling by I. Czachesz, The Grotesque Body in Early Christian Discourse (Sheffield and Bristol CT, 2012) 81–96. 13 Epiphanius, Pan. 51.33, cf. P. Herrmann on Tituli Asiae Minoris V.2, 310. 14 Dautzenberg, Urchristliche Prophetie, 270–3. 15  H. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church (New Haven and London, 1995) 57–65. 16 Eus. HE 5.17.3–4, see most recently C. Trevett, Montanism (Cambridge, 1996) 33–5; Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, 34, 44 (Quadratus); F. Amsler, Acta Philippi. Commentarius (Turnhout, 1999) 455. 17 Papias apud Eus. HE 3.39.9 = Papias F 5 Körtner in U. Körtner and M. Leutzsch, Papiasfragmente. Hirt des Hermas (Darmstadt, 1998); Polycrates apud Eus. HE 3.31.3, 5.24.2; Gaius apud Eus. HE. 3.31.4; Philippus Sidetus, HE, fr. in Cod. Baroccianus 142 = Papias F 10 Körtner; Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, 502–8. For the daughters and the problem of the confusion between Philip the Apostle and Philip the Evangelist, see the judicious observations of Amsler, Acta Philippi, 2.447–68. 18  See this volume, Chapter  5.

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Yet at the same time, prophets were already disappearing from the larger cities. Ignatius’s correspondence suggests that the episcopate was already firmly established in Antioch;19 a treatise like the Didache is also more naturally the product of a larger city, as it presupposes literacy and a plurality of audiences, and 1 Clement illustrates the same for Rome and Corinth, 20 as its treatment of the hierarchy in the church could easily have mentioned prophets. Regarding Rome, we should also notice that the probably somewhat later Hermas (ca. AD 120–140) does not mention prophets in its lists of the Christian clergy.21 This omission makes it likely that its description of the true prophet in Mand XI reflects the situation in only one of the Hausgemeinden of Rome rather than in the totality of the Roman congregations. In this period, Rome still lacked a dominant bishop, and the Church exhibited an astonishing variety and tolerance of Christian groups well into the last decades of the second century.22 According to Hermas, the ‘false prophet’ wants to have a prôtokathedria, a ‘place in the front row’, in the meeting of the congregation (Mand XI.12), as was customary for the Roman presbyters (Vis III.1.8). The fact that this is apparently no longer the case without discussion, and the absence of any claim by Hermas for a special place for the true prophet suggest the disappearance of the prophet as a specific position in the Roman congregations. This marginalisation of prophets becomes further apparent from the church of Marcion in Rome (ca. AD 150). We have several notices regarding bishops, presbyters and deacons, but prophets are lacking, and Tertullian’s disparaging remarks demonstrate that Marcion had no place for them in his clergy.23 Some decades later, Irenaeus, then residing in Gaul, speaks of prophets as a phenomenon of the past.24 The exception to this rule seems to be the tradition that one of Philip’s daughters was buried in Ephesus. Although the reliability of this tradition is guaranteed by the fact that our source is an Ephesian bishop at the end of the second century, Polycrates, we cannot say anything about the authenticity of the information. Yet one cannot escape the gut feeling that this tomb was created in competition with the Montanists’ prophetesses.25 The still existing prophets probably continued to perform in the congregational services, since in the Didache prophets can give thanks as often as they 19  For Ignatius and prophecy, see C.N. Jefford, ‘Prophecy and Prophetism in the Apostolic Fathers’, in Verheyden et al., Prophets and Prophecy, 295–316 at 303–09. 20  P. Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus (Minneapolis, 2003) should have commented upon their absence. 21  Hermas, Vis. III.5.1, Sim. IX.15.4, 16.5, 25.2; M. Leutzsch, Die Wahrnehmung sozialer Wirklichkeit im “Hirten des Hermas” (Göttingen, 1989) 72 note  58. 22 Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus, 385–96. 23 Tert. Adv. Marc. 3.22, cf. A. von Harnack, Marcion (Leipzig, 19242) 125–7. 24 Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 5.6.1, note also the reference to prophetic writings in 2.32.4. 25 Polycrates apud Eus. HE 3.31.3, 5.24.2, cf. Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, 504; Amsler, Acta Philippi, 2.462, 466.

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want after the Eucharist (10.7), and ‘John’ receives his revelations on a Sunday (Rev 1.10). The true prophet in the Hermas has to speak in the ‘synagogue of just men’ (Mand XI.9), whereas the ‘false prophet’ carries out his activity in a corner (XI.13 with Leutzsch ad loc.). Even if this description perhaps reflects an ideal situation rather than daily reality, it probably still indicates the norm or, not impossibly, the tradition. The more or less contemporaneous Apocalypse of Peter also mentions ‘false prophets (1G), but their place of activity is not specified. In consequence of the marginalisation of the prophets, we hear very little about their activities. Prophecies are still connected with the prediction of the future, as shown by ‘Paul’s’ words that he committed a charge unto Timothy ‘according to the prophecies which went before on thee’ (1 Tim 1.18). In the case of Revelation (1.1), ‘John’ tells us ‘things which must shortly come to pass’. Although not in a very politically correct manner, these ‘things’ are clearly meant to comfort and exhort the congregations at times of persecution. In the section of Hermas’ on the ‘false prophet’ (Mand XI.9) we find the combination of prophecy and prayer. In addition to these traditional activities we find another activity only e contrario. In 2 Peter (2.1), 1 John (4.1) and Revelation (16.13, 19.20, 20.10) we meet ‘false prophets’ (pseudoprophêtai).26 Their association with false teachers and heresies shows that at the time prophets were still connected with expositions of the faith. Finally, how did prophets prophesy? ‘John’ repeatedly informs us that he saw his visions ‘in the spirit’ (Rev 1.10, 4.2, 17.3, 21.10). However, he does not tell us how he reached this visionary state. We may expect some kind of ecstasy, but lack of information leaves room for speculations only. In any case, there must have been a difference from ecstasy in the midst of the congregation, which was probably reached by the clapping of hands, music or chants.

3.  Montanism or the revival of prophecy The process of marginalisation of prophecy was suddenly stopped in its tracks around AD 170 with the appearance in Phrygia of a certain Montanus on the Christian stage. Together with two women, Maximilla and Priscilla, he founded a new movement, probably first called ‘Prophecy’, perhaps later ‘New Prophecy’, which rocked the foundations of the Church.27 Montanus’ name is fairly 26  For the term, see J. Reiling, ‘The Use of ψευδοπροφήτης in the Septuagint, Philo and Josephus’, NovTest 13 (1971) 147–56. For its prehistory and successive usage, see, most recently, A. Catastini, ‘Who were the False Prophets?’, Henoch 34 (2012) 330–66; G. Stroumsa, ‘False Prophets of Early Christianity’, in B. Dignas et al. (eds), Priests and Prophets among Pagans, Jews and Christians (Leuven, 2013) 208–29, repr. in his The Making of the Abrahamic Religions in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2015) 59–71. 27  For the movement, see Trevett, Montanism; Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions; A. Stewart-Sykes, ‘The Asian Context of the New Prophecy and of Epistula Apostolorum’, VigChris

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frequent in the area of Phrygia and its surroundings, and he may have been someone of Roman descent, given the presence of imperial domains in the ­area.28 Maximilla’s and Priscilla’s names, on the other hand, are fairly rare in the Greek world, but, interestingly enough, both are also found in Phrygia.29 In any case, all three names are Roman, which suggests that their bearers belonged to the local elite.30 Their elite status is also supported by the fact that all three, including the women, were reputed to have written books, since it is hard to imagine women authors not belonging to the elite.31 Although the implications of the movement went far beyond prophecy, we will strictly limit ourselves to the subject of our paper. This is not very difficult since, as Kurt Aland (1915–1994) observed in a still valuable contribution, our sources are ‘alles in allem ausserordentlich gering’.32 Our account has already shown that both men and women could prophesy among the Montanists. The phenomenon of female prophets would go on to last a long time, and in the middle or later fourth century there was still a Phrygian prophetess Nanas, surely a Montanist one, who had, to quote her epitaph, ‘angelic visitations and speech in greatest measure’.33 As our information mainly derives from the movement’s opponents, most attention was directed towards the prophetic activity of the women,34 but we hear of other men too, such as Alcibiades (Eus. HE 5.3.4), Themiso (HE 5.18.4) and Theodotus, perhaps Montanus’ successor, of whom Eusebius relates that he was ‘sometimes taken up and raised to heaven, when he fell into a trance and trusted himself to the spirit of deceit, but was hurled down and died miserably’ (HE 5.16.14), a death that has some resemblance to that of Simon Magus (Chapter  13.3). The centre of the new movement was initially east of Philadelphia in Ardabau and it was subsequently concentrated in the Phrygian sites Pepouza and Tymion, which were considered to be the new Jerusalem.35 This strongly suggests 51 (1997) 416–38; V.E. Hirschmann, Horrenda Secta (Stuttgart, 2005); A. Marjanen, ‘Montanism: Egalitarian Ecstatic “New Prophecy”’, in id. and P. Luomanen (eds), A Companion to Second-Century Christian ‘Heretics’ (Leiden, 2005) 185–212; W. Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy and Polluted Sacraments: Ecclesiastical and Imperial Reactions to Montanism (Leiden, 2007); W. Tabbernee and P. Lampe, Pepouza and Tymion (Berlin and New York, 2008); H.E. Mader, Montanistische Orakel und kirchliche Opposition (Göttingen, 2012); C. Markschies, ‘Montanismus’, in RAC 24 (2012) 1197–1220. 28  Markschies, ‘Montanismus’, 1206. 29  MAMA IV.4 (Maximilla); MAMA V.23 (Priscilla); Markschies, ‘Montanismus’, 1206. 30  For the wealth of the founders of Montanism, see S. Mitchell, ‘An Epigraphic Probe into the Origins of Montanism’, in P. Thonemann (ed.), Roman Phrygia: Culture and Society (Cambridge, 2013) 168–97 at 191–92. 31  For female literacy, see this volume, Chapter  14.3. 32 Aland, Kirchengeschichtliche Entwürfe, 107. 33 For her epitaph, see Trevett, Montanism, 167–71; Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, 419–23. 34  For women and Montanism, see the detailed discussion by Trevett, Montanism, 151–97. 35 Eus. HE 5.17.2 calls them ‘little towns in Phrygia’. For their identification, see Tabber­

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that its epicentre was in one of the numerous small villages of Phrygia. From there the movement spread all over the Roman Empire and continued to survive well into the reign of Justinian, although the last Montanist inscriptions do not post-date the beginning of the sixth century.36 Where did the Montanists prophesy? Although we have little direct evidence, the comments of Origen, who discussed the Montanists in his commentary on 1 Corinthians, strongly suggest the traditional setting within the congregation: ‘you would not find that Deborah addressed the people as Jeremiah and Isaiah did’, as do his remarks that the daughters of Philip had never prophesied in an assembly.37 Origen’s words are confirmed by Epiphanius’ (Pan. 49.1.1–2.1) report on the Quintillians, a later subsect of the Montanists,38 where ‘often in their assembly seven lamp-bearing virgins enter, undoubtedly arriving robed in white, in order to prophesy to the people. They exhibit a kind of enthusiasm to the people present, working a deception to make everyone weep; they pour forth tears as though, in compassion, they are evoking repentance and by their demeanour are lamenting human existence’ (tr. Tabbernee). We find a last remnant of prophecy within the congregation in Tertullian (An. 9.4), who relates that in Carthage a sister received visions in ecclesia inter dominica solemnia per ecstasin. After the laity had been dismissed, she solet nobis renuntiare quae viderit.39 But who are the nobis? They must be the leaders of the congregation,40 and thus constitute a striking parallel with the AscIs (6) where the people are also dismissed before the vision is recounted to the king, prophets and ‘doers of righteousness’ (§  4). The prophecies of Montanus and his first female followers were especially of an eschatological nature. That is already clear from their stress on Pepouza as the new Jerusalem, itself an indication of their very concrete Enderwartung.41 That is presumably also why Maximilla prophesies: ‘After me no other prophet, but the consummation’.42 On the other hand, there is a difference from earlier nee and Lampe, Pepouza and Tymion, to be read with the critique of Markschies, ‘Montanismus’, 1203–05 and the important observations of Mitchell, ‘An Epigraphic Probe’, 169–70. 36  For the end of Montanism, see Trevett, Montanism, 223–32. 37 Origen, Catenae in Sancti Pauli Epistolas ad Corinthios, on 1 Cor 14.36. 38  For its probably post-Tertullian date, see Trevett, Montanism, 167–71; Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, 346 f. 39  For the passage, see Waszink ad loc.; L. Nasrallah, An Ecstasy of Folly: prophecy and authority in early Christianity (Cambridge MA, 2003) 147–48; K. Waldner, ‘Visions, Prophecy, and Authority in the Passio Perpetuae’, in J.N. Bremmer and M. Formisano (eds), Perpe­ tua’s Passions (Oxford, 2012) 201–19 at 214–15; C. Markschies, ‘The Passio Sanctarum Perpe­ tuae et Felicitatis and Montanism’, ibid., 277–90 at 282–84. 40  See Waszink’s commentary ad loc. E. Norelli, L’Ascensione di Isaia. Studi su un apocrifo al crocevia dei cristianesimi (Bologna, 1994) 245–7 notes the parallel, but interprets nobis as ‘gruppo montanista’, which is hardly correct. 41  So, rightly, Aland, Kirchengeschichtliche Entwürfe, 122; Trevett, Montanism, 95–105. 42 Epiph. Pan. 48.2.4 = Aland, Kirchengeschichtliche Entwürfe, 145 no.  13.

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prophets in that we have both written prophecies of the founding triad of Montanism and later testimonies about prophesying in the assembly (above).43 One would like to know if Montanus and his two prophetesses also pronounced prophecies in the assembly or whether they wrote books only or, also possible, whether they recorded the prophecies pronounced in the assemblies. As so often, sources fail to settle the problem. Finally, as we have already seen, prophesying in ecstasy was a characteristic of Montanism.44 This was already the case with the founding father and mothers. According to the earliest report we have, Montanus ‘became carried away by the Spirit (probably ‘spirit’!) and suddenly fell into frenzy and (the wrong) ecstasy.45 He began to be ecstatic and to talk and to speak in tongues (xe­ nophônein), prophesying contrary to the custom which belongs to the tradition and succession of the church from the beginning’.46 This is one more interesting testimony to the combination of glossolalia and prophecy, which probably also occurred with Maximilla and Priscilla, who according to the same source, spoke ‘madly, untimely and strangely, like Montanus’ (5.16.9). There can be no doubt, then, that ecstasy played an important role with the earliest Montanists, as of course their opponents often pointed out. In fact, their ecstasy seems to have been the main obstacle for the orthodox Christians, as dogmatically there was no great difference between the two groups.47 The Montanists were not the only group in Asia Minor, however, that prophesied in ecstasy. Irenaeus (Adv. haer. 1.13.5) tells us about Marcus ‘the Magician’, a Christian teacher of Valentinian inspiration, that he operated in Asia Minor, where he had seduced the wife of a deacon.48 The report may of course be wholly slanderous, but there is plenty of evidence that upper-class women felt attracted to Christian leaders and, presumably, not always for spiritual and intellectual reasons.49 The statement that they may say anything that comes out of their mouth (Adv. haer. 1.13.3) seems to suggest a kind of glossolalia. Unfortunately, Irenaeus gives us no further details about the ways in which these women prophesied. In this connection, it is highly interesting to note that recently a notice from Lucian has been discovered in an Arabic text, in which he makes fun of Christian glossolalia. Can it be that Lucian, who was demonstra-

43 

For these writings, see Aland, Kirchengeschichtliche Entwürfe, 105 f. Labriolle, La crise montaniste, 555–62; C. Markschies, Kaiserzeitliche christliche Theologie und ihre Institutionen (Tübiungen, 2007) 112–14 and ‘Montanismus’, 1206. 45  The term used, parekstasis, is also employed by Josephus, BJ 6.210. 46 Eus. HE 5.16.7; for Montanus’ ecstasy, see also HE 5.17.2. 47  This has been well stated by Aland, Kirchengeschichtliche Entwürfe, 117. 48 On Marcus, see N. Förster, Marcus Magus: Kult, Lehre und Gemeindeleben einer valentinianischen Gnostikergruppe (Tübingen, 1999); E. Thomassen, The Spiritual Seed (Leiden, 2006) 498–500. 49  See this volume, Chapter  3. 44  De

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bly interested in Christianity (see above), had become acquainted with the Montanists or Marcosians?50 In this connection, we should also pay attention to a neglected passage in the apocryphal Acts of Paul, which relates that in Corinth a certain Cliobius was seized by the Spirit and started prophesying (XII.3). His prediction that Paul has to die is accepted by Paul and the other members of the congregation. The Acts of Paul can be dated to the 190s and derives from southern Asia Minor.51 The acceptance of the prophecy shows that for this author and, presumably, the Christians around him prophecy was still acceptable, whereas elsewhere the activities of the Montanists had started to discredit prophecy among the more ‘orthodox’ Christians. Even more interesting, though, is the fact that a woman, a certain Myrte, was also seized by the Spirit and pronounced a longer prophecy than Cliobius to reassure the congregation that Paul would achieve many conversions in Rome (XII.5). Unlike in Carthage (above), Myrte prophesies within the congregation and clearly not in tongues. That is an important difference from the Montanists and shows that the imaginary congregation of the Acts of Paul was not part of the Montanist movement, even though it may have had some affinity with it. In any case, the epigraphic evidence shows that in the area of Montanism Jews as well as ‘heretical’ and ‘orthodox’ Christians lived closely together.52 This geographical proximity may have forced some ‘orthodox’ congregations to be more tolerant regarding prophecy.

4.  Preliminary conclusions When we now compare the three moments in time we see a rather homogeneous picture. Early Christianity had prophets, male and female, some of whom were members of the congregation, while others wandered from congregation to congregation. Although in Corinth prophecy seems to have been popular, the number of prophets in our sources is always limited.53 However, we have no explicit testimonies that wandering prophets occurred outside Palestine and Phoenicia. The reason is probably that in the first decades after Paul Christianity remained limited to the major cities, although at the end of the first century it had already started to penetrate into the smaller towns and villages of Asia Minor. Consequently, this tradition maintained itself for a while within the area of original Jewish prophecy and its surroundings, presumably due to familiarity with the 50  G. Strohmaier, ‘Lukian verspottet die urchristliche Glossolalie: ein rätselhafter Satz in Galens Epidemienkommentaren’, Philologus 156 (2012) 166–73 and ‘Lukian von Samosata privat’, Das Altertum 58 (2013) 19–26. 51  See this volume, Chapter  10.3. 52  See now Mitchell, ‘An Epigraphic Probe’, 192–97. 53  As is also noted by Dautzenberg, Urchristliche Prophetie, 214.

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phenomenon, but in other areas it did not really enter common Christian practice. Its place was in the assembly of the faithful, not in private like a magician or diviner. Prophecies could be produced orally and in written form, and the founders of Montanism may have used both forms. Whereas the earliest prophecies seem to have dealt with a wide field, subsequent prophecies seem to have concentrated more and more on the revelation of the end of time. Finally, there can be little doubt that early Christian prophecy contained a strong element of ecstasy, which expressed itself in glossolalia. At the same time, it is also clear that already at an early stage prophecy became marginalised. The reasons for this development are manifold, and not all aspects will have been equally important in every local community and moment in time. If we want to identify some reasons on a preliminary basis, we might mention here: cultural differences regarding ecstasy, the need to behave properly in order to become acceptable in the eyes of the pagan community, the need for a strong organisation in the face of growth and persecutions, competition within the church hierarchy, and the birth of the canon. The whole problem is urgently in need of a re-evaluation, but to do so here would exceed the limits of my contribution.54

5.  The Ascension of Isaiah and ecstatic prophecy The description of ecstatic prophecy in AscIs (6) immediately raises an important question of method. The AscIs is not a piece of truthful reporting or a scientific study, but a work of fiction. What is the relationship of this fiction to the reality of the author? Or, to put it differently, how can we use AscIs to reconstruct early Christian ecstatic prophecy?55 In my view, there is only one way. We must first construct a picture of that prophecy, as we have done in the previous paragraphs, and only then can we see in what ways the AscIs resembles or differs from our construction. Yet we must always keep in mind that as a work 54  J.L. Ash, ‘Decline of Ecstatic Prophecy in the Early Church’, Theological Studies 37 (1976) 227–52; B.D. Sommer, ‘Did Prophecy Cease? Evaluating a Reevaluation’, JBL 115 (1996) 31–47; K. Eshleman, The Social World of Intellectuals in the Roman Empire (Cambridge, 2012) 91–124. 55  For prophecy in the AscIs, see especially A. Acerbi, L’Ascensione di Isaia. Cristologia e profetismo in Siria nei primi decennia del II secolo (Milano, 1989) 7–82; M. Pesce, ‘Presup­posti per l’utilizzazione storica dell’Ascensione di Isaia’, in id. (ed.), Isaia, il Diletto e la Chiesa. Visione ed esegesi profetica Cristiano-primitiva nell’ Ascensione di Isaia (Brescia, 1983) 13–69 at 52–62; P.C. Bori, ‘L’esperienza profetica nell’Ascensione di Isaia’, in Pesce, Isaia, 133–45 (and discussion on 145–54), reprinted in his L’estasi del profeta ed altri saggi tra ebraismo e cristianesimo dalle origini sino al “Mosé” di Freud (Bologna, 1989) 17–30, and E. Norelli, ‘AI 6 e il profetismo estatico cristiano’, in his L’Ascensione di Isaia, 235–48.

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of fiction AscIs is not a direct source or an eyewitness report, and use of it has to proceed with care. So let us look one final time at the questions that I have raised in the previous paragraphs. Who is the prophet? The answer is of course clear: Isaiah. But why him? It may be true that he was chosen because of the importance of Isaiah 7.14 in the second part of AscIs,56 but one should also add that Isaiah was the prophet most often quoted in the New Testament and clearly the prophet par excellence for the early Christians.57 In his collection of studies on AscIs, Norelli includes a detailed discussion of the status of Isaiah.58 He compares Isaiah with the protagonist of Hermas (Mand XI) who is a prophet, ‘il quale si riunisce in assemblea con altre uomini che pure partecipano dello Spirito santo’ and concludes that in the AscIs we have similarly ‘un assemblea di profeti con un profeta in posizione eminente’ (241). Norelli rightly compares a papyrus (ca. AD 300) found at the end of the nineteenth century (P.Oxy. 1.5), which adds to a quotation of Hermas, Mand. XI.9–10a, that ‘The prophetic spirit is the body of the order of the prophets (tês prophêtikês taxeôs), which is the body of the flesh of Jesus Christ, which was mixed with humanity through Mary’. The fragment probably belongs to the second half of the second century, but its Sitz im Leben is unfortunately obscure. Norelli (243) explains the fragment as meaning that a body of prophets ‘entro lo comunità’ is considered as the presence of the Holy Spirit, but Harnack, perhaps more persuasively, sees the expression as referring to the prophets as ‘der eigentliche Kern der Christenheit’.59 And indeed, one cannot without further information relate the expression to a proper order within the individual congregations. Norelli (243) reaches this interpretation because he sees the AscIs as the product of a threatened ‘cerchia profetica’ in a congregation ‘in cui l’unico ministero è quello profetico’ (247). The existence of this circle and ‘unique ministry’ is derived solely from the presence of Isaiah, his fellow prophets and sons of prophets in AscIs 6, but to take this information as a historical report is to abolish the distinction between fact and fiction. In our discussion of the other testimonies we have seen that prophets were always few, and nowhere have we encountered a prophetic order or a church with prophets only. I take it therefore 56 

E. Norelli, Ascension d’Isaïe (Turnhout, 1993) 67. Sawyer, The Fifth Gospel: Isaiah in the History of Christianity (Cambridge, 1996); J. Blenkinsopp, Opening the Sealed Book: Interpretations of the Book of Isaiah in Late Anti­ quity (Grand Rapids. 2006); Ch. Metzenthin, Jesaja-Auslegung in Qumran (Zürich, 2010); A. Lange and M. Weigold, Biblical Quotations and Allusions in Second Temple Jewish Literature (Göttingen, 2011) 126–40; J.N. Bremmer, ‘Vergil and Jewish Literature’, Vergilius 59 (2013) 143–50. 58 Norelli, L’Ascensione di Isaia, 234–48. All references to page numbers in the text in this paragraph are to this study. 59  A. von Harnack, Kleine Schriften zur Alten Kirche, 2  vols (Leipzig, 1980) 1.341–5 at 344 (= SB Berlin 1898, 516–20). 57  J.F.

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that the other prophets in AscIs belong to the level of fiction, inspired by the schools of prophets in the Old Testament, but have no counterpart in early Christian reality. In other words, the AscIs reflects the existence of a single prophet together with a group of people who pay special attention to him, the congregation’s ‘doers of righteousness’, as was the case also in Tertullian’s Carthage. Whether there were other ministries too in that congregation we simply do not know, but it can hardly be excluded. Where does Isaiah prophesy? Norelli starts by rightly rejecting an approach to AscIs based on a comparison with Eskimo shamanistic initiation. He notes the differences, but wrongly states that the ecstatic experience of Isaiah takes place in ‘uno spazio sacro’, to which only ‘gli iniziati’ have access (p.  234). In fact, the experience takes place in the king’s palace, which is not described as holy in our text, and it is only the people which is sent away after Isaiah receives his vision, but not the king, his eunuchs or his close advisors. Evidently, prophecy is something for the elect, not the laity. On the other hand, Norelli rightly points out that the ecstasy takes place not in private, but in a meeting of the faithful (235). It seems to me highly doubtful, however, that we could adduce with him (236–7) the Testament of Job here as a parallel, let alone consider its chapters 46–50 with the prophesying daughters of Job as a Montanist interpolation. Only their father and their brother Nereus, whose name seems to have been chosen because of his connections with divination, 60 are present in their case, whereas the daughters do not have their vision in the presence of a community. What does Isaiah prophesy? Norelli (238–9) has rightly pointed out that the object of cc.6–11 is both a soteriological and eschatological revelation on the basis of 9.13 where it is said that ‘The LORD will indeed descend into the world in the last days’. Is this message transparently clear? Norelli (238–9) thinks so and argues that Isaiah’s message does not need any clarification or a Pauline diakriseis pneumatôn (1 Cor 12.10). I am not sure that this is actually the case. In fact, his message is not understood by everybody, only by, naturally, the other prophets and those few men who were ‘doers of righteousness and the fragrance of the Spirit was in them’. In other words, the message of a prophet can be understood only by a few elect. Norelli also seems to overemphasize here the role of the other prophets when he says that after the exposition of the vision ‘l’unica risposta dei profeti consiste nel canto’ (239). In fact, the text says that Isaiah recounted the vision to ‘all those standing before him and they sang praises’ (11.36). These ‘all’ surely also include the king and the just-mentioned ‘doers of righteousness’, not only prophets, but all those who have access to the Spirit.

60  This was overlooked in my ‘Nereus’, in K. van der Toorn et al. (eds), Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (Leiden, 19992) 620 f.

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Finally, how did Isaiah prophesy? There can be no doubt that Isaiah prophesies in an ecstatic manner. Our text clearly suggests that he lay down in a deep trance as if he were dead (6.17). This is a rather different trance from that encountered in our other testimonies, and one may even wonder whether this picture reflects an actual ecstatic practice in the author’s congregation. We should not overlook the fact that in fiction events are often represented as being more spectacular than in reality. It is time to reach a conclusion. As we have seen, the AscIs is a valuable but neglected testimony to early Christian ecstatic prophecy. Nothing contradicts its present localisation around AD 100. Yet it is not an eye-witness report, and its status as fiction should not be forgotten. 61

61  I am most grateful to Tobias Nicklas for his helpful comments and to Orla Mulholland for her skilful correction of my English.

Section II

Studies in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles and the Pseudo-Clementines

Chapter 7

Women in the Acts of John At the beginning of the 1980s, feminism began to influence the study of the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles (AAA). Stevan Davies suggested that the Acts were conceived and read by a community of Christian women; Dennis MacDonald attributed the origin of the Acta Pauli to oral traditions deriving from women who were in opposition to the ruling patriarchal order; and Virginia Burrus argued that the Acts were originally oral stories told by women in female communities, while the focus on chastity reflected the desired or experienced liberation from the patriarchal order.1 But towards the end of the decade a reaction set in. Whilst in principle approving of this sociological approach, Jean-Daniel Kaestli argued strongly that the Acts are unlikely to have an oral background or an origin in a female community, and Peter Dunn has seriously questioned the degree of liberation that the Acts really offered to women.2 Considering these differences in opinion, it is hard to disagree with Kaestli that we now need a study of each of the individual Acts in order to appreciate the contribution of the Acts as a whole to our knowledge of ancient Christianity and to understand the role women played in that movement.3 It will be the aim of this chapter to contribute to that understanding through a detailed study of the place of women in the Acts of John (henceforth: AJ),4 which was probably writ1  S.L. Davies, The Revolt of the Widows (New York and Winston, 1980); D.R. MacDonald, The Legend and the Apostle. The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon (Philadelphia, 1983) and ‘The Role of Women in the Production of the Apocryphal Acts’, The Iliff review 41 (1984) 21–38; V. Burrus, Chastity as Autonomy: Women in the Stories of the Apocryphal Acts (New York and Queenston, 1987), who first expounded her views in an article with the same title in Semeia 38 (1986) 101–17. Davies, ‘Women in the Third Gospel and the New Testament Apo­ crypha’, in A.-J. Levine (ed.), “Women Like This”. New Perspectives on Jewish Women in the Greco-Roman World (Atlanta, 1991) 185–97 simply ignores the critique by Kaestli (note  2). 2  J.-D. Kaestli, ‘Response’ (viz. to preceding article by Burrus), Semeia 38 (1986) 119–31, ‘Les Actes apocryphes et la reconstitution de l’histoire des femmes dans le christianisme ancien’, Cahiers bibliques de Foi et Vie 28 (1989) 71–79 and ‘Fiction littéraire et réalité sociale: que peut-on savoir de la place des femmes dans le milieu de production des actes apocryphes des apôtres?’, Apocrypha 1 (1990) 279–302; P.W. Dunn, ‘Women’s Liberation, the Acts of Paul, and other Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles’, Apocrypha 4 (1993) 245–61. 3  Kaestli, ‘Fiction littéraire’, 302. 4  I follow the standard edition of E. Junod and J.-D. Kaestli, Acta Iohannis, 2  vols (Turnhout, 1983) and use the translation by K. Schäferdieck, ‘The Acts of John’, in NTA 2.152–209. For a survey of modern studies of the AJ, see A. Jakab, ‘Actes de Jean: État de la recherche

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ten in Northern Asia Minor in the AD 160s.5 I start with the episode of Lycomedes and Cleopatra.

1.  Lycomedes and Cleopatra (19–29) The beginning of AJ has been lost and our text starts in medias res with the information that John, prompted by a vision, 6 hurried to Ephesus. His companions only with difficulty prevailed upon him to rest one day in Miletus. These companions are mentioned by name, except for ‘the wife of Marcellus’: the particular reference may well indicate that in the previous chapters John had performed a miracle for her. It is interesting to note that we find among these companions both males and females. In the Greek novel, the world of the women is highly limited and the only friends of a female protagonist are usually slaves. The situation is rather different in the AAA, where women and men quite regularly mingle.7 Unfortunately, we are unable to reconstruct the precise route of the apostle, but his journey from Miletus via Ephesus to Smyrna, and subsequently via Laodicea (58–59) back to Ephesus, suggests that he first toured the coastal cities before visiting those inland, just like the Roman governor on his yearly visits to the assize districts. 8 The focal point of the surviving part of AJ, though, is clearly Ephesus and all non-Ephesian parts have been lost.9 This circumstance seems to suggest that our surviving manuscripts derive from an Ephesian copy, since according to early Christian traditions John had taught in Asia Minor and was buried in Ephesus.10 When John and his followers were approaching Ephesus, they were met by a certain Lycomedes, who requested the apostle to come to his house and to heal his wife Cleopatra, who was paralysed. Lycomedes was still young and one of (1892–1999)’, Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 36 (2000) 299–334; add especially J.A. Snyder, Language and Identity in Ancient Narratives (Tübingen, 2014) 90–141. 5  See the Appendix to this chapter. 6  This is a recurrent motif in the AAA, cf. R. Söder, Die apokryphen Apostelgeschichten und die romanhafte Literatur der Antike (Stuttgart 1932; repr. Darmstadt, 1969) 171–75; J.N. Bremmer, ‘Marginalia Manichaica’, ZPE 39 (1980) 29–34 at 29. 7  For women in the Greek novel, see B. Egger, ‘Zu den Frauenrollen im griechischen Roman. Die Frau als Heldin und Leserin’, in H. Hofmann (ed.), Groningen Colloquia on the Novel I (Groningen, 1988) 33–66; S. Wiersma, ‘The Ancient Greek Novel and its Heroines: A Female Paradox’, Mnemosyne IV 43 (1990) 109–23; K. Haynes, Fashioning the Feminine in the Greek Novel (London and New York, 2003). 8  J. den Boeft and J.N. Bremmer, ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae III’, VigChris 39 (1985) 110–30 at 119, cf. E. Plümacher, Geschichte und Geschichten (Tübingen, 2004) 225. 9  As is observed by L. van Kampen, Apostelverhalen. Doel en compositie van de oudste apokriefe Handelingen der apostelen (Diss. Utrecht, 1990) 101. 10  M. Hengel, Die johanneische Frage (Tübingen, 1993) 113–9.

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the Ephesian stratêgoi,11 the executive council of Ephesus;12 moreover, he was ‘a wealthy man’: the reader is not left in any uncertainty about his importance. Cleopatra was equally young and although she was now ‘a withered beauty’ according to her husband, she had once been so beautiful that the whole of Ephesus had been ecstatic about her. It is not difficult to recognise in these descriptions topoi of the Greek novel, which also regularly details the youth, beauty and noble birth of the hero and heroine.13 After this appeal John immediately went to his house, where Lycomedes knelt before him and started to lament his fate. He blamed his wife’s illness on the evil eye of his enemies,14 and, as often happens in pagan novels, he announced his suicide – a frequently occurring narrative ploy to enhance the dramatic character of the situation.15 Despite the exhortations of the apostle to control himself, he fell to the ground and died. The apostle then healed Cleopatra who in turn resurrected her husband. After Lycomedes had recovered, he charged a painter with making a portrait of John, which he installed in his bedroom in front of an altar, surrounded by candles and wreathed with garlands. Irenaeus (Adv. haer. 1.25.6), a contemporary of AJ’s author (see Appendix), informs us that Carpocratian gnostics wreathed and worshipped portraits of Jesus, Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle and other philosophers, and Augustine (De haer. 7) mentions that a certain Marcella from the same sect worshipped Homer, Pythagoras and Jesus and burned incense in front of their images. Lycomedes’ altar will have served a similar purpose.16 In this passage, then, there seems to be

11 K. Schäferdiek, in NTA, 2.172, curiously translates with ‘praetor’; A.F.J. Klijn, Apokriefen van het Nieuwe Testament, 2  vols (Kampen, 1985) 2.14 uses ‘generaal’, which insufficiently indicates the political nature of the office. 12  The discussion by W. Schwahn, in RE, Suppl. 6 (1954) 1112–13 is totally out of date, cf. the index of the Inschriften von Ephesos (Bonn, 1979–84). 13 Cf. Xen. Eph. 1.1 and F. Letoublon, Les lieux communs du roman. Stéréotypes grecs d’aventure et d’amour (Leiden, 1993) 114–7 (young: this element is not mentioned by Junod and Kaestli, Acta Iohannis, 1.165, 441–42), 119–26 (beautiful, noble). 14  For the evil eye, see M. W. Dickie, ‘The Fathers of the Church and the Evil Eye’, in H. Maguire (ed.), Byzantine Magic (Washington D. C., 1995) 9–34; V. Stolba, ‘Beads, Pendants and Charms: The Evil Eye Belief among the Greek and Indigenous Population of Taurica’ (in Russian), Vestnik Drevnei Istorii 2009.2, 109–28; R. Kalmin, ‘The Evil Eye in Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity’, in B. Isaac and Y. Shahar (eds), Judaea-Palaestina, Babylon and Rome: Jews in Antiquity (Tübingen, 2012) 11–28; J.H. Elliott, Beware the Evil Eye: the Evil Eye in the Bible and the Ancient World, Vol.  2 : Greece and Rome (Eugene, OR, 2016). 15  B. Wesseling, Leven, Liefde en Dood: motieven in antieke romans (Diss. Groningen, 1993) 73–119. 16  This worship of portraits is clearly of Greek origin and was introduced by the Epicureans, cf. B. Frischer, The Sculpted Word (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1982). In the course of time, the custom seems to have merged with the Roman ritual of worshipping important ‘gurus’ in a lararium, cf. A.D. Nock, Essays on Religion and the Ancient World, 2  vols, ed. Z. Stewart (Oxford, 1972) 2.669 (where this passage has to be added); S. Settis, ‘Severo

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a polemic going on against gnostic sects who to a certain extent competed for the same followers as more orthodox Christianity, not least for women.17 In this episode the difference in behaviour between husband and wife is rather striking. Lycomedes is weak, grovels at the feet of the apostle and dies from grief. Cleopatra, on the other hand, is firm and the apostle saw her ‘neither raging from grief nor being outside herself’, although she also grieved for her partner. In fact, it is explicitly said that because of her controlled behaviour the apostle had pity on Cleopatra and prayed to Christ on her behalf. Moreover, he allowed her to resurrect her own husband,18 and she did not relapse into pagan practices. Clearly, the author of AJ pictures Cleopatra both as more in control of herself and as a firmer follower of Christ than her husband. Fortunately, the chapters about the relationship between Lycomedes and Cleopatra have survived almost completely,19 unlike those about Andronicus and Drusiana, the other couple who appear as protagonists in the Acts of John.

2.  Andronicus and Drusiana (63–86) When John returned to Ephesus for the last time, he was accompanied by Andronicus and Drusiana (a married couple), Aristobula, ‘who had learnt that her husband Tertullus had died in the Way (of Christ)’, Aristippe and Xenophon, and the ‘chaste prostitute’ (59). Allusions in later literature strongly suggest that they all played a role in the original AJ,20 but only some episodes about Andronicus and Drusiana have survived the ‘editing’ and censorship of previous centuries. The introduction of Drusiana has been lost, but we may assume that she, like Cleopatra, was a young woman, since Callimachus, who has fallen in love with her (below), is also described as a young man (71, 73, 76) – love for an older woman is hardly probable in these novels. Andronicus’ age is not mentioned, but he is described as a stratêgos, like Lycomedes, and he is ‘prôtos of the EpheAlessandro e i suoi Lari (S.H.A., S.A., 29, 2–3)’, Athenaeum 50 (1972) 237–51; J.D. Breckenridge, ‘Apocrypha of Early Christian Portraiture’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 67 (1974) 101–9. 17  For gnostics and women, see J.E. Goehring, ‘Libertine or Liberated: Women in the Socalled Libertine Gnostic Communities’, in K.L. King (ed.), Images of the Feminine in Gnosticism (Philadelphia, 1988) 329–44, repr. in D.M. Scholer (ed.), Women in Early Christianity (New York and London, 1993) 183–98; H. Havelaar, ‘Sofia en Maria Magdalena. Twee vrouwenfiguren in gnostische teksten’, in D. van Paassen and A. Passenier (eds), Op zoek naar vrouwen in ketterij en sekte (Kampen, 1993) 25–40; see also this volume, Chapter  3. 18  P. Schneider, The Mystery of the Acts of John (San Francisco, 1991) 24 states that ‘Lykomedes had only fainted’. This contradicts the explicit testimony of the text that he had died (23). 19  But see Junod and Kaestli, Acta Iohannis, on c. 25.3, 29.10, 19. 20  Junod and Kaestli, Acta Iohannis, 1.94–6.

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sians at that time’ (31).21 Junod and Kaestli translate this qualification with ‘un notable’, but this insufficiently brings out the agonistic flavour of the term: Andronicus is a ‘leading citizen’ (Schäferdiek) of the town. From allusions in the Manichaean Coptic Psalter, it appears that after her conversion Andronicus had locked up Drusiana and John together in a tomb.22 After two weeks they were released, the husband also converted and the couple started to live together as brother and sister (63).23 Does this relationship to some extent reflect contemporary events? It is clear that an ascetic trait runs through all of the AAA, but contemporary notices about ascetic couples are unfortunately lacking. The negative influence of conversion on mixed pagan-Christian marriages, however, can be paralleled in ‘real life’: Justin relates the story of an anonymous Roman matrona who after her conversion divorced her husband for his ‘sinful’ life and whose Christian teacher was subsequently executed (2Apol.  2). In the surviving parts of AJ we are told that Callimachus, also ‘prôtos of the Ephesians’, fell in love with Drusiana. But as he did not succeed in winning her favours, he fell in a state of melancholy. This distressed Drusiana to such an extent that she fell ill and, rather improbably, died ‘because of the bruising of the soul of that man’. Andronicus also grieved too much, if not to the same degree as Lycomedes. He regularly burst into tears in the company of others so that John repeatedly had to silence him. After her burial, Drusiana was not yet free from her ‘lover’. On the contrary, together with Fortunatus, the corrupt steward of Andronicus, Callimachus broke into the grave of Drusiana in order to commit necrophilia. When they were on the point of removing the last garment, the rather expensive dikrossion,24 a huge snake suddenly appeared from nowhere, fatally bit the steward and remained on Callimachus after he had fallen to the ground. The next day Andronicus, John and some other brothers went to the grave. On arrival, the apostle opened the doors of the grave by a simple order as they had forgotten the keys. The motif of automatically opening doors derives from pagan literature,25 as does another detail in this scene. When they entered the grave, they saw an attractive young man who was smiling. The same smiling youth is also encoun21  For this expression, see the Appendix to this chapter; this volume, Chapter  10.3 and my ‘The Onomastics and Provenance of the Acts of Paul’, in F. Barone et al. (eds), Philologie, herméneutique et histoire des textes entre Orient et Occident. Mélanges en hommage à Sever J. Voicu (Turnhout, 2017) 527–47. 22  Junod and Kaestli, Acta Iohannis, 2.549, rightly point to the novel for this motif; add Letoublon, Lieux communs, 74–8. 23  Junod and Kaestli, Acta Iohannis, 1.86–91. 24  For a very full collection of references to this type of garment, see F.R. Adrados (ed.), Diccionario Griego-Español V (Madrid, 1997) s.v. dikrossion and dikrossos. 25 The classic study is O. Weinreich, Religionsgeschichtliche Studien (Darmstadt, 1968) 45–290 (first published in 1929). For more passages and the most recent bibliography, see J.J. Smoolenaars, Statius Thebaid VII: a commentary (Leiden, 1994) 4041; this volume, Chapter  25 on c. 16.2.

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tered in the Acts of Paul, where a youth of great beauty appeared smiling and loosened Paul’s bonds (7), and in the Acts of Peter, where Jesus appeared smiling to Peter in his prison (16). The motif is well known from pagan epiphanies where the appearing divinity traditionally smiles to reassure anxious mortals.26 Erik Peterson has argued that when Christ appeared as youth, he appeared as the child that Adam was before the Fall.27 This explanation, however, is hardly persuasive and the motif deserves further attention. Andronicus considered Fortunatus unworthy of being saved, but he asked John to resurrect Callimachus in order that he should confess exactly what had happened, not, we may observe, so that he should convert. Drusiana, on the other hand, generously asked the apostle to resurrect Fortunatus as well, even though Callimachus opposed her request. When John charged her to do so she performed the resurrection with enthusiasm, but not before she had pronounced a prayer in which she mentioned Andronicus’ earlier violence towards her. As in the case of Cleopatra, then, she is represented in a more favourable light than her husband.

3.  Old women and widows (30–7) In addition to the two couples we have discussed, the surviving part of AJ also shows us John actively engaged on behalf of old women. He ordered Verus to bring to him all the old women of Ephesus in order to care for them. When he heard how many of them were in an ill state of health, he told Verus to bring them to the theatre, so that he could heal them there and thus also convert some of the spectators through these healings. This connection between healing and conversion is not unique in Christian texts and deserves a small excursus. In his study of the first stages of Christianisation, Ramsay MacMullen attaches great weight to exorcism and miracles as one of the means of attracting converts.28 ‘We should’, according to him, ‘assign as much weight to this, the chief instrument of conversion, as the best, earliest reporters do’. On closer inspection, these reporters – note the use of a term which suggests well‑informed eyewitnesses – turn out to be the early Christian apologists. And indeed, their claims were not negligible. Justin boasted that ‘many persons possessed by demons, everywhere in the world and in our own city, have been exorcised by many of our Christian men’ (2Apol.  6); Irenaeus asserted that ‘some people incontestably and truly (note the defensive tone!) drive out demons, so that those very persons, who have been purified of evil spirits, often become believers and 26 Many parallels: O. Weinreich, Antike Heilungswunder (Giessen, 1909) 3 note   2; M. Puelma, Mus. Helv. 17 (1960) 149; this volume, Chapter  12.1. 27  E. Peterson, Frühkirche, Judentum und Gnosis (Freiburg, 1959) 189–96. 28  R. MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire (New Haven, 1984) 27.

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become members of the Church’ (Adv. haer. 2.32.4), and Tertullian even issued the challenge ‘let a man be produced right here before your (viz. the emperor’s) court who, it is clear, is possessed by a demon, and that spirit, commanded by any (!) Christian at all, will as much confess himself a demon, which is true, as, by lying, he will elsewhere profess himself a “god”’ (Apol. 23.4). In the light of this evidence, it is hardly surprising that Lane Fox observes that ‘the fame of the Christian exorcists was widely known’.29 But was it? In fact, Lane Fox seems to have his doubts, since he raises some objections against the efficacy of this kind of miracle. He rightly observes that we know of no historical case when a miracle or exorcism turned an individual, let alone a crowd, to the Christian faith, and he quotes Justin (Dial. 60.6) who in the 130s observed that miracles only impress eyewitnesses.30 Should we not go even further? When we look more precisely at the claims of the Christian apologists we cannot be but struck by the vagueness of their utterances. Nobody ever cites a specific case. Irenaeus (Adv. haer. 2.32.4) wrote that miracles were still frequent in his time, but as Lane Fox rightly observes, his claim that ‘even dead bodies have been resurrected and they stayed with us for a good many years’, does not improve his credibility. Theophilus, an apologist in the 180s, observes only that exorcisms worked ‘sometimes and even today’ (Ad Autol. 2.8), and Origen is hardly more precise: ‘If I put in writing all those cases I have been present at myself, I would make myself a laughing‑stock for the unbelievers, who would think that I myself had made up these stories, like those others they suspect of having made up such tales’ (CC 1.46). In fact, there is a powerful argument that deters us from accepting exorcism as an important factor in the conversion to Christianity. Before Constantine, very little open advertising of Christianity is attested. Conversion by exorcism therefore could hardly have taken place in front of large crowds, and it is difficult to believe that the rather steep rise of Christianity was due to a secret army of exorcists going from door to door in order to win converts. The fame of Christian exorcism, of which Lane Fox spoke, only existed, accordingly, in the imagination of the Christians. I do not want to deny the existence of Christian exorcists, but their prominence was, so to speak, not so much a question of fame but rather of claim. This claim finds its explanation in the contemporary religious situation. The increasing distance between believer and god in the Hellenistic‑Roman period went hand in hand with an exaltation of the powers of that god. Building on the Jewish tradition, the early Christians focussed on mental health rather than bodily welfare. Their special focus may well have been a felicitous one in a period in which mental health seems to have come more under stress than in the previous era, but it is impossible even to be 29 

R. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (Harmondsworth, 1986) 328. AJ 2.23, 4.48, 6.14–15.30, 12.9, 18.

30 Compare

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remotely precise in this respect. The fact remains that in their praises of their own medical efficacity the Christian apologists had merely joined the chorus of those who praised the powers of their own particular god. It is this typically ‘Hellenistic’, aretalogical aspect of the new faith that explains the claims made for healing powers. Compared with the early Christian apologists, this aspect is exaggerated in the AAA, where the apostles perform all kinds of miracles, including raising the dead, the most spectacular feat of religious power, and healing the ill en masse as John proposed to do in Ephesus. There is, then, a strong missionary aspect to these Acts. Let us now return to the apostle and the old women. When the masses of Ephesus heard of his plan, they were already queuing up during the night in order not to miss the spectacle. Rosa Söder (1903–1991) has rightly observed that in the Acts the ‘crowd’ is a recurrent topos in descriptions of miracles and serves to enhance the dramatic character of many scenes. Yet these crowds were not only a literary phenomenon but must also have reflected contemporary behaviour, as is well illustrated by a scene in the Martyrdom of Pionius. When Pionius and his fellow Christians were led off after their arrest wearing chains, ‘quickly, as if for an unexpected spectacle, a crowd rushed up so that they jostled one another. And when they arrived at the Agora, at the eastern Stoa and the double gate, the whole of the Agora and the upper porticoes were filled with Greeks and Jews, and even women’.31 Söder has also drawn attention to the prominence of the theatre in these descriptions. This motif, too, reflects a contemporary phenomenon, viz. the enormous popularity of the theatre in Imperial times, which gradually replaced the agora as the meeting place for the assembly.32 When the old women and the crowd were assembled, John harangued his audience with a long sermon, in which he threatened his audience with the Last Judgment. The threat was apparently such a stock-in-trade part of early Christian preaching that even Celsus had noted that Christians ‘threaten others with these punishments’ (CC 8.48). According to Lane Fox, ‘there was an ample place ... for plain fear in Christian conversions, and Christian authors did not neglect it: their martyrs’ words on hell and the coming Judgment were believed to be an advertisement every bit as effective as their example at the stake’.33 Although Lane Fox is probably right that the threat was intended to support the plea for conversion, he provides not a single example to support his statement 31  Mart. Pion. 3, cf. L. Robert, Le martyre de Pionios, prêtre de Smyrne (Washington DC, 1994) 54–55, who does not comment upon the remarkable presence of the women. 32  Crowd and theatre: Söder, Apokryphen Apostelgeschichten, 158–62; S. Saïd, ‘The City in the Greek Novel’, in J. Tatum (ed.), The Search for the Ancient Novel (Baltimore, 1994) 216–36 at 221–22; A. Chaniotis, ‘Theatricality beyond the Theater. Staging Public Life in the Hellenistic World’, Pallas 47 (1997) 219–59, and ‘Theatre Rituals’, in P. Wilson (ed.), The Greek Theatre and Festivals (Oxford, 2007) 48–86. 33  Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 326ff; see also R. MacMullen, Changes in the Roman Empire (Princeton, 1990) 136.

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that the threat did actually work. Yet there can be no doubt that the early Christians had internalised the fear of the Last Judgment to an extent that is unthinkable today, as the following example may illustrate. The Carthaginian group of martyrs around Perpetua threatened those pagans who had come to their prison to jeer at them ‘with God’s judgment, stressing the joy they would have in their own suffering, and ridiculing the curiosity of those that came to see them’. John’s words, then, clearly reflected contemporary Christian thinking in this respect.34 When the apostle had finished his sermon, he healed the illnesses, but, unfortunately, the conclusion of the episode has been lost and we simply do not know what happened afterwards. Presumably, the old women and many spectators converted and accepted the new faith. Curiously, Junod and Kaestli pay no attention at all to the fact that the apostle cures old women, although this is a most remarkable feature of the episode. Old women had joined the Christian movement from the very beginning, as the pseudo-Pauline Letter to Titus shows (2.3), but in Greek and Roman society old women were in many ways at the bottom of the social scale. They were the butt of Attic comic mockery; Hellenistic sculptors frequently represented them as drunks; and Romans typically represented witches as old women.35 In concentrating on old women, then, the early Christians showed compassion for a social category that was despised and must have often been in dire circumstances. It is interesting that even contemporary pagans noted this concern for old women. In a book that he wrote around 165 about the self-immolation of the philosopher Peregrinus,36 the satirist Lucian mentions ‘old crones’ among his visitors in prison (12). Lucian clearly satirised their prominent position among the Christians, but he did not realise that he was witnessing a slow revolution in the ancient value-system, which would soon develop into a tidal wave. Old women also play a small role in an episode of AJ, which has only been recovered more recently from an Old Irish text. According to the fourteenth-century Liber Flavus Fergusiorum, ‘very many pious nuns, widows, and such holy persons following John’ lived from the alms that the apostle received from his fellow Christians. When they complained continuously about their small portions and accused the apostle of embezzling charitable donations, he changed hay into gold, which he subsequently threw into the sea. In this way he 34  Passio Perpetuae 17; see also Polycarp 11.2; Ptolemaeus and Lucius 2; Lyons 26; Mart. Agape etc. 4; this volume, Chapter  2.5. 35  J.N. Bremmer, ‘The Old Women of Ancient Greece’, in J. Blok and P. Mason (eds), Sexual Asymmetry. Studies in Ancient Society (Amsterdam, 1987) 191–215; S. Pfisterer-Haas, Darstellungen alter Frauen in der griechischen Kunst (New York, 1989); P. Zanker, Die trun­ kene Alte (Frankfurt, 1989); J. Masséglia, ‘Reasons to be Cheerful? The Drunken Old Woman of Munich and Rome’, in A. Chianotis (ed.), Unveiling Emotions: Sources and Methods for the Study of Emotions in the Greek World (Stuttgart, 2012) 413–40. 36  See this volume, Chapter  5.

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showed the ‘hypocritical widows’ that he did not need any wealth and had given them every penny of the alms he had received.37 The attention given to widows may surprise, but charity towards widows was an important activity in second-century Christianity.38 In the Acts of Peter we hear of a certain Marcellus who was the ‘refuge’ of all the widows in town (8). Peter heals some blind, old widows (21), and after he resurrects the son of a senator, the mother wants to distribute some of her property to her newly freed slaves, but the apostle tells her to distribute the remainder among the widows (28). In the Acts of Paul, a father sold his possessions and ‘brought the price to the widows’, after Paul had resurrected his son (4). In Rome in the first half of the second century, some Christians even tried to profit from this charity: Hermas saw in his visions a mountain with snakes and other wild animals. These were meant for those deacons who had embezzled money destined for widows: some of the deacons, who did the day-to-day work of charity whilst the bishop had the final responsibility, clearly lived in style at the expense of the congregational funds.39 In fact, charity must have been reasonably ‘big business’, since around 250 bishop Cornelius proudly mentioned that the congregation supported 1500 widows and other needy persons.40 Not every Christian, though, was pleased with the special treatment of widows, which so strongly contradicted prevailing values. The anonymous author of a popular Apocalypse of Peter, which perhaps originated in Egypt about AD 135, understood this negative feeling well and therefore included in his description of Hell the following warning: In another place situated near them, on the stone a pillar of fire (?), and the pillar is sharper than words – men and women who are clad in rags and filthy garments, and they are cast upon it, to suffer the judgment of unceasing torture. These are they who trusted in their riches and despised widows and the woman (with) orphans ... in the sight of God (9E, tr. C.D.G. Müller).

The wealthy who despised widows were not alone in their contempt. As in the case of the old women (above), Lucian also mentions, presumably with a sneer, the presence of widows among the visitors to Peregrinus. For the upper classes, 37  M. Herbert and M. McNamara, Irish Biblical Apocrypha. Selected Texts in Translation (Edinburgh, 1989) 93, whose translation slightly differs from that in Junod and Kaestli, Acta Iohannis, 1.114 f. 38  See this volume, Chapter  4. 39 Cf. Sim. IX.26.2 (deacons) and 27.2 (bishops); Just. 1Ap.  67.7 (deacons); M. Leutzsch, Die Wahrnehmung sozialer Wirklichkeit im ‘Hirten des Hermas’ (Göttingen, 1987) 73–74, 135, 161. 40 Eus. HE 6.43. For the importance of charity for the development of the Christian church in Late Antiquity, see the various studies by Peter Brown: Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity (Madison, 1992) 78–103; Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD (Princeton, 2012) and Treasure in Heaven (Charlottesville, 2016); this volume, Chapter  2.1.

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this interest was indeed absurd, but the organisation involved in charity must have been an important factor in the overall organisational strength of the early Church.

4. Conclusion What have we learned, then, about the place of women in the production, reception and text of AJ? In itself, it would not be impossible for a woman to have been the author, since many women in the Roman period could read and write,41 but in fact very few women are known to have written prose fiction in antiquity.42 The simple fact of a sympathetic treatment of women in a piece of writing does not necessarily make the author a woman.43 Moreover, the treatment of women in AJ is rather varied. Whereas upper-class women play an active role, old women are only an object of the apostle’s actions, and widows are even severely reproached. Clearly, AJ reflects in this respect the normal hierarchical views of the Greco-Roman upper classes and, thus, is hardly the product of a community of egalitarian ‘sisters’. Similarly, Burrus’ idea of an oral background for some of the stories in AJ, notably that about Drusiana, will hardly stand a critical test, since the stories are too poorly informed about Ephesus for such an origin to be credible.44 If female authorship, then, is not immediately probable, what about its readership? In the study of the Greek novel, female readership has lost much of its earlier popularity.45 Yet female readership can hardly be excluded, since throughout the Greek novel women are represented as literate and, for example, in Chariton’s Callirhoe they also form part of the internal audience.46 In the case of AJ a female readership certainly seems to have been one of the target audiences of the author,47 if only since the readership of the Acts of Paul (and 41 S.G. Cole, ‘Could Greek Women Read and Write?’, in H. Foley (ed.), Reflections of Women in Antiquity (New York and London, 1981) 219–45; add the Christian examples in this volume, Chapter  14.3. 42  E. Bowie, ‘The Readership of Greek Novels in the Ancient World,’ in Tatum, The Search for the Ancient Novel, 435–59 at 438 f. 43  See the objections to Davies’ thesis in M. Lefkowitz, ‘Did Ancient Women Write Novels?’, and R. Kraemer, ‘Women’s Authorship of Jewish and Christian Literature in the Greco-Roman Period’, in Levine, “Women Like This”, 199–219 and 221–42. 44  Persuasively argued by K. Schäferdiek, ‘Herkunft und Interesse der alten Johannesakten’, ZNW 74 (1983) 247–67. H. Engelmann, ‘Ephesos und die Johannesakten’, ZPE 103 (1994) 297–302 is not convincing. 45  Wesseling, ‘The Audience of the Ancient Novel’, in Hofmann, Groningen Colloquia I, 67–79; S.A. Stephens, ‘Who Read Ancient Novels?’, in Tatum, The Search for the Ancient Novel, 405–18. 46 B. Egger, ‘Looking at Chariton’s Callirhoe’, in J.R. Morgan and R. Stoneman (eds), Greek Fiction. The Greek Novel in Context (London and New York, 1994) 31–48 at 35 f. 47  As was already observed long ago for the AAA in general by F. Pfister, in E. Hennecke

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Thecla?) included women (below). But there are other indications as well. In AJ the two heroines are clearly depicted as far superior to their husbands: Cleo­ patra does not relapse into pagan practices, unlike Lycomedes, and Drusiana is not only more in control of herself but also resurrects her husband, not vice versa. AJ, then, allowed upper-class women clear possibilities for identification and this strongly points to female readership; considering the nature of Greco-Roman literacy, such readers were by definition members of the middle and upper classes. Indeed, it would be strange if it had been otherwise, since in the first centuries women seem to have constituted the majority of Christian membership.48 Did AJ also suggest a ‘liberated’ life-style to women?49 Whereas Cleopatra and Lycomedes presumably led a normal married life, Drusiana and Andronicus have renounced sexuality in their relationship. Apparently, the author left both possibilities open to married couples. In this connection there is a further scene we should consider (48–55). Before he left Ephesus for Smyrna, John met a young man who had fallen in love with his neighbour’s wife.50 Irritated by his father’s warning against this liaison, he kicked him to death. Junod and Kaestli insufficiently bring out the evil character of this deed. For Greeks and Romans, parricide was perhaps the most appalling crime imaginable – witness the myth of Oedipus, whose parricide led to incest with his mother.51 The story therefore has a strong moralistic flavour. Moreover, the parricide subsequently led to the self-castration of the young man, since after John had resurrected his father the man cut off his testicles and threw them before his former girl friend.52 It seems noteworthy that although John disapproved of this act, nevertheless he did not heal the youth but accepted him as he was. In other words, if AJ offered an alternative life style to women, it also suggested a life of continence for men. Finally, the prominent position of the women will also have had a certain missionary appeal among Greek and Roman women. It is important to stress the inclusion of the latter in AJ, since in the Greek novel the Roman world is mostly carefully eliminated. AJ, however, mentions a proconsul (31) and con(ed.), Neutestamentliche Apokryphen (Tübingen, 19242) 169. Snyder, Language and Identity, 138–39 persuasively argues that these women will have been Christians, as the AJ was intended for a Christian readership. 48  A. von Harnack, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums (Berlin, 1924 4) 589– 611; Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 310. 49  For the contemporary life of upper-class married women, see M.Th. Raepsaet-Charlier, ‘La vie familiale des élites dans la Rome impériale: le droit et la pratique’, Cahiers du Centre G. Glotz 5 (1994) 165–97. 50  Considering the hostile attitude towards the country in most Greek novels, we may notice that the young man is explicitly described as coming from the chôra (48), cf. E. Bowie, ‘The novels and the real world’, in B. Reardon (ed.), Erotica Antiqua (Bangor, 1976) 91–6 at 94 f. 51  Cf. J.N. Bremmer (ed.), Interpretations of Greek Mythology (London, 19882) 49–51. 52  For the connection between youth and castration, see Nock, Essays, 1.476 f.

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tains a number of Roman names: Marcellus, Tertullus, Fortunatus, and Drusiana, a most unusual but unmistakeably Roman name (see Appendix).53 In the earliest stages of Christianity, these women could occupy influential positions to a degree unheard of in contemporary pagan religions or Judaism,54 as still sometimes today in modern Africa,55 although a reaction against this more active role set in at an early stage.56 In fact, if we can trust the transmitted text of Tertullian’s De baptismo (17.5),57 certain Carthaginian women invoked the Acts of Paul (and Thecla?) to claim the right to instruct and to baptise. Evidently, a certain ‘liberating’ effect of the AAA can not be denied.58

Appendix: date and place of composition of the Acts of John The place and date of composition of the Acts of John are topics of debate. As for date, Junod and Keastli have convincingly argued that the AJ was the earliest of the five great Apocryphal Acts.59 Its author almost certainly knew the Greek novel by Chariton,60 and the borrowing of the name of Lycomedes as one of its protagonists suggests a temporal affinity to the novelist Xenophon of Ephesus (1.1, 1.5 etc.), who was writing between the late Flavian and early Antonine age, 53  Cassius Dio 57.13.1 mentions that the sharpest swords were called ‘Drusiana’, but this does not seem relevant in our case. Note, however, its frequent occurrence in Manichaean circles as a testimony to the success of the AJ in those circles: I. Gardner et al., Coptic Documentary Texts from Kellis I (Oxford, 1999) no.  19.62, 73; 21.20; 28.31. 54  Pagan religions and Christianity: J. Hidalgo de la Vega, ‘Mujeres, carisma y castidad en el cristianismo primitivo’, Gerión 11 (1993) 229–44; A. Buelman and R. Frei-Stolba, ‘Les flaminiques du Culte impérial: contribution au rôle de la femme dans l’empire romain’, Études de Lettres 1994, 114–26; this volume, Chapter  3. Judaism: see the balanced view by P.W. van der Horst, Hellenism-Judaism-Christianity (Kampen, 1994) 73–95, although women were perhaps not as important as leaders of synagogues as he suggests, cf. T. Rajak and D. Noy, ‘Archisynagogoi: Office, Title and Social Status in the Greco-Jewish Synagogue’, JRS 83 (1993) 75–93, reprinted in T. Rajak, The Jewish dialogue with Greece and Rome (Leiden, 2001) 393– 429; see also P.W. van der Horst, ‘Images of Women in Ancient Judaism’, in R. Kloppenborg and W.J. Hanegraaff (eds), Female Stereotypes in Religious Traditions (Leiden, 1995) 43–60. 55  G. Kosack, ‘Christianisierung – Ein Schritt zur Emanzipation? Die Bedeutung der Religion für die Mafa-Frauen (Nordkamerun)’, Anthropos 90 (1995) 206–17. 56  Cf. R. Nürnberg, ‘Non decet neque necessarium est, ut mulieres doceant. Überlegungen zum altkirchlichen Lehrverbot für Frauen’, JAC 31 (1988) 57–73; K.J. Toresen, ‘Tertullian’s “Political Ecclesiology” and Women’s Leadership’, Studia Patristica 21 (1989) 277–82; E.M. Synek, ‘In der Kirche möge sie schweigen’, Oriens Christianus 77 (1993) 151–64. 57  W. Rordorf, Lex orandi – Lex credendi (Freiburg, 1993) 475–84; A. Hilhorst, ‘Tertullian on the Acts of Paul’, in J.N. Bremmer (ed.), The Acts of Paul and Thecla (Kampen, 1996) 150–63; G. Poupon, ‘Encore une fois: Tertullien, De baptismo 17.5’, in D. Knoepfler (ed.), Nomen Latinum. Mélanges A. Schneider (Neuchâtel and Geneva, 1997) 199–205. 58  Contra Dunn, ‘Women’s Liberation’. 59  See especially Junod and Kaestli, Acta Iohannis, 2.698–700. 60  Junod and Kaestli, Acta Iohannis, 2.691; P.J. Lalleman, ‘Classical Echoes (Callimachus, Chariton) in the Acta Iohannis’, ZPE 116 (1997) 66 and The Acts of John, 149.

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perhaps even in the first years of Antoninus Pius. 61 A date only slightly later than this for the AJ is suggested by a detail that has not received the attention it deserves. In Ephesus, John commands Verus, ‘the brother that served him’, to convene the old women (AJ 30). Verus’ name is noteworthy. Here, a man with an imperial name – Lucius Verus was co-emperor with Marcus Aurelius from AD 161–169 – is explicitly said to serve the apostle. The fact that ‘Verus’ is not employed as a personal name in any other texts or any inscription from Asia Minor, the area where our author lived, shows that the author of the AJ chose it for a reason. As it is unlikely that the author would have chosen the name long after Verus’ death in AD 169, this detail, along with the evident knowledge of the two Greek novels, the AJ’s pre-Valentinian Gnostic tendencies, its specific form of docetic Christology,62 and its seeming ignorance of the Old Testament and the Epistles of Paul, supports the frequent suggestion that the AJ originated in the AD 160s. 63 Otto Zwierlein posits a slightly later date by arguing that the Acts of John derive from the Acts of Peter, which are to be dated to the 170s or 180s. 64 He has made a reasonable case for a number of derivations from the Acts of Peter within the chapters 87–105, but precisely these chapters have long been recognised as an interpolation, a fact Zwierlein overlooks. 65 In other words, these derivations do not help us to date the Acts of John more precisely, as we do not know the time or place where this interpolation was made, although Alexandria seems not improbable. 66 As regards its place of composition, it is important to note the social terminology describing its protagonists: both Andronicus (31) and Callimachus (73) are called a ‘first of the Ephesians’ (31), and Antipater is ‘a first of the Smyrnaeans’ (56). This social and political terminology was typical of Northern Lycia and Caria. 67 At first sight, Aphrodisias would be the ideal place given the number of early novels that have been plausibly ascribed to Aphrodisias, such as Chariton’s Callirhoe and, albeit with various degrees of probability, Ninus,

61  K. Coleman, ‘Sailing to Nuceria: Evidence for the Date of Xenophon of Ephesus’, Acta Classica 54 (2011) 2741. 62 Lalleman, The Acts of John, 270. 63  Junod and Kaestli, Acta Iohannis, 2.168 note  5 observe that the author of the AJ ‘ne mentionne nulle part l’existence de l’Ecriture’, but see Lalleman, The Acts of John, 110–34, 142–46, whose proposed parallels are hardly persuasive. 64  See this volume, Chapter  9.3. 65  O. Zwierlein, Petrus und Paulus in Jerusalem und Rom (Berlin and Boston, 2013) 233– 48. Interpolations: Junod and Kaestli, Acta Iohannis, 2.581–677; Lalleman, The Acts of John, 25–68 and ‘The Relation between the Acts of John and the Acts of Peter’, in J.N. Bremmer (ed.), The Apocryphal Acts of Peter (Leuven, 1998) 161–68. 66 Lalleman, Acts of John, 267–68. I. Czachesz, ‘Eroticism and Epistemology in the Apo­ cryphal Acts of John’, Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift 60 (2006) 59–72 persuasively argues for a second edition in Alexandria at the beginning of the third century 67  See this volume, Chapter  10.3.

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Chione, Parthenope and Antonius Diogenes’ Wonders beyond Thule. 68 Yet this city hardly enters into consideration, since Christianity was a latecomer to Caria in general and Aphrodisias in particular.69 In fact, our evidence for Jewish life in Aphrodisias derives only from Late Antiquity, although inscriptions demonstrate the earlier presence of Jews in other cities of Caria.70 Still, the usage of the Ionian form Smyrne rather than the habitual Smyrna (37) also points to an inhabitant of Asia Minor. However, there is an important indication that has not been noted until now. In the case of texts, it is often a specific name or institutional detail that can help us to determine it origin. In our case, we have such an as yet unnoticed detail. As far as I can see, investigators of this text have not recognised how rare the name Drusiana was in the ancient world. Apart from Drusianus, which is attested in various part of the Roman world, especially as a second cognomen or agnomen of Imperial slaves and freedmen who had once belonged to a Drusus, probably, at least in some cases, the son of Livia,71 there are only two more examples of the name. One Drusiana derives from Rome, viz. the daughter of a M. Flavius Drusianus (CIL 6.1414: c. 200 AD), but she is obviously no help to us. Much more intriguing is our second example: Τεττία Δρουσιανή, wife of Π. Αἴλιος Ἀσκληπιάδης, Νεικομηδέων βουλευτής, whose tombstone was erected at Dorylaion in northern Phrygia, but who himself evidently was a Nicomedian and member of the Nicomedian boulê.72 Given its utmost rarity, the name is highly indicative and suggests that the author of the Acts of John took it from a local honorific or funeral inscription for this Drusiana. Inscriptions as sources of inspiration for the authors of these Christian ‘novels’ may surprise, but we have perfectly comparable parallels. The Acts of Peter seems to use inscriptions with the name of Granius Marcellus, a pro-consul of Bithynia under Augustus, 68  G. Bowersock, Fiction as History (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1994) 38–41 (Antonius Diogenes); S. Stephens, ‘Fragments of Lost Novels’, in G. Schmeling (ed.), The Novel in the Ancient World (Leiden, 1996) 655–83 at 660–1 (Chione); S. Swain, Hellenism and Empire (Oxford, 1996) 424–25 (Ninus and Parthenope). For Parthenope, see also G. Strohmaier, ‘Al-Biruni und der griechische Partenoperoman’, Graeco-Arabica 6 (1995) 72–9. 69  P.W. van der Horst, Essays on the Jewish World of Early Christianity (Freiburg and Göttingen, 1990) 166–81 (‘Jews and Christians in Aphrodisias’); F.R. Trombley, Hellenic Religion & Christianization c. 370–529, 2  vols (Leiden, 1994) 2.52–73. 70 A. Chaniotis, ‘The Jews of Aphrodisias: New Evidence and Old Problems’, SCI 21 (2002) 209–42; W. Ameling, Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis II: Kleinasien (Tübingen, 2004) 69–144; P.W. van der Horst, Saxa Judaica loquuntur: Lessons from Early Jewish Inscriptions (Leiden, 2014) 39–41. 71  H. Chantraine, Freigelassene und Sklaven im Dienst der romischen Kaiser (Wiesbaden, 1967) 311. 72  A. Koerte, ‘Kleinasiatische Studien VI’, Athenische Mitteilungen 25 (1900) 398–444 at 427 no.  45. The husband is dated to the second/third century AD by the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names V.A, ed. T. Corsten (Oxford, 2010) s.v. Asklepiades (40). I am most grateful to Heiki Solin for the reference (per email 20–7-2016).

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and Q. Iulius Balbus, the proconsul of Asia of 100/1 or 101/102, and the Acts of Paul uses the names of the historical Queen Tryphaena and of Falconilla, the wife of a consul of AD 163.73 Consequently, it is almost certain that the author of the AJ came from Nicomedia, precisely the big town where we could have expected the variety in female roles that is so characteristic of the AJ. His familiarity with the terminology of the ‘first of the city’, the author probably took from the novel and not from the area of Lycia and Caria, as I thought before. The location may surprise, but previous studies have persuasively suggested a Bithynian origin for the Acts of Andrew and the Acts of Peter. Moreover, these two works have long been seen as fairly close to the AJ, especially the Acts of Andrew.74 A Nicomedian origin, which was actually suggested for the Acts of Peter long ago and is not improbable for the Acts of Andrew as well,75 thus seems an unexpected but compelling solution to the quest for the original place of composition of the Acts of John.76

73 

See this volume, Chapter  9.3 (Peter) and 10.2 (Paul). and Kaestli, Acta Iohannis, 2.698 with a list of the similarities; similarly, J.-M. Prieur, Acta Andreae, 2  vols (Turnhout, 1989) 1.394–400. 75  See this volume, Chapter  8 , Introduction (Andrew), and 9.3 (Peter). 76  I am most grateful to Ton Hilhorst for his observations and to Ken Dowden and Harry Maier for their helpful corrections of my English. 74  Junod

Chapter 8

Man, Magic, and Martyrdom in the Acts of Andrew From the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles (AAA) less has been preserved of the Acts of Andrew (AA) than of any of the other Acts, although two recent editions have made considerable progress with the constitution of the text in comparison with earlier ones.1 Fortunately, its general plan still remains visible in the reworking by Gregory of Tours of the lost Latin translation (AAlat), but this skeleton version has, surely, robbed us of many details which might have enabled us to determine with more certainty where and when the author lived and worked. Confronted with these handicaps, what can we nevertheless say about the author? According to Prieur, it is as likely that the AA was composed in ‘Greece as in Asia Minor, Syria or Egypt’.2 The latter area is not a very strong possibility, since the name of one of the protagonists of AA, Maximilla (to whom we will return below), is not attested for Egypt.3 Prieur has also overlooked the fact that our author uses the expression ‘first of the city’: in the Pontic town of Amasea Andrew resurrected an Egyptian slave of Demetrii ... primi civitatis Ama­seo­ rum (AAlat 3). This expression, variants of which also occur in the Acts of John and the Acts of Paul,4 may have been inspired by local custom, since a Pontic inscription from Sebastopolis mentions a grandson of an ‘andros prôteuontos en têi mêtropolei Amaseiai’.5 A Pontic or Bithynian origin would explain the awkward scope of the AA, which somewhat uneasily combines a stay in Pontus and 1  J.-M. Prieur, Acta Andreae, 2 vls (Turnhout, 1989), whose numbering I follow, and I use the translation by Prieur and W. Schneemelcher, in NTA 2.101–51; T.S. Richter, ‘P.Ien. inv. 649: Ein Splitter vom koptischen Text der Acta Andreae’, Archiv für Papyrusforschung 44 (1998) 275–84; L. Roig Lanzillotta, Acta Andreae Apocrypha (Geneva, 2007), summarised as ‘The Acts of Andrew. A New Perspective on the Primitive Tekst’, CFC (g): Estudios griegos e indoeuropeos 20 (2010) 247–59, who has shown that the oldest and most primitive text is that of the Codex Vaticanus 808; X. Lequeux, ‘Les anciennes Passions latines de l’Apôtre André’, in H.G. Saradi and D.D. Triantaphyllopoulos (eds.), O απόστολος Ανδρέας στην ιστορία και την τέχνη (Patras, 2013) 9–16. Translations: D.R. MacDonald, The Acts of |Andrew (Santa Rosa, 2005); L. Roig Lanzillotta and G.P. Luttikhuizen, Handelingen van Andreas (Zoetermeer, 2008). 2 Prieur, Acta Andreae, 1.414–64 and NTA 2.115. 3  As a computer search in the papyri and inscriptions has shown. 4  See this volume, Chapter  14.2. 5  IGR III.115, republished by B. Le Guen Pollet, Epigraphica Anatolica 13 (1989) 65–6 and T.B. Mitford, ‘Inscriptiones Ponticae—Sebastopolis’, ZPE 87 (1991) 181–243, no.  12.

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Bithynia with a martyrdom in Patras. The latter location was perhaps influenced by a Greek novel, the lost Metamorphoses of ‘Lucius of Patrai’, the model of Apuleius and Lucian’s Onos;6 in fact, the author of the AA hardly displays any real knowledge of Patras.7 In any case, its combination of the vocabulary of elite and civic virtues (below) makes it unlikely to have been written anywhere else than in Asia Minor. Such an origin is also supported by the mention of the wife of the proconsul Lesbios and her steward (AAlat 23). It is unlikely that a real Roman proconsul would have taken his wife with him to his province, let alone together with her own steward.8 On the other hand, a steward (oikonomos or pragmateutês) of wealthy Greek women is epigraphically attested, especially in areas with large estates, such as Central Anatolia and Bithynia, and they must have been a sufficiently common and distinctive feature for the author of the Historia Apollonii Tyrii (31 RA, RB) to have introduced one into his novel.9 In this respect, our text also points to Asia Minor. Given that we have situated the AJ in Nicomedia,10 the AA may well have been written there too, as the literary interests and values of the author (below) fit a big city much better than a small town. What else can we say about the author? Most likely, he was a cultivated man, as he was well versed in Platonic philosophy.11 However, he also mentions a woman Calliope (the name of one of the Muses: AAlat 25), a slave Alcmanes (a probable reference to the famous Spartan poet Alcman: 4, AAlat 34), a Sinopean citizen Gratinus (probably Cratinus, the name of the famous poet of Old Comedy: AAlat 5), a Megarian citizen Antiphanes (the name of a famous poet of Middle Comedy: 15; AAlat 29), and the proconsul Lesbios, whose name in this literary company evokes the island of Lesbos, which was famous for its poets

6  For this author, see J.N. Bremmer, ‘The Novel and the Apocryphal Acts: Place, Time and Readership’, in H. Hofmann and M. Zimmerman (eds), Groningen Colloquia on the Novel IX (Groningen, 1999) 157–80 at 168 f. 7 A. Weiss, ‘Lokalkolorit in der Apostelgeschichte des Lukas und in den apokryphen Apostelgeschichten – Realitätseffekt oder Authentizitätsmarker? Ein Vergleich’, in J. Thiessen (ed.), Die Apostelgeschichte des Lukas in ihrem historischen Kontext (Münster and Zürich, 2013) 9–28 at 13–15. 8  For stewards, see J. Carlsen, Vilici and Roman Estate Managers until AD 284 (Rome, 1995); Wives: M.T. Raepsaet-Charlier, ‘Épouses et familles de magistrats dans les provinces romaines aux deux premiers siècles de l’empire’, Historia 31 (1982) 56–70. 9  Oikonomos: SEG 43.441 (BCH 1993, 384–94); I. Iznik 196, 1062, 1201, 1208; RECAM ii.324; L. Robert, BCH 102 (1978) 429 note  3; S. Mitchell, Anatolia, 2  vols (Oxford, 1993) 1.160; R. van Bremen, The Limits of Participation (Amsterdam, 1996) 267–9. 10  See this volume, Chapter  7, Appendix. 11 Prieur, Acta Andreae, 1.376–77; C. Schroeder, ‘The Erotic Asceticism of the Passion of Andrew: the Apocryphal Acts of Andrew, the Greek Novel, and Platonic Philosophy’, in A.-J. Levine (ed.), The Feminist Companion to New Testament Apocrypha (Sheffield, 2006) 47–59.

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Alcaeus and Sappho (AAlat 22).12 One may be sceptical about these identifications, but our author was certainly sensitive to names. It can hardly be chance that the wife of the proconsul Lesbios was called ‘The most beautiful’, Callista (AAlat 23), and the wife of the proconsul Aegeates ‘The most important’, Ma­ xi­milla, even though the latter name was not very usual in the Greek world. There are also other indications that our author did not belong to the lowest strata of his city. Any reader of the AA will be struck by the stress on ‘gentleness’ in our text. Antiphanes invokes Andrew’s help with the words: ‘if there is any gentleness (bonitas) in you’ (AAlat 29), just as all the men of Thessalonica loved a young man, Exuos (Exuor, Exoos, Exuus), for ‘his gentleness and mildness’ (bonitatem et mansuetudinem: AAlat 12) after his resurrection. And when Stratocles is introduced into the story, he is said to have ‘fulfilled his proper duty to his friends, bearing himself kindly (prosênôs) to all and greeting all in gracious (epieikôs) and seemly (metriôs) fashion’ (1). These words were key terms of Greek civic life and regularly recur in the honorific decrees so abundantly displayed in the Greek cities of Hellenistic and Roman times. The most frequent of the three Greek terms in the characterisation of Stratocles was epieikês, ‘reasonable’, which in the course of time came to mean ‘fair’,13 whereas metrios meant ‘moderate’, and prosênês ‘gentle’; the latter quality even became reflected in names.14 Sometimes the terms occur in combinations, as in the case of the above mentioned Exuos, who was praised for what in Greek may have been called his praotês kai epieikeia, a combination which was rather popular in Aphrodisias.15 In all these cases, the stress on moderation and softness is an indication of the growing judicial harshness of the period which needed to be countered by praising the moderation and gentleness of the grands seigneurs.16 But whereas at first these terms denoted important civic virtues, they subsequently became used to denote personal qualities, as in our examples.17 The use of these terms, then, shows that our author was a man well 12  Prieur misses all literary references, except Alcmanes. A literary interpretation of the name Cratinus is supported by its virtual absence in second-century Asia Minor. 13  L. Robert, Hellenica 4 (1948) 15–8, 133 and 13 (1965) 223–4; J. de Romilly, La douceur dans la pensée grecque (Paris, 1979) 269–70; L. Robert, Le martyre de Pionios (Washington, 1994) 63–4; SEG 43.850; this volume, Chapter  11.1. 14  Prosênês: Robert, Hellenica 4, 133; De Romilly, La douceur, 271; SEG 35.1330. Names: H. Solin, Die stadtrömischen Sklavennamen, 3  vols (Stuttgart, 1996) 2.426 and Die griechi­ schen Personennamen in Rom, 3  vols (Berlin and New York, 20032) 2.838. Metrios: C. Spicq, Notes de lexicographie néotestamentaire, 2  vols (Freiburg and Göttingen, 1978) 2.563–5; TAM II.3.739; SEG 35.1363. 15  De Romilly, La douceur, 269; note also the name Prautês, cf. N.P. Milner, An Epigraphical Survey in the Kibyra-Olbasa Region Conducted by A.S. Hall (Ankara, 1998) no.  142. 16  See also C. Spicq, Notes de lexicographie néo-testamentaire. Supplément (Freiburg and Göttingen, 1982) 570–82. For the growing harshness, see R. MacMullen, ‘Judicial Savagery in the Roman Empire’, in his Changes in the Roman Empire (Princeton, 1990) 204–17, 357–64 (notes). 17 Robert, Le martyre de Pionios, 63.

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acquainted with the ethical vocabulary of his time and thus, probably, a representative of the higher classes. The author’s theological views have been well studied by Prieur, who has concluded that they have much in common with Gnosticism. His contempt for the flesh also displays itself in his propagation of a very simple diet, encratism and the renunciation of sexuality.18 The latter element is demonstrated by various scenes, one of which deserves a closer look. In Philippi, Andrew prevented a wedding between two pairs of cousins (AAlat 11). The moment itself is narrated with a feeling for drama, since the marriage is nearly consummated and the parents are already wearing the wedding garlands, as befitted such a festive event. At that very moment, the apostle arrived and spoilt the party. Prieur has persuasively suggested that Gregory has tinkered with the story, but the question is of course in what way he did so.19 A marriage in the urban elite between the children of brothers, the so-called parallel cousins, was not uncommon at the time of the AA. In fact, Achilles Tatius’ contemporary novel Leukippe and Kleitophon is a striking example, since the homonymous protagonists of the novel are children of two brothers. Achilles Tatius probably came from southern Anatolia,20 the same region where we situate the AP, and it is exactly in Lycia that endogamy in the elite is repeatedly attested.21 Another interesting example can be found in Apuleius (Met. 4.26), whose Greek model, the Metamorphoseis ascribed to ‘Lucius of Patrai’, probably was also composed in Southern Anatolia.22 Here a girl relates that on the very day of her wedding bandits had taken away her consobrinus, ‘cousin’, whom omnis civitas had elected as filium publicum, that is, he was a ‘son of the city’, a honorary title especially popular, once again, in Southern Anatolia in the second century.23 Her husband-to-be was also three years older than herself, an interesting indication of the age difference at marriage in the region.24 On the other hand, Prieur is completely right in stating that incest between cousins was not an issue in those days. In fact, the prohibition of a marriage between cousins appears first in the Councils of Epaon (AD 517: canon 30) and Auxerre (canon 31), that is, right at the time of Gregory. Unfortunately, the date of the latter Council is debated. If it indeed took place some time after AD 585, as the latest discussion hesitantly suggests, that would be an additional argu18 Prieur,

Acta Andreae, 1.319–30. Acta Andreae, 1.42 f. 20  Bremmer, ‘The Novel and the Apocryphal Acts’, 165–8. 21  S. Pembroke, ‘Last of the Matriarchs: a study in the inscriptions of Lycia’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 8 (1965) 217–47 at 231n2; A. Balland, Inscriptions du Létôon (Paris, 1981) 152ff; M. Wörrle, Stadt und Fest im kaiserzeitlichen Kleinasien (Munich, 1988) 70; M. Adak, Epigraphica Anatolica 26 (1996) 136. 22  Bremmer, ‘The Novel and the Apocryphal Acts’, 168. 23  Van Bremen, Limits of Participation, 167–69. 24  Add the example to those in the introduction to Chapter  9, this volume. 19 Prieur,

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ment for dating the Liber de miraculis to Gregory’s last years, since ‘incest’ between cousins does not seem to have been a burning issue in the earlier part of that century.25 In any case, in the original AA the episode will have been directed against marriage rather than against incest. So when did the intellectual from Asia Minor write the AA? The absence of institutional details, the peculiar Christology and the absence of any certain references to the New Testament have made Prieur suggest that the AA were composed shortly after the AJ.26 Such an early date of origin for the AA, presumably somewhere in the 160s or 170s, is supported by its close proximity to the Acts of John. The state of the textual tradition makes it difficult to determine with certainty who has borrowed from whom, although there are strong arguments that the AA borrowed from AJ.27 There is also another indication, which should be taken into account. When Stratocles is introduced, the author tells us that Caesar had excused him from the army so that he could dedicate himself to philosophy (1): evidently, it was impossible to represent the emperor as being opposed to military service. The author’s intentions become clearer in the Coptic fragment, where we hear of a young man who, like the centurion mentioned by Tertullian in his De corona (1), had thrown off his uniform and dropped his sword (AAco 9) 28 – a passage perhaps to be connected, as Prieur suggests, with the soldiers who threaten the apostle in Thrace (AAlat 9).29 Now the question about the acceptability of military service hardly occurs in the Christian literature of the first and second centuries, but suddenly becomes prominent around the beginning of the third century, when, presumably, the Christian faith had started to make inroads into the Roman army.30 In other words, the theme of 25  P. Mikat, Die Inzestgesetzgebung der merowingisch-fränkischen Konzilien (511–626/7) (Paderborn, 1994) 119–20 (Epaon), 131–32 (Auxerre); add to his bibliography M. de Jong, ‘To the Limits of Kinship: anti-incest legislation in the early medieval west (500–900)’, in Bremmer (ed.), From Sappho to De Sade. Moments in the History of Sexuality (London, 19892) 36– 59. Late date of Liber: J. Flamion, Les Actes Apocryphes de l’Apôtre André (Louvain, 1911) 54 f. 26 Prieur, Acta Andreae, 1.313–14; L. Roig Lanzillotta, ‘The Acts of Andrew and the New Testament: The Absence of Relevant References to the Canon in the Primitive Text’, in J.-M. Roessli and T. Nicklas (eds), Christian Apocrypha: Receptions of the New Testament in Ancient Christian Apocrypha (Göttingen, 2014) 173–88. 27  Junod and Kaestli, Acta Iohannis, 2.698; Prieur, Acta Andreae, 1.394–400; Lalleman, ‘The Acts of Andrew and the Acts of John’. Add to the latter ‘verbal parallels’ (143) the, probably, Christian neologism θρήσκευμα, ‘religious practice’, in AJ 39–40 and AA 7, which does not re-appear before Synesius, Aegyptii sive de providentia 1.18. 28  I quote the Coptic fragment from the edition in Prieur, Acta Andreae, 2.655–71. 29 Prieur, Acta Andreae, 2.588, who on p.  327 notes the author’s rejection of military service, but does not draw any chronological conclusions from his observation. 30  A very full bibliography on this theme: F. Ruggiero, Tertulliano, De Corona (Milan, 1992) XLIV-XLVIII; add J. Roldanus, ‘De vroege kerk en de militaire dienst’, Kerk en Theologie 33 (1982) 182–202; P.W. van der Horst, De onbekende God (Utrecht, 1988) 210–28; G. Dunn, ‘Tertullian and Military Service’, in D.V. Meconi (ed.), Sacred Scripture and Secular Struggles (Leiden, 2015) 87–103.

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the rejection of military service supports a date for the AA in the later second century at the earliest. After these observations on the author, place and period of the AA, it is time to look at some of its more prominent aspects. I will discuss (1) men and women, (2) magic and exorcism, and (3) martyrdom as reflected in the AA.

1.  Males and females How are males and females represented in the AA?31 Let us start with the depiction of the brothers Stratocles and Aegeates, both noble Romans. When Stratocles saw his beloved servant Alcmanes in the grip of a demon, he wanted to commit suicide because of his great grief (2). Moreover, he is depicted as groaning, sighing and incessantly weeping (8, 43) – hardly the accepted behaviour of the Roman upper class. Aegeates does not fare much better. To start with, his status is evidently belittled by his own admission that he was of a lower status than his wife (36; AAlat 24). Relationships in which a Christian woman was socially superior to her pagan partner did indeed occur. They were even condoned by Pope Callistus, but it is not clear whether our passage presupposes such practices.32 Aegeates’ lower status was also reflected in his behaviour. He was a drunkard (18), a glutton (46) and, like his brother, he threatened to commit suicide when his wife was very seriously ill (AAlat 30). In addition, he was slow-witted, since for eight months a female slave, Eukleia, could pretend to be his wife in bed, despite the fact that he is pictured as being a husband in love – a mistake admittedly made easier by the Roman upper-class custom of making love in the dark.33 Aegeates also did not always move in the right way. When he was once acting as a judge, he suddenly remembered the apostle, rose from the bench and ran ‘like a madman’ to the praetorium (35), whereas a real Roman (or Greek) gentleman, of course, was never seen running in public; even Maximilla, although in haste, moved ‘not rashly or without set purpose’ (46).34 Even worse, when Aegeates was at the point of discovering Andrew and the brethren in Maximilla’s chamber, he became struck with stomach-ache and had to sit a long time on a kind of toilet (13) – not a very dignified sight for a Roman governor! In this passage, the author has visible pleasure in depicting the highest 31 

For the various figures, see also Lanzillotta, Acta Andreae Apocrypha, 141–49. Ref. 9.12.24–5; Tert. Ad uxorem, 2.8. 33 Ovid, AA 2.619–20, Am 1.5.7–8; Martial 11.2.4, 11.104.5, 12.43.10; Tacitus, Ann. 15.37. 34  For walking among the Greeks and Romans, see Bremmer, ‘Walking, standing and sitting in ancient Greek culture’ and F. Graf, ‘Gestures and conventions: the gestures of Roman actors and orators’, in J. Bremmer and H. Roodenburg (eds), A Cultural History of Gesture (Cambridge, 1991) 15–35 at 18–20 and 36–58 at 55, respectively. 32 Hipp.

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Roman official in less than respectable situations: an interesting testimony of the possibilities which Greeks could exploit to express their true opinion about their rulers.35 Moreover, Aegeates was very cruel. After his detection of Eukleia’s cheating he had her fellow slaves, who had informed him about her deceit, crucified. Regarding Eukleia herself, her tongue, hands and feet were cut off and ‘after remaining some days without nourishment she became food for the dogs’ (22). Crucifixion was a customary Roman penalty for slaves, although not uncommon in the Greek world, whereas originally the other measures seem to have been typically Greek.36 Similar cruelty was also displayed by an anonymous proconsul in, perhaps, Amaseia, who ordered a young man, Sostratus, with whom his mother had fallen hopelessly in love, to be executed via the culleus of the parricide (AAlat 4).37 This typically Roman penalty may seem out of place in this Greek environment, but for the Greek mentality incest and parricide were closely related,38 and the passage may thus reflect the original. In both these cases, the behaviour of the Roman pagan proconsuls is in stark contrast with the gentleness and affability of the converted Stratocles. In one case, even a Christian prostitute could be more imposing than a pagan male. The wife of the proconsul Lesbios, whom we will meet again as a real sinner, condemned her husband’s former concubine, Trophime, to a brothel, which was not an uncommon penalty39. Here she was protected by an euangelium hidden on her bosom. Apparently, the method of protection proved very helpful, since it made impotent all those who wanted to ‘touch’ her (continge­ rent) and helped to kill a youth who wanted to ‘sexually humiliate’ her (inlu-

35  The example is not mentioned by H. Fuchs, Der geistige Widerstand gegen Rom in der antiken Welt (Berlin, 1938); J. Palm, Rom, Roemertum und Imperium in der griechischen Literatur der Kaiserzeit (Lund, 1959). 36  Greek crucifixions: M. Hengel, Crucifixion (London, 1977) 69–83; J. and L. Robert, Fouilles d’Amyzon en Carie (Paris, 1983) 259–63; É. Puech, ‘Notes sur 11Q19 LXIV 6–13 et 4Q524 14, 2–4. À propos de la crucifixion dans le Rouleau de Temple et dans le judaïsme ancien’, Revue de Qumran 18 (1997) 109–24; in general, J.G. Cook, Crucifixion in the Mediterranean World (Tübingen, 2014). Tongue: 2 Macc.7.4; Plut. M.849B; 4 Macc. 10.19, 12.13; Origen, Mart.23. Hands and feet: Pol. 5.54.10, 8.21.3; 2 Macc. 7.4; Diod.Sic. 34.8; 4 Macc. 10.20; Aug. De gestis cum Emerito 9 (PL 43.704: a bishop’s tongue and hands cut off). 37  For a fascinating study of the penalty with rich bibliographies, see F. Egmond, ‘De “straf met de zak” of poena cullei. De longue durée van een rituele strafvoltrekking’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 109 (1996) 3–44. 38  Parricide and incest: J.N. Bremmer (ed.), Interpretations of Greek Mythology (London, 19882) 49–51; add A. Moreau, ‘La liaison entre parricide, inceste et cannibalisme. Compléments’, Cahiers du GITA 1 (1985) 49–56. 39  F. Rizzo Nervo, ‘La vergine e il lupanare’, in La narrativa cristiana antica (Rome, 1995) 91–99.

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deret: AAlat 23).40 This power of the gospel also becomes apparent in the case of an old man of 74, evidently still compos mentulae, who had converted after a life of debauchery and taken an euangelium with him.41 Yet life-long habits are not easily shed. He again succumbed to his lust and approached a prostitute, but this time she did not let him get near her – evidently, she had felt the presence of the gospel. According to Prieur, the episodes must have been introduced by Gregory or a later translator (revisor?) of the text, since contemporary testimonies for ‘magical’ use of a gospel are non-existent. And indeed, Christian miniature codices are attested only from the fourth century onwards,42 when also the magical use of the gospel becomes apparent. Jerome also reproaches superstitiosae mulierculae for carrying small gospels on their persons like the Pharisees with their phylacteries, and small gospels have been found in graves from the fourth or fifth century onwards – surely as amulets.43 It is, then, unlikely that these episodes were already part of the original AA. When we now survey our evidence, we cannot fail to observe a clear contrast between men and women, and there can be little doubt as to which category comes off the better. On the whole, except for the apostle, males are depicted as rather feeble and having difficulty controlling themselves, just as they are in the Acts of John. As was the case with the AJ, we thus once again feel that educated, wealthy women were an important part of AA’s intended readership.44

2.  Magic and exorcism Any reader of the AA will be struck by the multitude of references to magic, demons and exorcism. We cannot discuss in detail all the relevant passages, but we can certainly pose questions such as: who is the magician, where are the de40  In late Latin, contingere is a well attested euphemism for sexual intercourse, cf. J.N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (London, 1982) 184; for inludo see Adams, ibidem, 200. 41  The sexual connotation of exercere in AAlat 28: Adams, Latin Sexual Vocabulary, 158 n.  1. 42  E. Turner, The Typology of the Early Codex (Philadelphia, 1977) 22, 30; M. Kruger, The Gospel of the Savior: An Analysis of P. Oxy. 840 and Its Place in the Gospel Traditions of Early Christianity (Leiden, 2005) 23–40; several studies by T.J. Kraus: ‘Die Welt der Miniaturbücher in der Antike und Spätantike’, Studien zum Neuen Testament und seiner Umwelt.A 35 (2010) 79–110; ‘Fragmente zweier christlicher Kodizes in der Bodleian Library, Oxford’, in D. Minutoli (ed.), Inediti offerto a Rosario Pintaudi per il suo 65o compleanno (Florence, 2012) 39–52 and ‘Miniature Codices in Late Antiquity: Preliminary Remarks and Tendencies about a Specific Book Format’, Early Christianity 7 (2016) 134–52. 43  J. Vezin, ‘Les livres utilisés comme amulettes et comme reliques’, in P. Ganz (ed.), Das Buch als magisches und als Repräsentationsobjekt (Wiesbaden, 1992) 100–15 at 103–5; J.N. Bremmer, ‘From Books with Magic to Magical Books in Ancient Greece and Rome’, in D. Boschung and J.N. Bremmer (eds), The Materiality of Magic (Munich, 2015) 241–69. 44  For female readership, see this volume, Chapter  14.3.

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mons and what do they look like? How do they affect the possessed? How does the apostle approach them and how do they react? How does the victim of demonic possession respond to his exorcism? In what kind of context does exorcism take place? And what is the reaction of the public? Investigation into ancient exorcism has rarely transcended the stage of collecting the facts, but we must always take into account that exorcism is a ritual scenario that takes place between the exorcist, the person possessed, the demon(s) and the public. Any analysis that neglects one of these aspects only presents us with an inadequate view of this ancient ritual.45 Let us start with the magician. In the Coptic fragment, a young magician says before ‘attacking’ a Christian girl: ‘If I have spent five and twenty years under the instruction of my master until I was trained in his skill, this is the beginning of my craft’ (AAco 10). The passage is an interesting, albeit neglected, testimony to the ancient belief that magic could only be learnt after many years of instruction, preferably in Egypt.46 So Celsus reproached Jesus of having learned magic in Egypt;47 according to later legend, Bishop Cyprian had been ten years with the Memphitic priests training to become a magician (Conf. 12),48 and Lucian’s lover of lies had spent twenty-three years in subterranean chambers of Memphis 45  For exorcism, see K. Thraede , ‘Exorzismus’, in RAC 7 (1969) 44–117 (learned but insufficient on the AAA); P. Brown, Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (London, 1982) 123–6; R. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (Harmondsworth, 1986) 327–30; R. Kotansky, ‘Greek Exorcistic Amulets’, in M. Meyer and P. Mirecki (eds), Ancient Magic and Ritual Power (Leiden, 1995) 243–77; F. Graf, ‘Exorcismus’, in Der neue Pauly 4 (1998) 348–350; E. Sorenson, Possession and Exorcism in the New Testament and Early Christianity (Tübingen, 2002); R.A. Horsley, ‘“My Name is Legion”: Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Roman Palestine’, in F. Flannery et al. (eds), Experientia, vol.  1 (Leiden, 2008) 41–57; A.A.R. Bastiaensen, ‘Exorcism: Tackling the Devil by Word of Mouth’, in N. Vos and W. Otten (eds), Demons and the Devil in Ancient and Medieval Christianity (Leiden, 2011) 129–42; modern Greece, Ch. Stewart, Demons and the Devil (Princeton, 1991) 211–21. 46 For Egypt as the country of magic par excellence, see R. Ganschinietz, Hippolytos’ Capitel gegen die Magier, Refut. Haer. IV 28–42 (Leipzig, 1913) 34; P. Achtemeier, ‘Jesus and the Disciples as Miracle Workers in the Apocryphal New Testament’, in E. Schüssler Fiorenza (ed.), Aspects of Religious Propaganda in Judaism and Early Christianity (Notre Dame and London, 1976) 149–86 at 155–6; F. Graf, ‘How to Cope with a Difficult Life. A View of Ancient Magic’ and D. Frankfurter, ‘Ritual Expertise in Roman Egypt and the Problem of the Category “Magician”’, in H. Kippenberg and P. Schäfer (eds), Envisioning Magic (Leiden, 1997) 93–114 at 94–5 and 115–35 at 119–21, respectively; G. Bohak, ‘Rabbinic Perspectives on Egyptian Religion’, Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 2 (2000) 215–31 at 220–1; Dickie, Magic and Magicians, 203–5, 215–7, 229–31; M. Frenschkowski, Magie im antiken Christentum (Stuttgart, 2016) 156–57; G. Bohak, ‘Diffusion of the Greco-Egyptian Magical Tradition in Late Antiquity’, in I. Rutherford (ed.), Graeco-Egyptian Interactions: Literature, Translation, and Culture, 500 BC-AD 300 (Oxford, 2016) 357–82. 47 Origen, CC 1.28, 38, 46; bSanh 107b; B. Kollmann, Jesus und die Christen als Wundertäter (Göttingen, 1996) 179–81. 48  For the text, see Acta Sanctorum, Sept. vol. VII, 204ff; H.M. Jackson, ‘A Contribution Toward an Edition of the Confession of Cyprian of Antioch, the secreta Cypriani’, Le Muséon 101 (1988) 33–40.

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where Isis had trained him to become a magician (Philopseudeis 34–6). Clearly, after an even longer period of instruction our magician should have been a formidable opponent of the apostle! The same teacher-pupil relationship perhaps underlies the episode of Exuos, an upper-class youth, who had left his parents in order to follow Andrew. When they tried to smoke out the apostle with the help of a military cohort, their son extinguished the fire with a dish of water. The parents realised that their plan had failed and exclaimed: ‘Look, our son has become a magician!’ Not wholly surprisingly, they had identified Andrew as a master magician (AAlat 11). The young magician did not speak himself, but, according to the apostle, it was the demon Semmath who had entered him (AAco 10). According to Prieur (ad loc.), Semmath may well have been the devil and must have been introduced by the Coptic translator, but he rightly does not follow Quispel’s suggestion that Semmath is the demon Sammael of the Latin translation of the Acts of Andrew and Mathias (24).49 Unfortunately, both Quispel and Prieur overlooked a close relative of this demon, the undoubtedly related demon Sammoth from one of the Leiden magical papyri (PGM XII.79). Magicians were traditionally believed to be accompanied by a demon who helped them perform their magic, the so-called parhedros.50 According to Irenaeus, the heretic Marcus had such a ‘demonic assistant (daimona parhedron), through whom he himself seems to prophesy and through whom he rouses to prophecy those women whom he thinks worthy of participating in the grace’ (Adv. haer. 1.13.3). As the assistant was indispensable, he is sometimes even mentioned right at the beginning of a ritual, such as in a Berlin magical papyrus: ‘A [daemon comes] as an assistant who will reveal everything to you clearly and will be your [companion and] will eat and sleep with you’.51 Often, though, demons do not belong to a specific magician but seem to be independent beings that sometimes lurk in specific places. It is rather striking for us moderns to find them regularly in the baths,52 a belief abundantly illustrated by the AA. When Andrew comes near Sinope, he heals the son of Crati49  G. Quispel, ‘An Unknown Fragment of the Acts of Andrew’, VigChris 10 (1956) 129–48 at 137 n.4. 50  C. Zintzen, in Kleine Pauly 4 (1972) 510–11; Th. Hopfner, Griechisch-ägyptischer Offenbarungszauber I, 19211 (Amsterdam, 19742) §  1ff; C. Colpe, in RAC 10 (1974) 621ff; L. Ciraolo, ‘Supernatural Assistants in Greek Magical Papyri’, in Meyer and Mirecki, Ancient Magic, 279–95; F. Graf, Magic in the Ancient World (Cambridge MA, 1997) 107–16; A. Scibilia, ‘Supernatural Assistance in the Greek Magical Papyri: The Figure of the Parhedros’, in J.N. Bremmer and J.R. Veenstra (eds), The Metamorphosis of Magic from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period (Leuven, 2003) 71–86. 51  PGM I.1–3. All translations from magical papyri are from H.D. Betz (ed.), The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation I (Chicago, 19922). 52  C. Bonner, ‘Demons of the Bath’, in Studies Presented to F.Ll. Griffith (London, 1932) 203–8; Hopfner, Offenbarungszauber I §  195; K. Dunbabin, ‘Baiarum grata voluptas: pleasures and dangers of the baths’, Papers of the British School at Rome 57 (1989) 6–46.

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nus, who had been ‘struck’ (see below) by a demon when frequenting the women’s bath (AAlat 5). Subsequently, in Patras he resurrected the wife of Lesbios, Callista, who, whilst taking a bath together with her steward (see the introduction), had been ‘struck’ by a demon (AAlat 23). Finally, in Corinth he exorcised both an old man and a youth whom he had met in the baths (AAlat 27). Gregory’s narration supplies no more information about the last case, but in the earlier ones we can easily recognise the underlying pagan and Christian objection to mixed bathing.53 The demons manifested themselves in rather different ways. The demon who had struck the proconsul’s wife and her steward is just called a daemon teterrimus, but those who beat up the pro-consul Lesbios were ‘Aethiopians’, pitchblack men, a favourite manifestation of ancient demons (AAlat 22).54 They could even show up as animals. In Nicaea seven demons lived in tombs along the road (AAlat 5, 7), another place fit for demons, just as their number, seven, is typical of groups of demons in the New Testament.55 When the apostle arrived in the city, the Nicaeans approached him with olive branches, not, as Prieur suggests (ad loc.), in imitation of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, but in the Greek way of supplication.56 The apostle gave in to their entreaties and ordered the demons to show themselves. At that very moment, they appeared as dogs, one more indication of the ambivalent standing of the dog among Jews and Greeks.57 How did the demons affect their victims? As the above mentioned examples show, some victims felt ‘struck’, ‘beaten’ or ‘whipped’ by the demons. We do not find this belief in a ‘stroke’ by a demon in the New Testament, but just as the wife of the proconsul and her steward were percussi by a demon (AAlat 23), so Stratocles’ servant Alcmanes was ab inpulsu daemonis percussus (2; AAlat 34). Indeed, the explanation of illness or possession as the result of a stroke is very widespread and regularly occurs in the magical papyri, where, for example, in a recipe for a love spell the advice is to ‘glue it to the dry vaulted vapour room of a bath, and you will marvel. But watch yourself so that you are not struck’. A variant of the ‘stroke’ was a ‘lash’, a belief perhaps reflected in the proconsul Lesbios’ feeling of being ‘whipped’ by ‘Ethiopians’ (AAlat 22).58 53  For mixed bathing, see Martial 7.35, 11.75; Juvenal 6.422–23; Clem.Alex. Paed. 3.5.32; A. Hilhorst, ‘Erotic Elements in the Shepherd of Hermas’, in H. Hofmann and M. Zimmerman (eds), Groningen Colloquia on the Novel IX (Groningen, 1998) 193–204 at 196. 54  See this volume, Chapter  9.1. 55  Tombs: Mt 8.28; Mk 5.2,3,5; Lk 8.27; Strack-Billerbeck 4,516–17. Seven: Ez. 9.1–2; Mt 12.45; Mk 16.9; Lk 8.2, 11.26; Test. Sol. 8.1. Canine demons: H.-J. Loth, ‘Hund’, in RAC 16 (1994) 773–828 at 822–23; add Test. Sol. 10.1–4. 56  F. Naiden, Ancient Supplication (Oxford, 2006) 56–57; add, for a contemporary parallel, Apuleius, Met. 3.8. 57  Loth, ‘Hund’. 58  PGM XXXVI.76; see also PGM VII.282; Ptol. Tetrabl. 3.14; S. Eitrem, Notes on the Demonology in the New Testament (Oslo, 19662) 36–37; for the widespread background of this belief, see L. Honko, Krankheitsprojektile (Helsinki, 1959).

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From the Middle Ages until virtually our own times, possessed people also display socially unacceptable behaviour and extreme signs of motor disorder, often with contortions and dislocations. It is no different in the AA. The old man in the bath (above) trembled (AAlat 27). Some servants of Antiphanes were ‘grinding their teeth...and insanely laughing’ (AAlat 29).59 Other people had even lost all control over their limbs. The son of Cratinus had gone mad and fallen on the ground in front of the apostle (5). In the Coptic fragment the soldier fell on the ground and started to foam at the mouth (AAco 9), just like Stratocles’ servant Alcmanes, who was moreover ‘utterly convulsed’ and sitting on a dung heap (2–3; AAlat 34), not a very dignified position. One may at least pose the question to what extent these possessions, or their descriptions, were dependent on the New Testament where, for example, in Mark the boy with the dumb spirit ‘convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth’ (9.20). 60 It could be even worse. The Nicaean canine demons killed the son of old parents (AAlat 7), just as a demon killed the proconsul’s wife and her steward (AAlat 23), and strangled the son of a Thessalonian (AAlat 14). In the latter case, one may wonder whether the narrative here does not exaggerate the feeling of suffocation that is attested for some possessed people. Exaggeration certainly plays a role in the earlier scenes and this raises a problem to which we will return immediately, viz. to what extent these scenes were stock descriptions rather than representations of reality. How did the apostle react to the demonic powers? Whereas he had taken the initiative in addressing the Nicaean canine demons, it usually was the other way round. For example, in Philippi a youth cried out: ‘What is there between you and me, Andrew? Have you come to chase us from our proper place?’ (AAlat 17). Virtually the same approach takes place in a Corinthian bath, when a youth addresses Andrew with: ‘What is there between you and me? Have you come here to unsettle us from our place?’ (AAlat 27). These initiatives are clearly influenced by the New Testament, where the Gadarene demoniacs address Jesus first with the words: ‘What have we to do with you, son of God?’ (Mt. 8.29, cf. Mk. 1.24, 5.7, Lk 8.28), and they are thus not likely to be authentic,61 but in Megara all the demons cried out in unisono (unius vocis impetu): ‘Why do you chase us here, holy Andrew?’ (AAlat 29), which makes a more convincing impression. The demonic initiative is probably to be explained from the public 59  Teeth: Jerome, Vita Hilarionis 12.10. Laughter: Philostratus, Life of Apollonius 4.20; Aretaeus 3.6; this volume, Chapter  9.2. 60  Note also the description in Lucian, Philopseudeis 16. 61  For the Old Testament background of the formula (1 Kings 17.18), see O. Bächli, ‘“Was habe ich mit Dir zu schaffen?”. Eine formelhafte Frage im A.T. und N.T.’, Theologische Zeitschrift 33 (1977) 69–80; P. Guillemette, ‘Mc 1,24 est-il une formule de défense magique?’, Science et esprit 30 (1978) 81–96.

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arena in which the confrontation takes place. Before the community can accept that the possessed persons are healed, it has to be convinced that the demons have actually left. So the demons have to make themselves manifest before they can be properly expelled. Not all demons were properly cooperative, though, and in the magical papyri a magician therefore says: ‘I conjure you, every daemonic spirit, to tell whatever sort you may be, because I conjure you by the seal which Solomon placed on the tongue of Jeremiah, and he told’. 62 For those who persisted in keeping silent, the papyri supply an effective recipe: ‘If you say the Name to a demoniac while putting sulphur and asphalt to his nose, the demon will speak at once and go away’. 63 Normal people might have been frightened by the sudden outburst of the demons, but an apostle is of course not that easily impressed. In the case of the possessed house of Antiphanes, Andrew can react as if there is nothing strange about the situation (nimis de his admirans: AAlat 29). Similarly, after having been invoked by Maximilla in order to heal Alcmanes who was ‘foaming at the mouth’, he entered ‘smiling’ (3). The reader is left in no doubt that our hero will confront the ‘villain’ and convincingly despatch him. But how does he do it? At first it may seem surprising how unimpressive the actual exorcism sometimes is. In the case of Alcmanes, the apostle just invokes God in a prayer in the characteristic participle style so well analysed by Eduard Norden (1868–1941): ‘O God, who does not hearken to the magicians ... grant now that my request be speedily fulfilled before all these in the slave of Stratocles, putting to flight the demon whom his kinsmen could not drive out’ (5; AAlat 34). 64 In the Coptic fragment, he addresses the soldier as follows: ‘It is now fully time for you to come out from this young man, that he may gird himself for the heavenly palace’ (AAco 14). In other cases, the apostle seems to be less quiet. To the son of Cratinus he speaks increpans: ‘Go away from the servant of God, you enemy of the human race’ (AAlat 5), and the same verb is used when he expels the demons from the old man and the youth in the swimming pool (AAlat 27). This approach was probably more like real practice, since both Jesus and Apollonius of Tyana, too, were sometimes agitated while exorcising demons and rebuked them. 65 Also the order ‘discede’ will have been part of traditional Jewish exor-

62  PGM IV.3037–41; see also Lucian, Philopseudeis 16; Theophilos, Autolyc. 2.8; Acts of Thomas 74; Test. Sal. 5.2ff, 13.2. 63  PGM XIII.242–4; note also Josephus, Ant. 8.47. 64  For the participle style, see E. Norden, Agnostos Theos (Stuttgart, 1912) 166–8. 65 Eitrem, Some Notes, 51–52, who compares Mk 1.43, 2.12 and Philostratus, Life of Apollonius 4.20; add Mk 9.25; Lucian, Philopseudeis, 16, 31; Philostratus 3.38; H.C. Kee, ‘The Terminology of Mark’s Exorcism Stories’, NTS 14 (1967–8) 232–46 at 240ff; Thraede, ‘Exorzismus’, 51, 66 (many more examples).

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cism, since the command éxelthe is a recurrent term in New Testament exorcism stories and occurs in the magical papyri, 66 but is absent from pagan exorcisms. 67 Faced with the supernatural power of the apostle, what could a demon do? In the Coptic fragment the demon quietly leaves the young soldier on the order of Andrew and assures him that ‘I have never destroyed a limb of his’ (AAco 14). In the case of Alcmanes, the demon uses the term ‘fleeing’: ‘I flee, servant and man of God, I flee not only from this slave, but also from this whole city’ (5) – the terminology of actual exorcistic formulae.68 That was not enough for Andrew, but by ordering the demon to stay away from wherever the Christians were he showed the extent of his power. 69 Not all demons were so placid, however. The demon of Cratinus’ son left multo clamitans (AAlat 5) and a soldier even died when the demon left him (AAlat 18). The last example looks like a narrative exaggeration of a traditional theme in exorcism: the demon’s dramatisation of his departure by an act of physical violence. The theme is already present in Mark, where evil spirits leave amid loud shouting (1.26, 9.20) or even destroy a herd of swine (5.13), but it must have been part and parcel of the contemporary exorcist’s trade.70 Naturally, not only did the demon have to demonstrate his departure, but also the exorcised persons had to show that they had been healed. So Alcmanes rose from the floor and sat down with Andrew ‘sound in mind and tranquil and talking normally’ (5). Once again, these aspects have to be seen against the public character of the ritual. It is only when everybody has noticed the expulsion of the demon and the recovery of the possessed that he can function again in the community. The last actor in this scenario to be considered is the public. During resurrections crowds are always prominently present and acclaim the apostle with traditional formulae such as: ‘Magnus est Deus Christus, quem praedicat servus eius Andreas’ (AAlat 7)71, ‘Non est similis tibi, Domine’ (AAla 24) or ‘Non est similis 66 Mk 1.25, 5.8, 9.25; Acts 16.18; compare also APt 11; ATh 73, 74 and 77; Cyprian, Ep.  69.15; PGM IV.1227, 1242–4, 3007ff and V.158; Thraede, ‘Exorzismus’, 52; D. Jordan and R. Kotansky, ‘A Salomonic Exorcism (Inv. T 3)’, in M. Gronewald et al., Kölner Papyri 8 (Opladen, 1997) 53–69 at 55 f. 67  As is observed by Kollmann, Jesus und die Christen, 202. 68  Kotansky, ‘Greek Exorcistic Amulets’, 258 f. 69 For Geisterbannung in general, see O. Weinreich, ‘Gebet und Wunder. Zwei Abhandlungen zur Religions- und Literaturgeschichte’, in Genethliakon. Wilhelm Schmid zum 70. Geburtstag am 24. Febr. 1929 (Stuttgart, 1929) 169–464, repr. in Weinreich, Religionsgeschichtliche Studien (Stuttgart, 1968) 1–298. 70  For more examples, see C. Bonner, ‘The Technique of Exorcism’, HThR 26 (1943) 39–49 and his supplement in HThR 27 (1944) 334–6; L. Delatte, Un office byzantin d’exorcisme (Brussels, 1957) p.  30.1, 54.17, 56.16, 84.11, 90.10, 91.6, 92.2 and 21. 71  For the acclamation ‘Great is...’, see H.S. Versnel, Ter unus (Leiden, 1990) 194–6; A. Chaniotis, ‘Acclamations as a Form of Religious Communication’, in H. Cancik and J. Rüpke (eds), Die Religion des Imperium Romanum. Koine und Konfrontationen (Tübingen 2009) 199–218; note also AA Mart. pr. 6.

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deo Andreae’ (AAlat 13), the latter exclamation typically being uttered in the theatre.72 But what about exorcisms? The great Gibbon, who called exorcism ‘the awful ceremony’, thought that the ritual was performed in front of many spectators and so led to the ‘conviction of infidels’.73 And indeed, it is true that in the time of the European religious wars, exorcism often had been the arena in which Catholics and Protestants had tried to establish the superiority of their faith.74 In the AA, however, and other early Christian literature we notice nothing of this crowd activity. On the contrary, Christian and pagan authors alike stress that the Christians exorcised in a manner as simple as possible. Apparently, they wanted at all costs to avoid the dangerous accusation of being magicians, and thus they practised without the usual hocus pocus of traditional magicians.75 That is also why in the AA magicians are shown up in a bad light (AAco) and are proved to be ineffective (4), and why accusations of magic are immediately refuted (AAlat 18; Mart. pr. 3–4).  

3. Martyrdom Let us conclude our study with a few observations on the event of martyrdom as represented by the AA. We have two scenes that show us something of the suffering of the early Christians. In the first case, the proconsul Varianus condemned Andrew to the beasts.76 As was customary, the proconsul let the beasts and the apostle enter the arena early in the morning.77 First, they let loose a wild 72  For the theatre as the place of performance in Later Antiquity, see Junod and Kaestli, Acta Iohannis, 2.459–60; A. Chaniotis, ‘Theatricality beyond the Theater. Staging Public Life in the Hellenistic World’, Pallas 47 (1997) 219–59, and ‘Theatre Rituals’, in P. Wilson (ed.), The Greek Theatre and Festivals (Oxford, 2007) 48–86; D. Elm, ‘Mimes into Martyrs. Conversion on Stage’, in I. Henderson and G. Oegema (eds), The Changing Face of Judaism, Christianity, and Other Greco-Roman Religions in Antiquity (Gütersloh, 2006) 87–100. 73  E. Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. D. Womersley, 3  vols (London, 1995) 1.472. 74  C. Ernst, Teufelsaustreibung: die Praxis der katholischen Kirche im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Berne and Toronto, 1972); D.P. Walker, Unclean Spirits (London, 1981); S. Greenblatt, ‘Loudon and London’, Critical Inquiry 12 (1985–6) 326–46 and Shakespearian Negotiations (Oxford, 1988) 94–128; H. de Waardt, Toverij en samenleving. Holland 1500–1800 (The Hague, 1991) 171–4. 75  H. Remus, Pagan-Christian Conflict over Miracle in the Second Century (Cambridge MA, 1983) 52–72. 76  Unlike Prieur (ad loc.), I prefer the name Varianus, which also occurs in AAco 9 and which is widely attested, cf. P.Oxy. 3.486.1, 9.1201.16, 12.1475.10, 14.1642.4 and 1727.1; P.Kron. 3.1; P.Diog. 6.3 (Egypt); SEG 37.544.2, 4 (Macedonia); I.Prusias 7.2.22; TAM III. 118.3, 180.3, 596.2 and 697.1 (Termessos); C. Marek, Stadt, Ära und Territorium in Pontus-Bithynia und Nord-Galatia (Tübingen, 1993) 136 nr. 3 (Pompeiopolis). 77  G. Ville, La gladiature en Occident des origines à la mort de Domitien (Rome, 1981) 393–94; K. Coleman, ‘Fatal Charades: Roman executions staged as mythological enactments’, JRS 80 (1990) 44–73 at 55.

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boar at Andrew, but apparently the animal was not interested in the apostle. This must have happened more often in the arena and could of course easily be interpreted as an act of God.78 Next came a bull, the use of which is well known from Blandina’s martyrdom in the Letter of Lyon. It killed the venatores, the professional fighters against beasts, who had goaded it on; the same fate is suffered by the attendant who had tied Saturus to a boar in the Passio Perpetuae (19).79 Finally, there came a most ferocious leopard, who spurned the apostle completely but instead jumped up to the special seat of the proconsul and killed his son. The scene is surely legendary, but it must have been illustrative of the ferocity of the leopard: in the Passio Perpetuae (19.4), Saturus hoped to be killed by one bite of a leopard. This whole passage of the AA is only sketchy, but it shows something of what the Christians had to suffer for their faith. The second instance is the death of Andrew. After a long conversation between Stratocles and Andrew, the apostle told him: ‘Tomorrow Aegeates will hand me over to be crucified’ (45). The term used, anaskolopidzô, can mean ‘to impale’ and ‘to crucify’.80 Given the cruel treatment of the slave Eukleia, for a moment the reader is left in doubt in which way Andrew would be killed. However, his doubts are soon resolved, since the proconsul opted for crucifixion (46). As was the case earlier, the preparations for the execution started at dawn. In the customary Roman way, the apostle was whipped first,81 but Aegeates gave orders ‘to leave his sinews uncut’ (51), a detail for which I have been unable as yet to find a parallel. Unlike normal Roman practice, 82 Andrew did not need to carry his own cross, as Jesus had to do, but a cross had been prepared for him at the edge of the sea. The place is intriguing but may be a reminiscence of the Greek practice to dispense of polluted beings at the beach, a typically ambivalent place between land and sea.83 To prolong his suffering, the proconsul had given orders that instead of using nails he should be tied to the cross by his hands and feet. Once again, we feel the contrast between the gentleness of Stratocles and the cruelty of his brother. As was the case with Thecla, the population now became restless and protested to Aegeates,84 who had apparently remained in the city to continue with his court cases. He immediately left his bêma, his seat, which is repeatedly mentioned in the AAA. 85 However, he arrived to speak with the apostle, who died after glori78 

Prieur (ad loc.) compares AP 28, 33–5; Eus. HE.5.1.41–2. L. Robert, Opera minora selecta V (Amsterdam, 1989) 809 f. 80  P. Franchi’ de Cavalieri, Scritti agiografici 2  vols (Rome, 1962) 2.160. 81 Hengel, Crucifixion, 21. 82  S. Lieberman, Texts and Studies (New York, 1974) 92 f. 83  R. Parker, Miasma (Oxford, 1983) 226 f. 84  For such protests, see this volume, Chapter  10.2; add AA 60 and AAlat 18. 85  See this volume, Chapter  10.1; add AA 36, AAlat 4; E. Dinkler, Signum crucis (Tübingen, 1967) 118–33 (archaeological evidence); Lieberman, Texts and Studies, 69, 83 (occurrence in Jewish sources). 79 

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fying God and after being glorified by the author. The wretched proconsul committed suicide shortly afterwards. The difference in values manifested by the pagan proconsul and his Christian brother, as well as those displayed in the deaths of the proconsul and the apostle, already suggest the turning of the tables, but it would still take more than a century before Christianity won a definitive victory.86

86  For comments and information I am most grateful to David Frankfurter, Ton Hilhorst, Peter van Minnen and Jacques van der Vliet.

Chapter 9

Aspects of the Acts of Peter: Women, Magic, Place and Date Around the turn of the twentieth century, after the discovery of various new texts, the Acts of Peter (APt) received much scholarly attention, which focused on the date, composition and place of origin of the APt but paid little attention to the interpretation of the text in general.1 It is only in the last decades of the twentieth century that the APt have, so to speak, re-emerged from oblivion. This renewed interest was especially due to the preparation of new texts of the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles (AAA) by a Swiss équipe and the work towards a new translation of the AAA by an American group.2 There is therefore plenty of scope for investigation into specific aspects of the text.3 In this chapter I will first discuss the ‘newer’ subjects of women, demons and magic, and conclude with the ‘traditional’ subjects of the place and date of composition.

1. Women The APt lacks striking female figures, such as Drusiana in the Acts of John (AJ) or Thecla in the Acts of Paul (AP), but women are certainly not absent. In fact, we find a rich variety of ages and classes in these Acts, whose importance for the Church is heavily stressed. When most brothers defected from the faith, impressed as they were by the miracles of Simon Magus, only a few kept the faith, 1  For the Forschungsgeschichte until 1930, see M.C. Baldwin, Whose Acts of Peter? (Tübingen, 2005) 26–62. 2  See especially J.B. Perkins, The Suffering Self (London, 1995) 124–41; various studies by R.F. Stoops, Jr.: ‘Patronage in the Acts of Peter’, Semeia 38 (1986) 91–100; ‘Christ as Patron in the Acts of Peter’, Semeia 56 (1992) 143–57; ‘Departing to Another Place: The Acts of Peter and the Canonical Acts of the Apostles’, in E.H. Lovering (ed.), SBL 1994 Seminar Papers (Atlanta, 1994) 390–404 and his excellent translation The Acts of Peter (Salem, 2012). 3  For the text, see R.A. Lipsius, Acta Apostolorum apocrypha I (Leipzig, 1891) 45–103. I follow the numbering of W. Schneemelcher, ‘The Acts of Peter’, in NTA 2.271–321. Regarding commentaries, the only useful one is Gerhard Ficker’s (1865–1934) ‘Petrusakten’ in E. Hennecke (ed.), Handbuch zu den neutestamentlichen Apokryphen (Tübingen, 1904) 395–491. For recent (re-)editions of parts of the text, see O. Zwierlein, Petrus in Rom (Berlin and New York, 20102) 404–25 (Martyrium Petri) and Petrus und Paulus in Jerusalem und Rom (Berlin and Boston, 2013) 161–64 (papyri).

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amongst whom ‘two women in the lodging-house of the Bithynians (see below §3) and four who could no longer go out of their house’ (4). Let us start our discussion with virgins. Due to a happy identification by Carl Schmidt (1868–1938), a scene in a Coptic papyrus is now generally accepted as being part of the APt.4 It relates how the crowd reacted to Peter’s healing activities by asking him to heal his own, beautiful daughter, who was paralysed on one side. Peter immediately gave in to the request and cured his daughter, but then asked her to return to her place and lie down again. The reason for her illness, as he explained, was that a certain Ptolemaeus had fallen in love with her, when she was bathing with her mother at the age of ten. Léon Vouaux (1870– 1914) thought of a bathe in the sea, but the scene is situated in Jerusalem. It therefore seems more likely that the author had in mind one of the baths, which were widespread in Asia Minor. Baths were haunted by voyeurs and were typical places for picking up boys and girls. Consequently, later Christians often objected to them.5 The age of ten may be suspect, since for Greek girls menarche probably started some years later and they do not seem to have married before the age of about fifteen, 6 but it may perhaps stress the evil nature of men’s desire. The paralysed girl is an indication of the encratitic tendencies of the Apt, even if these are not quite as outspoken as in some other AAA.7 Not only is the apostle the cause of four (!) concubines deserting their lover, the prefect Agrippa,8 but Peter also causes the breakdown of the marriage of a certain Xanthippe, which will mean his death. The message of the APt is therefore clear: serious illness and death are less harmful than sexual relationships with people who refuse to follow Christ. This message is even stressed right at the beginning of the APt, since Paul sternly addressed Rufina, a woman that lived with an adul4  J. Brashier and D. Parrott, Nag Hammadi Codices V 2–5 and VI with Papyrus Berolinensis 8502 .1 and 4 (Leiden, 1979) 473–93; M. Tardieu, Écrits gnostiques. Codex de Berlin (Paris, 1984) 217–22, 403–10. 5  Petronius, 92.7–8; Martial, 1.23, 11.63 (with N.M. Kay ad loc.); R.W. Daniel and F. Mal­ tomini, Supplementum Magicum II (Opladen, 1992) 143–44; J. Zellinger, Bad und Bäder in der altchristlichen Kirche (Munich, 1928); K. Dunbabin, ‘Baiarum grata voluptas: pleasures and dangers of the baths’, Papers of the British School at Rome 57 (1989) 6–46; F. Yegtil, Baths and Bathing in Classical Antiquity (New York, 1992) 250–313; G. Charpentier, ‘Les petits bains proto-byzantins de la Syrie du Nord’, Topoi 5 (1995) 219–47. 6  For the age of a girl’s marriage, compare Ninos, Col. A.III. I (15); Longus, Daphnis and Chloe (14). For menarche, see H. King, ‘Medical Texts as a Source for Women’s History’, in A. Powell (ed.), The Greek World (London, 1995) 199–218 at 210 f. 7  For more detailed analyses of the episode, see J. Dochhorn, ‘Peter’s Daughter. A Case Story from Late Antiquity’, in E.-M. Becker et al. (eds), Trauma and Traumatization in Individual and Collective Dimension. Insights from Biblical Studies and Beyond (Göttingen, 2014) 85–99; M. Henning, ‘Chreia Elaboration and the Un-healing of Peter’s Daughter: Rhetorical Analysis as a Clue to Understanding the Development of a Petrine Tradition’, JECS 24 (2016) 145–71. 8  On Agrippa, see I. Karasszon, ‘Agrippa, King and Prefect’, in J.N. Bremmer (ed.), The Apocryphal Acts of Peter: Magic, Miracles and Gnosticism (Leuven, 1998) 21–28.

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terer and who instantly ‘fell down, being paralysed on the left side from her head to her toenails’ (2). The message is also stressed through a scene, known only via the eighth-century Pseudo-Titus, De dispositione sanctimonii (lines 83–4), which mirrors that of Peter’s daughter in a negative way. After Peter had been requested by someone to pray for the good of his only daughter’s soul, he did so and she immediately fell down dead. Understandably, the father asked Peter to raise his daughter again, but some days later she eloped with a man who had posed as a believer. Considering the often-hostile attitude towards the country in most Greek novels,9 we may notice that the girl was the daughter of a peasant. The cases of these virgins are relatively straightforward, but other virgins are much harder to place. After Peter had healed various widows in the house of Marcellus (below), he began ‘to attend the virgins of the Lord’ (22), who are also mentioned later when the mother of the senator (see below §3) brought Peter two thousand pieces of gold (29). These maidens were evidently unable to support themselves and may well have deserted their families. They also seem already to form a separate category among the faithful – a development which would accelerate in subsequent centuries.10 Our next category are the widows who are prominent in the APt.11 They were clearly dependent on the charity of the richer members of the congregation, such as the senator Marcellus (8, 19–21). There were widows of various ages and the APt regularly combines viduae et seniores (19, 21, 27), the latter being particularly dependent: one of them is blind and has to be guided by her daughter (20), and another has only a son to help her (27).12 Many of these widows were also despondent, ill or blind, and Peter assisted them in various ways, by charity (28–9), healing or raising a son (27). It is no wonder, then, that they were singled out among the Christians who tried to save Peter from the cross (36). Having healed the blind widow, Peter entered Marcellus’ dining room, where men and old blind widows were listening to the reading of the gospel. The apostle ‘rolled up (the book)’ (involvens) and started a long theological exposition (20). The reference to a scroll is rather surprising, since virtually all early Christian papyri of the gospels have come to us in the form of a codex.13 9  E.L. Bowie, ‘The Novels and the Real World’, in B. Reardon (ed.), Erotica Antiqua (Bangor, 1976) 91–6 at 94 f. 10  R. Metz, La consécration des vierges dans l’église romaine (Diss. Strasbourg, 1954). 11  For Christian widows, see this volume, Chapter  4. 12 J.-D. Kaestli, ‘Fiction litteraire et realité sociale: que peut-on savoir de la place des femmes dans le milieu de production des Actes apocryphes des apôtres?’, Apocrypha 1 (1990) 279–302 at 300, persuasively argues that the seniores in cc.19–21 are not ‘old men’ but ‘older widows’. For old women in patristic literature, see G. Donni, Der alte Mensch in der Antike (Bamberg, 1996) 165–75. 13  For this phenomenon and possible explanations, see G.H.R. Horsley, ‘Classical Manuscripts in Australia and New Zealand, and the Early History of the Codex’, Antichthon 27 (1993) 60–83; T.C. Skeat, ‘The Origin of the Christian Codex’, ZPE 102 (1994) 263–8; J.L. de

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On the other hand, Jan den Boeft and I have drawn attention to a passage in the Acta Scillitanorum (12), where one of the future martyrs, Speratus, carries ‘books and epistles of Paul’ in a capsa, normally a container of scrolls. We concluded that this passage seems to suggest a continuing use of the scroll in some parts of the Christian church and pointed out that codex was also absent from Tertullian, despite his rich terminology for Christian scripture.14 This passage of the APt, then, might be a further illustration of the continuing use of the scroll in some Christian circles. Whereas the first part of our argument has been well received and gains some force from the observation that scrolls also appear in some early Christian art,15 Gamble has objected that our comment on Tertullian ‘carries no more weight than any argument from silence’.16 However, he has overlooked the fact that Tertullian’s oeuvre is not particularly a small one and consistently uses volumen not codex.17 Widows were not only members of the church because of their expectation of charity or healing, but they also fulfilled certain functions, although we do not yet hear of the ordo viduarum in the APt. However, Marcellus gave orders to bring the viduae et seniores in his house ‘in order to pray with us’ (19). In the Jewish tradition, which is still visible in the New Testament, widows were valued for their prayer because God was thought to have pity on them in particular.18 It may well be that we still find this tradition alive in our Acts. Their special position, especially that of the seniores, also appears from the fact that, even though they did not yet believe, they alone saw Jesus in a number of ways: old, young and as a child (21).19 Miguel Jover, ‘El humilde nacimiento del Codice’, Myrtia 10 (1995) 157–76; H. Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church (New Haven and London, 1995) 42–81; L. Hurtado, The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins (Eerdmans, 2006) 43–93 and https:// larryhurtado.wordpress.com/ 2014/09/16/the-codex-and-early-christians-clarification-corrections/ (accessed 8–1-2017); this volume, Chapter  2.2. 14  J. den Boeft and J.N. Bremmer, ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae IV’, VigChris 45 (1991) 105–22 at 116 f. 15  Cf. W.V. Harris, ‘Why Did the Codex Supplant the Book-Roll?’, in J. Monfasani and R.G. Musto (eds), Renaissance Society and Culture: Essays in Honor of Eugene F. Rice, Jr (New York, 1991) 71–85 at 77. 16  R. Lane Fox, ‘Literacy and Power in Early Christianity’, in A.K. Bowman and G. Woolf (eds), Literacy and Power in the Ancient World (Cambridge, 1994) 126–48 at 142; Gamble, Books, 279 note  138 (quotation). 17  J.E.L. van der Geest, Le Christ et l’Ancien Testament chez Tertullien (Nimwegen, 1972) 56–57, 60. 18  K. van der Toorn, ‘The Public Image of the Widow in Ancient Israel’, in J.N. Bremmer and L.P. van den Bosch (eds), Between Poverty and the Pyre. Moments in the History of Widowhood (London, 1995) 19–30 at 25. 19  Cf. E. Junod and J.-D. Kaestli, Acta Iohannis, 2  vols (Turnhout, 1983) 2.698–700; P.J. Lalleman, ‘Polymorphy of Christ’, in J.N. Bremmer (ed.), The Apocryphal Acts of John (Kampen, 1995) 97–118; I. Czachesz, The Grotesque Body in Early Christian Discourse: Hell, Scatology, and Metamorphosis (Sheffield, 2012) 115–29; L. Roig Lanzillotta, ‘Jesús de Nazaret

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In addition to poor women, the APt also pay much attention to those of the upper classes. Right at the beginning of the Apt, ‘a large crowd of women’ (3) accompanied Paul to the harbour; amongst them were two matronae ‘from the house of Caesar’, Berenice and Philostrate, clearly freedwomen. In a way, they set the tone for the APt, which seem to mention more women of the upper classes than any other of the major AAA. These rich women are especially mentioned at the beginning of the Martyrium Petri (30), where the apostle preaches to ‘many senators, more knights, and rich aristocratic women’ (matronae). Some of these women did even leave their husbands, such as Xanthippe, the wife of Albinus, ‘the friend of the Emperor’ (tou Kaisaros philou: 34). Incidentally, we may observe that this qualification points to Asia Minor rather than to Rome, since the Emperor frequently used this title in letters referring to provincial governors or other high officials: the mode of address stressed their authority and access to the Emperor. Illustrative of this is a letter from Trajan to Smyrna, which has been found in Aphrodisias and which mentions ‘Iulius Balbus (see below §3), my friend and proconsul’.20 Other women were Agrippina, Nicaria, Euphemia and Doris, the four concubines of the prefect Agrippa, surely the praefectus urbi, who acted as a judge in Rome (33). Not all women, though, were as chaste as these were. One wealthy woman, Chryse, apparently had liaisons with her younger slaves, a not unusual practice in ancient Rome: Trimalchio relates that he gave sexual favours to his boss but did not neglect his mistress either.21 Aristocratic women also occur earlier in the narrative. We have already heard about the mother of the young senator, whose wealth is illustrated by her gift of two thousand pieces of gold. She clearly also owns a number of slaves, and it is highly interesting that Peter stresses that they, even though freed before the resurrection of her son, must remain free but also employed. We have here a hint of the excitement that slaves must have felt at the thought of being freed, but also of the concomitant anxiety of being turned out on the street at the same time. To my knowledge there is not a single classical passage that informs us about the experiences of freedmen being suddenly on their own, but reports from the aftermath of the American Civil War can give us some idea of the shock that sudden manumission gave to slaves.22 y la cuestión del polimorfismo divino. De los apócrifos neotestamentarios a Nag Hammadi’, in L. Roig Lanzillotta and I. Muñoz Gallarte (eds), Liber amicorum en honor del Profesor Jesús Peláez del Rosal (Cordoba, 2013) 65–92. 20  Amici: F. Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World (London, 1977) 110–22; add SEG 32.1202 = G. Petzl, Die lnschriften von Smyrna II.1 (Bonn, 1987) no.  593. 21  Petronius 75.11; note also Herodas 5; Pliny, NH 34.l l-12; Martial 1.84; Juvenal 6.279, 331; Suetonius, Vitellius 12. 22  K. Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves (Cambridge, 1978) 148 f. For the Christian manumission of slaves, see J.A. Harrill, The Manumission of Slaves in Early Christianity (Tübingen, 1995).

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A more interesting case, though, is that of the Judean Eubola, who seems to be typical of the wealthy women of that time: they were regularly the target of heretics and founders of new religions (17).23 Simon and his accomplices had robbed this woman of her gold, but they also planned to rob her of a statuette, a satyriskos, of gold, ‘with a precious stone set in it’ and to hand it over to a goldsmith, presumably to be smelted down. Satyriskoi are not often mentioned or depicted, but they start to appear in the Hellenistic period.24 Eubola’s satyriskos also was the object of worship, since Peter mentions that she put up her idol and veiled it, when she meant to celebrate a festival. In other words, the statuette was the object of private devotion. Eubola’s statuette must have been quite small, since it was of gold but weighed only two pounds. Such portable statues of gods were not unusual in the period of our Acts. In recent times, examples have become known of small statues of Glykon, the god created by Alexander of Abunoteichos, measuring between 6 and 7 centimetres. The famous French epigraphist Louis Robert (1904–1985) dedicated an excellent article to these statuettes, building also on earlier work done by Franz Dölger (1879–1940).25 The latter had drawn attention to a passage in Philostratus’ biography of Apollonius of Tyana, in which the sage berated people who wore small statuettes of Demeter and Dionysos around their necks (5.20). He had also pointed to a passage in Apuleius’ Apology in which the philosopher admitted that ‘wherever I go, I carry an image of a god hidden among my books and on festive days (like Eubola!) I supplicate it with incense, wine and sometimes a victim’ (63). This god, Hermes, was therefore a portable god, just like the image belonging to Eubola.26 Louis Robert was able to add various inscriptions, which all went to show that in the time of our Acts there was a lively trade of these small, often very precious statuettes of divinities. In this respect, then, Eubola was a typical religious product of her time.27 23 

See this volume, Chapter  3. Theocritus, 27 .3, 49–50; Hero, Spir. 1 .37, cf. H. von Hesberg, Mechanische Kunstwerke und ihre Bedeutung fiir die höfische Kunst des frühen Hellenismus’, in Marburger Winckelmannprogramm 1987, 47–72 at 55; AP 16.244; B. Andreae, ‘Schmuck eines Wasserbeckens in Sperlonga. Zum Typus des sitzenden Knäbleins aus dem Schiffsfund von Mahdia’, Römische Mitteilungen 83 (1976) 287–309 and ‘Statuetten eines sitzenden Knäbleins’, in G. Hellenkemper-Salies et al. (eds), Das Wrack. Der antike Schiffsfund von Mahdia (Cologne, 1994) 365–74; P.Oxy. 64.4432. 25  L. Robert, Opera Minora Selecta V (Amsterdam, 1989) 747–69; F.J. Dölger, Antike und Christentum IV (Münster, 1934) 67–72, 277–9; E. Bartman, Ancient Sculptural Copies in Miniature (Leiden, 1992) 43–48. 26  On this passage of Apuleius, see F. Graf, Magic in the Ancient World (Cambridge MA and London, 1997) 80–82; V. Hunink, Apuleius of Madaurus: Pro se de magia, 2  vols (Amsterdam, 1997) 2.162–74. 27  See also R. Turcan, ‘Note sur les dieux “portables”’, in F. Chausson and É. Wolff (eds), Consuetudinis amor. Fragments d’histoire romaine (IIe-VIe siècles) offerts à Jean-Pierre Callu (Rome, 2003) 409–17. 24 

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The final woman I want to discuss is only a dream woman. On the day preceding the great contest of Peter and Simon Magus, the senator Marcellus had a short sleep. In his dream he saw a ‘most evil-looking woman, who looked like an Ethiopian, not an Egyptian, but was all black, clothed in filthy rags, dancing with an iron collar about her neck and chains on her hands and feet’. Although the Greeks generally considered the Egyptians black, they could also distinguish them from their neighbours, if necessary. For example, Achilles Tatius calls the Boukoloi black but ‘not deep black like Indians but as black as, say, a half-Ethiopian might be’ (2.9, tr. J. Winkler). According to Philostratus (VA 6.2), those who inhabited the border regions between Egypt and Ethiopia were ‘less black than the Ethiopians but more black than the Egyptians’.28 The message is clear: the woman is terribly black and as such disgusting; not surprisingly, black was a regular colour for demons in antiquity.29 Her low status is further stressed by the signs of her being a prisoner: her chains and the collar about her neck, which probably suggests a member of a chain gang; the martyr Pionius also made collars for himself and his followers.30 Marcellus twice rejected Peter’s exhortation to kill the woman, but suddenly a man appeared who closely resembled Peter and who cut the woman into pieces. Refreshed and encouraged by the dream, Peter went to face his magician opponent (22). There is a striking parallel to this dream. On the day before her execution, Perpetua dreamt that she had to fight against an ugly Egyptian. During this fight she was encouraged by God in the shape of the agonothêtês. In the end, she managed to defeat her opponent and realised that this fight foreshadowed her own final victory (Passio Perpetuae 10).31 Now we know that Carthaginian women had read the Acts of Paul, and Perpetua, too, seems to have either read 28  For the colour of the Egyptians and Ethiopians, see A. Cameron, Callimachus and His Critics (Princeton, 1 995) 233–6; add J. den Boeft and J.N. Bremmer, ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae II’, VigChris 36 (1982) 383–402 at 390; J. den Boeft et al., Philological and Historical Commentary on Ammianus Marcellinus XXII (Groningen, 1995) 310; S. Walker and M. Bierbrier, Ancient Faces. Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt (London, 1997). 29  B. Steidle, ‘Der kleine schwarze Knabe in der alten Möncherzählung’, Bened. Monats­ schr. 34 (1958) 339–50; P. du Bourguet, ‘La couleur noire de la peau du démon dans l’iconographie chrétienne à-t-elle une origine précise?’, in Actas del Vlll Congreso Internacional de Arqueología Cristiana (Vatican City, 1972) 271–72; L. Cracco Ruggini, ‘Un negro buono e il negro malvagio nel mondo classico’, in M. Sordi (ed.), Conoscenze etniche e rapport di convivenza nell’antichità (Milano, 1979) 108–35; L.A. Thompson, Romans and Blacks (London, 1989) 110–13; P. Frost, ‘Attitudes Towards Blacks in the Early Christian Era’, Second Century 8 (1991) 1–11; J.-J. Aubert, ‘Du noir en noir et blanc: éloge de la dispersion’, Museum Helveticum 56 (1999) 159–82; D. Brakke, ‘Ethiopian Demons: Male Sexuality, the Black-Skinned Other, and the Monastic Self’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 10 (2001) 501–35; P. Habermehl, Perpetua und der Ägypter (Berlin, 20042) 161–77; P.A. Jacob, ‘Le Noir, l’Éthiopien, l’Égyptien dans la littérature chrétienne des premières siècles’, Studia Monastica 49 (2007) 7–28. 30  Mart. Pion. 2.3, cf. L. Robert, Le martyre de Pionios, prêtre de Smyrne (Washington DC, 1994) 51. 31  For a detailed discussion of the dream, see this volume, Chapter  2 2.4.3.

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or heard of these Acts.32 In the light of the resemblance between Marcellus’ dream and that of Perpetua, I suggest that Perpetua had also read the APt. Considering the date of the Latin translation (§3), she will have read the APt in the Greek original.33

2.  Demons and magic In the APt we are at various times confronted with demons and magic. In principle, these are of course very different categories, but in the ancient world they were often associated through the employment of magic in exorcising demons. The mingling of these two categories appears clearly in the contest between Peter and Simon Magus, who is still called only Simon in the canonical Acts (8) and, presumably, received his epithet from the Christians. Before Simon entered Rome, he stayed in Aricia, a small town out-side Rome with an important cult of Diana/Artemis and Hecate and so, presumably, the appropriate place for Simon to stay. Apparently, he had already made a great impact in Rome, since he had been acclaimed as in Italia deus and tu Romanorum salvator (4). The latter acclamation clearly reflects the Greek sôter, a common acclamation that need not reflect a divine status, but the earlier undeniably acclaimed him as a god. In this absolute sense, though, deus used for a human only occurs very rarely in Latin, and the combination of theos and sôter almost certainly is more Greek than Roman. The divinisation of Simon recurs later, when Marcellus confesses to Peter that he has erected a statue for Simon with the inscription Simoni juveni deo, undoubtedly a mistranslation of the Greek Simon; neôi theôi (10). Simon’s statue is mentioned first by Justin (1Apol. 26), who gives as the inscription Simoni deôi sanktôi, evidently an adaptation of a dedication to an old Sabine god: Semoni Sanco Deo Fidio sacrum, as has long been seen. The dedication neôi theôi, which further adapts the Latin inscription for a Greek audience, is not very frequently found but not wholly unusual either: both Gaius Caesar and Germanicus had received this title (IGR 4.1094, 74–5). Once again, we seem to be in the Greek world rather than in Italy. If ruler cult is often stimulated from the top down, there remained the tendency from the bottom up to divinise people who had performed impressive deeds. We can still observe this tendency in the New Testament where the Maltese said of Paul ‘that he was a god’, after he had survived the bite of a viper (Acts 28.6). Even more interesting is the visit of Paul and Barnabas to Lystra in Lykaonia. After the apostles had healed a lame man, the inhabitants started to call Paul Hermes and Barnabas Zeus, a divine pair which 32 

See this volume, Chapter  10.1. For her knowledge of Greek, see Passio Perpetua 13.4: coepit Perpetua Graece cum illis loqui; for bilingualism in Africa in general, Hunink, Apuleius, 2.22 f. 33 

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was popular in that very region, as epigraphy and archaeology amply attest.34 Philostratus provides another example, closer to the time of the APt, in his biography of Apollonius of Tyana. After the pagan sage had told his Assyrian host that he spoke all languages and even understood all human secrets, ‘the Assyrian prayed to him ... and considered him to be a god’ (daimona: 1.19). It is in line with this tendency that people instantly worshipped (adorantes) Simon after he had flown through the sky (4).35 Having been depicted as received with divine honours, Simon immediately promised to perform perhaps the most impressive deed a magician can do other than a resurrection, that is, flying. The theme was not uncommon and occurs in a fragment of an ancient novel,36 in Lucian’s Lovers of lies (13) and in Philostratus’ biography of Apollonius (3.15, 17 and 6.10–1), that means, works closely contemporary with the APt. Peter, on the other hand, also could demonstrate his own powers. When Marcellus had stepped outside his house and confessed his sins, Peter noticed somebody, who was possessed by a demon, smiling a bit mockingly (subridentem). His smiling was probably meant to mock the apostle, but the passage may also show the ambivalent attitude of the early Christians towards laughter, which was condemned by many a Church Father.37 Peter exorcised the demon in nomine Domini nostri Jesu Christi, thus following Jesus’ command in the gospels to perform miracles in his own name,38 and ordered the demon to show himself to the bystanders. What follows is truly remarkable. The demon left the young man, caught hold of a great marble statue of the emperor in the courtyard of Marcellus’ house and kicked it to pieces. Both in Rome and the Greek world, images of emperors have been found in private houses, if not very frequently; thus, its presence in the house of a senator cannot have been something uncommon to the contemporary reader. These statues were very important and any sign of disrespect or damage to them wrought with danger. Even urinating near such a statue could already be cause for execution.39 It is therefore not surprising that Marcellus immediately feared for his 34  Acts 14, cf. L. Robert, Hellenica 13 (1965) 29; C.P. Jones, ‘A Geographical Setting for the Baucis and Philemon Legend’, HSCPh 96 (1994) 203–23. 35  This tendency also occurs elsewhere in the AAA and the pagan novel, cf. R. Söder, Die apokryphen Apostelgeschichten und die romanhafte Literatur der Antike (Stuttgart, 1932) 95–100; add Achilles Tatius 3.23; AA 3; ATh 106. 36  S. Stephens and J. Winkler, Ancient Greek Novels: the fragments (Princeton, 1995) 173– 78. 37 J.N. Bremmer, ‘Jokes, Jokers and Jokebooks in Ancient Greek Culture’, in id. and H. Roodenburg (eds), A Cultural History of Humour (Cambridge, 1997) 11–28 at 21–3; L. Moulinier, ‘Quand le Malin fait de l’esprit. Le rire au Moyen Age vu depuis l’hagiographie’, Annales ESC 52 (1997) 457–75; S. Halliwell, Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity (Cambridge, 2008) 471–519. 38  M. Smith, Jesus the Magician (London, 1978) 114. 39  S. Price, Rituals and Power (Cambridge, 1984) 119–20 (houses; add our example), 192–5 (where he wrongly speaks of accidental damage in our case); T. Pekáry, Das römische Kaiser-

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life. After Peter had removed his fear by letting him repair the statue with water, Marcellus naturally ‘believed with his whole heart in the name of Jesus Christ the Son of God, through whom all things impossible are (made) possible’ (11).40 Having witnessed this not unimpressive miracle, the crowd requested more signs of Peter’s power, since ‘Simon too did many signs in our presence, and therefore we followed him’ (12). It is somewhat surprising that the author of APt does not notice new converts after the exorcism of the young man, since in our sources conversion is often connected with exorcism.41 However, Peter did convert many people by making a dead fish swim (13) – a rather curious reason to believe, one would have thought.42 Subsequently, he made a young child speak to Simon and tell him that he would have to meet Peter on the next Sabbath and, once again in the name of Jesus, make him dumb and leave Rome. Spells for speechlessness frequently occur in the magical papyri and often concern opponents in legal disputes.43 Peter’s use here of the same device shows the small difference between his behaviour and that of his opponent. Interestingly, Simon left immediately and stayed in a stabulum, an inn with a stable (15),44 the kind of place where Jesus was born. In these cases, we can see the importance of using the name of Christ in performing miracles, just as magicians call out the name(s) of their gods. Peter, though, did something more. He resurrected the widow’s son by touching his side and let the prefect Agrippa resurrect one of his slaves by taking his hand (28). Touching and the use of the hand were very common in magical practice. We can see this already in the gospels where Jesus frequently used his hand, but the practice also occurs in magical papyri and is mentioned in Philostratus’ biography of Apollonius of Tyana. A girl had died ‘in the hour of her marriage’, bildnis im Staat, Kult und Gesellschaft (Berlin, 1985) 139; D. Fishwick, The Imperial Cult in the Latin West II.l (London, 1991) 532–40; R. Turcan, ‘La promotion du sujet par le culte du souverain’, in A. Small (ed.), Subject and Ruler: the cult of the ruling power in classical anti­ quity = Journal of Roman Archaeology, Suppl. 17 (Ann Arbor, 1996) 51–62. 40  For interesting discussions of this scene and some others in the APt, see J. den Boeft, ‘Recognizing Demons’, in J. Dijkstra et al. (eds), Myths, Martyrs, and Modernity: Studies in the History of Religions in Honour of Jan N. Bremmer (Leiden, 2010) 475–86; C. Callon, ‘Images of Empire, Imaging the Self: The Significance of the Imperial Statue Episode in the Acts of Peter’, HThR 106 (2013) 331–55; J.A. Snyder, ‘Apostles and Politics in the Roman Empire’, Sacra Scripta (published in Cluj, Romania) 13.2 (2015) 191–214 at 192–97, reprinted (slightly revised) in J.A. Snyder and K. Zamfir (eds), Reading the Political in Jewish and Christian Texts (Leuven, forthcoming). 41  R. MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire (New Haven and London, 1981) 50; this volume, Chapter  12. 42  Unless, as Ton Hilhorst wonders, there is here a reference to Christians as pisciculi (Tertullian, De baptismo 1). Or does the scene refer to Peter as ‘fisher of man’, as Kathleen Coleman suggests to me? In any case, for an interesting discussion, see J. Spittler, Animals in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles (Tübingen, 2008) 148–54. 43  Daniel and Maltomini, Magical Papyri II, no.  55, 58.8–9. 44  T. Kleberg, Hôtels, restaurants et cabarets dans l’antiquité romaine (Uppsala, 1957) 18 f.

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but Apollonius resurrected her by touching her and whispering something (VA 4.45).45 Finally, I would like to stress a detail in the reaction of the crowd towards the loser in the contest between Peter and Simon. After Simon had called out: ‘Men of Rome, if you see the dead man restored to life, will you throw Peter out of the city?’ And they answer: ‘... that self-same hour we will burn him with fire’. This threat was clearly not meant as hyperbole, since as soon as Simon caused the dead man to raise his head, ‘they began to look for wood and kindling, in order to burn Peter’. Moreover, after Peter had demonstrated his powers, they called out ‘let Simon be burnt instead of Peter’ (28). Is this reaction of the crowd just part of the author’s dramatisation of the situation or is it a credible reflection of contemporary behaviour? I fear that the latter is nearer to the truth, as a similar accident may illustrate, which is also very interesting in the light of the breaking of the imperial statue in Marcellus’ house. After Apollonius of Tyana had arrived in Pamphylian Aspendus, he found out that at that very moment the population had become so angered by the corn hoarding of the rich that ‘a crowd of all ages had set upon the governor, and were lighting a fire to burn him alive, although he was clinging to the statues of the Emperor, which were more dreaded at that time and more inviolable than the Zeus in Olympia’.46 In these cases the potential victims escaped unhurt, but others were less lucky. The Thessalian Petraeus was burnt alive during riots under the rule of Augustus. And after the Asiarch Philip had refused to let loose a lion on Polycarp, the mob decided ‘that Polycarp should be burnt alive’ and ‘immediately collected logs and brushwood from the workshops and baths’.47 Lynching, then, was not just an invention of the American South.

3.  Place of origin and date of the APt According to Wilhelm Schneemelcher, the place of origin of the APt ‘cannot be certainly determined. Rome or Asia Minor have been suggested ... But for the present we cannot get beyond conjecture’ (NTA 2.283). This conclusion is perhaps too pessimistic. As Peter Lampe persuasively observed, the many Greek names in the APt, the ignorance of the ‘trophy’ of Peter on the Vatican and the place of Peter’s funeral (40), all point to Asia Minor rather than Rome.48 In ad45  S. Eitrem, Some Notes on the Demonology of the New Testament (Oslo, 19662) 41–6; P.J. Lalleman, ‘Healing by a Mere Touch as a Christian Concept’, Tyndale Bulletin 48 (1997) 355–61. 46 Philostratus, VA 1.15, tr. F.C. Conybeare, cf. J.-J. Flinterman, Power, Paideia & Pythagoreanism (Amsterdam, 1995) 111–12, where the Christian examples have to be added. 47 Plutarch, Mor. 815D, cf. C.P. Jones, Plutarch and Rome (Oxford, 19722) 40–41; Mart. Pol. 12–3. 48  P. Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus (Minneapolis, 2003) 122 note  16.

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dition to these more negative arguments, there are also more positive indications for an origin of the APt in Asia Minor. I have already stressed the significance of the expression ‘the friend of the Emperor’ and the adaptation of the inscription on Simon’s statue, but we may have one more important indication. After the apostle had raised a widow’s son from the dead during his contest with Simon Magus (§1), he was approached by another mother, who had evidently heard about this resurrection (§1). She requested him to resurrect her own son too, who was a senator. Peter consented and the mother had her son carried towards him in great style. Her slaves put their caps on their heads and walked in front of the bier together with everything that was normally offered for a deceased person, whereas the mother followed her son in the company of many senators and their wives, for ‘Nicostratus was noble and much liked among the senate’ (28). The scene is well written and through the interest of the senatorial community the reader is impressed by the standing of the son and is made to share the mother’s grief. It is interesting to see that the deceased son receives a typically Roman funeral, as the use of the pillei and the bier demonstrate. It was normal Roman custom that the bier was carried by freed slaves, who wore a felt cap as the sign of their recent freedom,49 whereas in Greece the corpse was transported on a chariot or sometimes carried by the local ephebes, as in the case of Chariton’s Callirhoe (1.5). The somewhat vague description ‘all that was to be used for the body’ probably refers to the expensive unguents and perfumes to be used for the funeral. How old, though, was the senator? The text is very explicit at this point. Three times he is called a puer. This is very surprising. How can a Roman senator be so young that he is still called a boy? Vouaux rightly seems to speak of the ‘naìveté, un peu maladroite’ of our author at this point,50 And indeed, in imperial Rome it was only after having been quaestor that a man could become senator – hardly an age at which still to be called puer. It is true that during the Principale since Augustus sons of senators could attend the senate, but that does not make Nicostratus a senator. On the other hand, in the Roman East it became normal in the course of the second century that sons of urban elite families became associated with the activities of the boulê and performed all kinds of offices.51 The young senator, therefore, fits an origin in Asia Minor much better than in Rome where such a young politician would be hardly credible at an early age.

49  The Latin translation uses iuvenes but the Greek original most likely had paides. For freed slaves at a Roman funeral, see J. Marquardt, Das Privatleben der Römer, ed. A. Mau (Leipzig, 18862) 355; H. Flower, Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture (Oxford, 1996) Plate 5 (cf. p.  94). 50  L. Vouaux, Les Actes de Pierre (Paris, 1922) 385. 51  Cf. M. Kleijwegt, Ancient Youth (Diss. Leiden, 1991) 221–72.

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Can we go even further? Ficker persuasively argued that the author of the APt came from Bithynia. His main arguments are the mention of a hospitium Bithyniorum (4) and the name of the senator Marcellus, whom Ficker has connected with Granius Marcellus, a pro-consul of Bithynia under Augustus.52 One could add the name Balbus (3) and connect him with Q. Iulius Balbus, the proconsul of Asia of 100/1 or 101/102.53 The proposed identifications may look improbable at first sight, but the mention of the historical figures of Tryphaena and Falconilla in the Acts of Paul demonstrate that the authors of the AAA occasionally used names of historical persons,54 probably inspired by local inscriptions.55 Christians within Bithynia are already mentioned in the preface to 1 Peter and in the famous letter of Pliny to Trajan about the Christians. Considering the rich social variety within the APt, one might perhaps think of Nicomedia. Around 170, this important city already had a Christian congregation, witness a letter of Dionysius of Corinth with a warning against Marcion (Eusebius, HE 4.23). Nicomedia would also have been the residence of Granius Marcellus. At first sight, this specific location may look no more than speculation, but the variety of classes and the strong Roman presence and familiarity with Rome certainly point to one of the larger cities of Asia Minor. Given that there are strong arguments to situate the AJ and AA also in Nicomedia, as we have seen in Chapters 7 and 8, the location proposed here may deserve serious consideration. Regarding the date of the APt, we can be less certain. It would help if we could at least provide a relative date by establishing the priority of the various AAA. Junod and Kaestli have convincingly argued that the AJ was the oldest of the AAA.56 Given that the author of the Acts of Paul knew the APt, as recent studies have established,57 the latter will therefore date between the Acts of John and Andrew and the Acts of Paul, that is, somewhere between 170 and 200, and, given the markedly conservative character of its regula fidei,58 preferably earlier than later. The large variety of upper-class Romans described as being Chris52  A. Stein and L. Petersen, PIR 2 IV (Berlin, 1952–56) 40 no.  211 (AD 14/5 proconsul in Bithynia). 53  PIR 2 IV, 152 no.  199. 54  For these names, see this volume, Chapter  10.2. 55  For the use of inscriptions by authors of hagiographical works, see the brilliant studies of Peter Thonemann: ‘Abercius of Hierapolis’, in B. Dignas and R.R.R. Smith (eds), Historical and Religious Memory in the Ancient World (Oxford, 2012) 257–82 and ‘The Martyrdom of Ariadne of Prymnessos and an Inscription from Perge’, Chiron 45 (2015) 151–70. 56  Junod and Kaestli, Acta Iohannis, 2.700. 57  C. Thomas, The Acts of Peter, Gospel Literature, and the Ancient Novel: Rewriting the Past (Oxford, 2003) 37–39; Spittler, Animals in the Apocryphal Acts, 146–48, overlooked by Zwierlein, Petrus und Paulus in Jerusalem und Rom, 214–18 (priority and date of APt), who improves upon Stoops, The Acts of Peter, 23. 58 L.H. Westra, ‘Regula fidei and Other Credal Formulations in the Acts of Peter’, in Bremmer, The Apocryphal Acts of Peter, 134–47.

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tians or interested in the new faith actually fits this date, and it was this aspect of the APt that led Carl Schmidt to date the APt to the last decades of the second century.59 In principle, this suggestion still seems correct, although we have now a much more precise idea of the extent of Christian influence in the highest Roman circles. 60 Considering the enormous number of senators in those years – we must think of about 6000 – the number of known Christian senators in the second century is amazingly small. Werner Eck, to whom we owe the best study of this subject, is unable to mention a single Christian senator by name, but he does mention some senatorial women.61 Christian senators occur in the reign of Septimius Severus – probably the influence of the persecution-free time of Commodus. Of course, we can attribute a fanciful imagination to the author of APt, but it seems more credible that he wanted to show off the success of the new faith by mentioning senators and senatorial women. On the other hand, senators could hardly demonstrate public allegiance to Christianity without losing their official functions. It seems that the author took this aspect of their (possible) allegiance into account: Marcellus has no ecclesiastical function, and it is the resurrected son of a poor widow, not the resurrected young senator, who is said to become deacon and bishop in due time (27). 62 The dream of Perpetua (§1) seems to show that, virtually immediately, the APt became known in Africa. But when and where did they translate the Acts into Latin? After the studies of Westra and Poupon, 63 there can be no doubt left that the Latin translation originated in Africa. C.H. Turner dated it to the ‘third or fourth’ century, and he is followed by Poupon, who thinks it not ‘improbable’ that the first Manichaean missionaries had brought the text along from Egypt and translated it upon their arrival in Africa. 64 Now the best evidence for determining the date of a text is often an institutional detail. 65 In this case, too, there is a passage in the translation that has not yet received the interest it deserves. When the demon had kicked the marble statue to pieces (§2), Marcellus 59 

C. Schmidt, ‘Zur Datierung der alten Petrusakten’, ZNW 29 (1930) 150–5. A. Weiss, Soziale Elite und Christentum. Studien zu ordo-Angehörigen unter den frühen Christen (Berlin and Boston, 2015). 61  W. Eck. ‘Das Eindringen des Christentums in den Senatorenstand bis zu Konstantin d. Gr.’, Chiron 1 (1971) 381–406; for some possible additions, see T. Barnes, ‘Statistics and the Conversion of the Roman Aristocracy’, JRS 85 (1995) 135–47 at 135 f. 62  According to Stoops, ‘Christ as Patron’, 154, the author of APt ‘wanted to obligate the wealthy to fulfil their duties as benefactors, without granting them the honor and loyalty which are the normal responses to such patronage’. Both explanations are perhaps valid. 63 Westra, ‘Regula fidei and Other Credal Formulations’; G. Poupon, ‘L’origine africaine des Actus Vercellenses’, in Bremmer, The Apocryphal Acts of Peter, 192–99, not refuted by Baldwin, Whose Acts of Peter?, 189–93. 64  C.H. Turner, ‘The Latin Acts of Peter’, JThS 32 (1931) 119–33 at 119; Poupon, ‘L’origine africaine des Actus Vercellenses’. 65  For an example from Late Antiquity, see my ‘An Imperial Palace Guard in Heaven: The Date of the Vision of Dorotheus’, ZPE 75 (1988) 82–8. 60 

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called out: Magnum flagitium factum est: si enim hoc innotuerit Caesari per aliquem de curiosis, magnis poenis nos adfliget (11), which Schneemelcher (NTA 2.297) translates as follows: ‘A great crime has been committed; if Caesar hears of this through some busybody, he will punish us severely’. However, his translation overlooks the fact that the curiosi were not ‘busy bodies’, but a nickname for the agentes in rebus, a kind of imperial secret police.66 It is only from AD 359 onwards that they reported directly to the emperor and, therefore, became feared as spies. Consequently, the APt was translated into Latin in the second half of the fourth century. 67 It fits this date that knowledge of the Latin translation is not attested before Augustine (Contra Adimanti calumnias 17). Schnee­ melcher (NTA 2.276) still states that ‘the Latin translator has obviously followed the Greek text practically word for word’, but it is now obvious that the translator ‘updated’ and varied his translation in order to make it more interesting and look more contemporary. 68 Admittedly, the precise date and place of origin of the APt and their Latin translation will still remain debated, but we may have come somewhat closer to the truth. 69

66 

As was pointed out by Pekáry, Das römische Kaiserbildnis, 139 n.  66. For further discussion, see this volume, Chapter  14.2. 68  This is now well shown by Baldwin, Whose Acts of Peter?, although he unpersuasively argues for the late emergence of a written Acts of Peter. 69  For information and comments, I would like to thank Kathleen Coleman, Ken Dowden, Ton Hilhorst, Peter van Minnen, Rolf Schneider and Julia Snyder. Stephen Harrison kindly corrected my English. 67 

Chapter 10

Magic, Martyrdom and Women’s Liberation in the Acts of Paul and Thecla The strong impact of feminism initially led to suggestions of a female origin of the Apocryphal Acts of Apostles (AAA), but more recently the reaction has swayed to the other extreme and even questioned any form of liberation through the AAA. Within this debate, the Acts of Paul and Thecla (AThe) are particularly important,1 since they have often been quoted as advocating women’s liberation, as being written by women, and/or being the written transformation of female stories,2 although opposing views have not been absent.3 However, through this focus on the ‘feminist’ views of these Acts equally interesting aspects have been neglected. In this contribution, which continues earlier contri-

1  For the Greek text, see R.A. Lipsius Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha I (Leipzig, 1891; repr. Hildesheim, 1990) 235–72; L. Vouaux, Les Actes de Paul et ses Lettres apocryphes (Paris, 1913). I follow the numbering and translation of W. Schneemelcher and R. Kasser, ‘The Acts of Paul’, in NTA 2.213–270. See also the translation of W. Rordorf et al., ‘Actes de Paul’, in F. Bovon and P. Geoltrain (eds), Écrits apocryphes chrétiens, 2  vols (Paris, 1997–2005) 1.1127–77, which is based on the forthcoming edition in the Corpus Christianorum, series apocryphorum. For recent (re-)editions of the text, see R. Kasser and P. Luisier, ‘Le Papyrus Bodmer XLI en édition princeps. L’épisode d’Ephèse des Acta Pauli en Copte et en traduction’, Le Muséon 117 (2004) 281–384; O. Zwierlein, Petrus in Rom (Berlin and New York, 20102) 426–49 (Martyrium Pauli) and Petrus und Paulus in Jerusalem und Rom (Berlin and Boston, 2013) 164–178 (papyri). For recent studies/commentaries, see V. Mangogna, Commentario agli Atti di Paolo e Tecla Composizione e trasmissione di un modello narrativo nel cristianesimo delle origini (Naples, 2004–05) = www.fedoa.unina.it/1098/1/Tesi_Mangogna_Viviana.pdf (accessed 11– 1-2017); J.W. Barrier, The Acts of Paul and Thecla: A Critical Introduction and Commentary (Tübingen, 2009) 73–75; G. Snyder, Acts of Paul: The Formation of a Pauline Corpus (Tübingen, 2013); unsatisfactory, R.I. Pervo, The Acts of Paul (Eugene, 2014) 88–99. 2  V. Burrus, Chastity as Autonomy: Women in the Stories of the Apocryphal Acts (New York and Queenston, 1987), who first expounded her views in an article with the same title in Semeia 38 (1986) 101–17; R. Albrecht, Das Leben der heiligen Makrina auf dem Hintergrund der Thekla-Traditionen (Göttingen, 1986) 239–326; R.S. Kraemer, Her Share of the Blessings (New York, 1992) 151–54. For the ‘feminist’ approach to the AThe, see M. Shelly, ‘Thinking of Thecla: Issues in Feminist Historiography’, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 17 (2001) 39–55; K. Greschat, Gelehrte Frauen des frühen Christentums (Stuttgart, 2015) 17–29 and J.W. Barrier, ‘The Acts of Paul and Thecla: the Historiographical Context’ , in id. et al. (eds), Thecla: Paul’s Disciple and Saint in the East and West (Leuven, 2017) 327–50 at 341–49. 3  L.C. Boughton, ‘From Pious Legend to Feminist Fantasy: Distinguishing Hagiographical License from Apostolic Practice in the Acts of Paul/Acts of Thecla’, Journal of Religion 71 (1991) 362–83; P.W. Dunn, ‘Women’s Liberation, the Acts of Paul, and other Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles’, Apocrypha 4 (1993) 245–61.

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butions to the debate about the position of women in the AAA,4 I will therefore not only look at Thecla and some other women in the AThe, but also at the descriptions of magic and martyrdom. In a kind of running commentary, I will first analyse the events in Iconium (§  1), then those in Antioch (§  2), and conclude with some observations on the composition, name, date, place of origin, author and aims of the Acts of Paul (AP: §  3).

1.  Paul and Thecla in Iconium In the Canonical Acts (14), Luke shortly relates Paul’s activities in Iconium, where Paul and Barnabas were violently ejected by a combination of Jews and pagans. The author of the AP took up this notice and supplied a much more detailed, if fictional, report, which focuses on a young girl, although the apostle is not neglected.5 After his flight from Antioch, Paul travelled with his companions, Demas and Hermogenes the smith, 6 whose debasedness is not left in any doubt, to Iconium. Naturally, Paul followed the via Sebaste (3), the still visible, broad paved highway which had been constructed in 6 BC and renovated precisely in AD 198 as we can see from surviving milestones,7 leading from Antioch via Iconium down to the Pamphylian coast.8 Here he was met by a certain Onesiphorus with 4 

This volume, Chapters 7 and 9; see also Chapter  11.2 the relationship between Luke’s Acts and the AP, see W. Schneelmelcher, Gesammelte Aufsätze (Thessaloniki, 1974) 204–22; W. Rordorf, Lex orandi, lex credendi (Neuchâtel, 1993) 449–65; R. Bauckham, ‘The Acts of Paul as a Sequel to Acts’, in B.W. Winter and A.D. Clarke (eds), The Book of Acts in Its Ancient Literary Setting I (Michigan and Carlisle, 1993) 105–52 at 107–16; R. Gounelle, ‘Actes apocryphes des apôtres et Actes des apôtres canoniques. État de la recherche et perspectives nouvelles (I)–(II)’, Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses 84 (2004) 3–30 et 419–41 at 431–43; J.A. Snyder, ‘Relationships between the Acts of the Apostles and Other Apostle Narratives’, in J. Frey et al. (eds), Between Canonical and Apo­ cryphal Texts: Processes of Reception, Rewriting and Interpretation in Early Judaism and Early Christianity (Tübingen, forthcoming, but also available at: https://www.academia. edu/12833029/Relationships_between_the_Acts_of_the_Apostles_and_Other_Apostle_ Narratives: accessed 11–1-2017). 6  In the New Testament, both Demas (Col 4.14, Philemon 24, 2 Tim 4.10) and Hermogenes (2 Tim 1.15) are mentioned as apostate followers of Paul. The Latin translations (cf. O. von Gebhardt, Die lateinischen Übersetzungen der Acta Pauli et Theclae [Leipzig, 1902] 2–3); Schneemelcher, in NTA 2.239, and A. Hilhorst, in A.F.J. Klijn (ed.), Apokriefen van het Nieuwe Testament I (Kampen, 1985) 158, make Hermogenes into a copper-smith, but the Greek just calls him a chalkeus. 7  M. Christol, M. and Th. Drew-Bear, ‘Bornes routières et géographie administrative en Asie Mineure sous les Antonins et les Sévères’, Bulletin de la Société nationale des antiquaires de France 1992, 338–48; Peter Thonemann on MAMA XI.9. 8  For the road, see D. French, ‘The Roman Road-system of Asia Minor’, in ANRW II.7.2 (Berlin and New York, 1980) 698–729 at 706 (map); S. Mitchell, Anatolia, 2  vols (Oxford, 1993) 1.70: ‘The via Sebaste was clearly the major line of communication from the south coast to the interior; there can be little doubt that this was the route along which St Paul travelled from 5  For

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his wife Lectra, a very uncommon name,9 and their sons Simmias and Zeno, whose philosophical names suggest an intellectual father.10 Onesiphorus had been told what Paul looked like: ‘a man small of stature, with a bald head and crooked legs, in a good state of body, with eyebrows meeting and a somewhat longer nose,11 full of friendliness; for he now appeared like a man, and now he had the face of an angel’ (3). This description established the author of the AThe as an authority on Paul;12 it also must have satisfied contemporary interest in physiognomy, the then popular pseudo-science (§  3), which we can use to decode the ‘message’ of the description.13 It is striking that the description is far from being wholly positive.14 Meeting eyebrows indicated tristem maxime hominem sed et paucum sapientem,15 bow-legged people were dim-witted,16 small men too quick,17 and baldness was considered ugly, as various literary passages show,18 whereas the meaning of the somewhat longer nose remains unclear. The reason for this negative part of the description probably lies in the following chapters where Thecla is pictured as being mesmerised by Paul’s message. If Paul had been described as physically attractive, her fascination could well be explained by a physical attraction. However, after this description the reader will have been warned to look into a Perge to Pisidian Antioch on his first missionary journey’. For its modern situation, see M. Arslan, ‘Ancient Routes, New Destinations: Roman Road Via Sebaste as a Thematic Cultural Route’, Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences 4.10 (October 2013) 660–65. 9  I have been unable to find a parallel for this name, but the late Olivier Masson (per litt.) suggested that it may be an abbreviation of Electra. 10  Onesiphorus is mentioned in 2 Tim 1.16 and 4.19, and the name is clearly chosen because of Paul’s appreciation of his help. For these and the other names in the AP, see now my ‘The Onomastics and Provenance of the Acts of Paul’, in F. Barone et al. (eds), Philologie, herméneutique et histoire des textes entre orient et occident (Turnhout, 2017), 527–47. 11  The Latin versions translate mikros epirrinon with aquilino nasone, but this is a more positive trait in contemporary physiognomy (‘magnanimous’), just as these versions translate the baldness away. Schneemelcher translates with ‘a nose somewhat hooked’. 12  As is suggested by L. van Kampen, Apostelverhalen. Doel en compositie van de oudste apokriefe Handelingen der apostelen (Diss. Utrecht, 1990) 65. 13  Other studies of this passage have also used physiognomic manuals but not in any systematic way, cf. R.M. Grant, ‘The Description of Paul in the Acts of Paul and Thecla’, VigChris 36 (1982) 1–4; better but still unsatisfactory, A.J. Malherbe, ‘A Physical Description of Paul’, HThR 79 (1986) 170–5; H. Omerzu, ‘The Portrayal of Paul’s Outer Appearance in the Acts of Paul and Thecla. Re-Considering the Correspondence between Body and Personality in Ancient Literature’, Religion & Theology 15 (2008) 252–279. 14  As was already seen by older students but wrongly rejected by Malherbe, ‘A Physical Description’, 170 f. 15  Anonymus Latinus, De Physiognomia 18 (wrongly quoted by Malherbe). 16  Anonymus Latinus 86, cf. Bremmer, ‘Walking, standing and sitting in ancient Greek culture’, in J. Bremmer and H. Roodenburg (eds), A Cultural History of Gesture (Cambridge, 1991) 15–35 at 24. 17 Aristoteles, Physiognomonica 813b; Anonymus Latinus 88. 18  B.L. Hijmans Jr. et al., Apuleius Madaurensis, Metamorphoses VIII (Groningen, 1985) 206.

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different direction. The reason, then, for this characterisation has to be looked for in the text itself, not in speculations about memories of Paul’s real appearance, as earlier scholars liked to think.19 On the other hand, the text could hardly depict Paul in purely negative terms and thus adds that he was ‘full of grace’ and sometimes looked ‘like an angel’.20 The latter detail may well explain why he met Onesiphorus ‘with a smile’ (4): the smile was a recurring part in ancient epiphanies.21 In Onesiphorus’ house, there was ‘great joy, and bowing of knees and breaking of bread’ (5). Apparently, the author of the AThe was part of a congregation that took the Eucharist without wine, just like those of the Acts of John and Acts of Peter.22 Would this allusion to the Eucharist have been understandable for pagan contemporaries? Probably it would. The references to the Eucharist as a ‘Thyestean banquet’ in pagan literature point to an informed, if lurid, interest.23 Moreover, the novelist Achilles Tatius, who lived in the third quarter of the second century, 24 already alludes to the rite in the following passage, in which the god Dionysus proclaimed of a cup with wine: ‘“This is the water of early autumn, this is the blood of the grape”. He then took the shepherd to a vine, plucked a cluster of grapes, and crushed it before him, saying: “This is the water, and this is the fountain”’ (2.2.4–6).25 Surely, if a pagan novelist could presuppose his readers to understand his allusion, so could a Christian novelist. Then Paul spoke of ‘the word of God concerning continence and the resurrection’, if mostly about continence, in a series of beatitudes. It is against this background that there occurs a sudden shift of scenes. As in a movie, we are abruptly taken to the neighbour’s house, where a young girl, Thecla, listened for three days and nights to Paul. Although she saw many women entering,26 she 19 

Similarly, Van Kampen, Apostelverhalen, 83. For a more detailed discussion of the passage, see now my ‘The Portrait of the Apostle Paul in the Apocryphal Acts of Paul, in Th. Greub and M. Roussel (eds), Figurationen des Porträts (Munich, 2017) forthcoming. 21  See this volume, Chapter  7.2. 22  The passage has to be added to those discussed by H. Roldanus, ‘Die Eucharistie in den Johannesakten’, in J.N. Bremmer (ed.), The Apocryphal Acts of John (Kampen, 1995) 72–96. 23  See more recently, J.B. Rives, ‘Human Sacrifice among Pagan and Christians’, JRS 85 (1995) 65–85; L. Roig Lanzillotta, ‘The Early Christians and Human Sacrifice’, in J.N. Bremmer (ed.), The Strange World of Human Sacrifice (Leuven, 2007) 81–102; J.N. Bremmer, ‘Early Christian Human Sacrifice between Fact and Fiction’, in F. Prescendi and A. Nagy (eds), Sacrifices humains: discours et réalité (Turnhout, 2013) 165–76. 24  Cf. K. Plepelits, Achilleus Tatios: Leukippe und Kleitophon (Stuttgart, 1980) 1–17. 25  So, persuasively, G.W. Bowersock, Fiction as History: Nero to Julian (Berkeley, 1995) 125–28 (a book with many interesting observations on the reflection of Christianity in the Greek novels), see now C. Friesen, ‘Dionysus as Jesus: The Incongruity of a Love Feast in Achilles Tatius’s Leucippe and Clitophon 2.2’, HThR 107 (2014) 222–40. 26  Voyaux adds the words ‘and virgins’, but these words are not only omitted by the Syrian, Armenian, Coptic and most Latin versions but also contradicted by Theoclia’s later description of the visitors as ‘women and young men’ (9). 20 

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refrained from going to her neighbour’s house (8): the author most likely wanted to stress her decent deportment. Thecla’s mother, Theoclia, 27 saw things in a different light. Puzzled by her daughter’s behaviour, she called her fiancé, Thamyris (again a name not without literary pretensions), who is described as ‘a first of the city’ (11).28 The term clearly has an institutional value: Thecla warns the Syrian (§  2) Alexander, ‘a first of the Antiochenes’, not to bother her, since she herself is ‘a first of the Iconians’ (26). Thecla and her fiancé, then, belonged to the elite of the town (§  3). Theoclia complained to Thamyris about the unusual behaviour of her daughter, who for three days and nights had not been eating, drinking or sleeping (8). Thecla, as the mother vividly described her, ‘sticks to a window like a spider... bound by a new desire and fearful passion’ (9). It is hardly surprising that Theo­ clia was getting anxious, since Thecla displayed clear signs of love-sickness, as the novels abundantly show: Philetas explains the intensity of his one-time love in Daphnis and Chloe with the words ‘I forgot to eat, I did not drink; I could not sleep’ (2.7).29 The term ‘bound’ (dedemenê), as used by Theoclia, recurs later when Thamyris finds Thecla ‘bound with him (Paul: syndedemenên) in affection’ (19). These recurring references to ‘binding’ suggest a case of erotic magic and may prepare the reader for the later accusation of Paul as a performer of erotic magic (below).30 Paul, so the mother continued, upsets the whole city, in particular its women and young men, by his teachings of the ‘heis kai monos god and chaste living’ (9). The qualification of Paul’s god does not mean ‘one single God only’, as Wilhelm Schneemelcher (1914–2003) translates, but ‘the unique and only God’, a well-known agonistic, elative acclamation. In Maeonia, dedications have even been found to a divinity called heis kai monos Theos.31 This god is closely related to the god Holy and Just (Hosios kai Dikaios), who has been connected with Judaism more than once. The association seems to be doubtful,32 but the close27  Thecla is the diminutive of the name of her mother, Theoclia. The name Thecla is wholly unique and clearly coined by our author, although Theclia occurs in an inscription of Illyrian Apollonia (I.Apollonia 40). 28  Schneemelcher wrongly translates as ‘the first’. 29  See also Sesonchis, col. III.19–20 Stephens/Winkler; Metiochus and Parthenope, ibid., 75; Achilles Tatius 1.5, 6, 9; Longus 2.82; Heliodorus 4.7; D.G. Martinez, P. Michigan XVI. A Greek love charm from Egypt (P. Mich. 757) (Atlanta, 1991) 60 (with further examples); P. Toohey, ‘Love, Lovesickness, and Melancholia’, Illinois Classical Studies 17 (1992) 265–86. 30  For the use of the simplex of ‘binding’ in magic, instead of the compound katadeô, see R. Wünsch, Defixionum Tabellae Atticae (Berlin, 1897) 96–97, 108; A. Audollent, Defixionum Tabellae (Paris, 1904) 15, 81, 163–4, 172, 179, 249, 259; SEG 35.1566; E. Eidinow, ‘“A Devotee and a Champion”: Re-interpreting the Female “Victims” of Magic in Early Christian Texts’, in M. Dillon et al. (eds), Women’s Ritual Competence in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean (London and New York, 2016) 213–28 at 221–23. 31  M. Ricl, Epigraphica Anatolica 18 (1991) 3 and 19 (1992) 91; see also H.S. Versnel, Ter unus (Leiden, 1990) 235 note  145, 243. 32  P. Trebilco, Jewish Communities in Asia Minor (Cambridge, 1991) 133–40.

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ness of various aspects of Judaism to pagan religiosity in this area remains striking and may well have had some influence on the early success of Christianity in the region. Unfortunately for Theoclia, her daughter completely disregarded her wishes. Is it really believable that a daughter would have disregarded her parents for the course of Christianity? In fact, we have a striking parallel in the case of Perpe­ tua, whose Passio relates how this young woman, ‘of high birth, educated in a manner befitting her status and formally and properly married’ (2.1), firmly rejected the appeals of her father: 3 While we were still under surveillance, Father kept trying to talk me into renouncing my faith: because of his love for me, he wanted to lead me astray. So I said: “Father, do you see this container here, for instance: this pitcher or whatever it is?” “Yes,” he answered. 2 I said, “It can’t be called anything other than what it is, right?” “Right.” “Well, that’s the way it is with me. I can’t call myself anything other than what I am: a Christian.” 3 That word upset Father so much that he lunged at me, aiming for my eyes [as if to pluck out my eyes]. But he only managed to shake me up. Then he left, defeated, and the ruses of Satan along with him. 4 Over the next few days I thanked the Lord for Father’s absence and I was relieved that he was not there. It was during this period of a few days that we were baptised, and the Spirit told me to ask for only one thing from the water: bodily endurance. (3.1–4, tr. J. Farrell and C. Williams).

This was only the first in a series of four confrontations, during which Perpetua consistently refused to give in to her father.33 Both young women did not only display this confident attitude towards their parents but also during their martyrdom. Perpetua guided the hand of the gladiator who had to finish her off (21.9), and when Thecla, after she had been condemned to death, ‘saw the Lord sitting in the form of Paul’, she, surely indignantly, said: ‘As if I were not able to endure, Paul has come to look after me’ (21). A most striking parallel is also the attitude towards those who had died without having been baptised. Perpetua prayed for her brother Dinocrates, who had died some years earlier (Passio Perpetua 7–8) and Thecla prayed for Falconilla, the daughter of Queen Tryphaena (29: §2).34 Could Perpetua have been inspired by Thecla’s behaviour? She is nowhere mentioned in Perpetua’s Passio, but Carthaginian women had read the AP,35 and Perpetua was probably sufficiently fluent in Greek to have read the 33  For this fascinating Passio, see most recently J.N. Bremmer and M. Formisano (eds), Perpetua’s Passions (Oxford, 2012), with extensive bibliography; this volume, Chapters 22– 26. 34  Unfortunately, E. Dassmann, Sündenvergebung durch Taufe, Busse und Martyrerfürbitte in den Zeugnissen frühchristlicher Frömmigkeit und Kunst (Münster, 1973) 165 mistakes Tryphaena for Falconilla and insufficiently distinguishes between early and late texts. 35 Tertullian, De baptismo 17.5, cf. Rordorf, Lex orandi. Lex credendi, 475–84; A. Hilhorst, ‘Tertullian on the Acts of Paul’, in J.N. Bremmer (ed.), The Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla (Kampen, 1996) 150–63; G. Poupon, ‘Encore une fois: Tertullien, De baptismo 17.5’, in D. Knoepfler (ed.), Nomen Latinum. Mélanges A. Schneider (Neuchâtel and Geneva, 1997) 199–205.

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AThe herself,36 if she had not heard about Thecla from other women. Influence from Thecla’s behaviour, then, seems not impossible in Perpetua’s case. There is of course one big difference between the two young women. Whereas Perpetua remained estranged from her father, the author of the AThe leaves this open (43). Actually, he may not have found it too advantageous to present early Christianity as destructive of families. After the unsuccessful appeals of her mother and fiancé, the latter took action ‘together with magistrates, officers and a great crowd with cudgels’ (15). A reader from Asia Minor will hardly have failed to recognise in this passage of the AThe the diogmitae, the local constabulary, which was used to arrest criminals and hunt down bandits, but which was not allowed to use heavy weapons; as their dedications also illustrate, their most important weapons were sticks or clubs.37 They went to the house of Onesiphorus, where Thamyris told Paul to come with them to the pro-consul, while the crowd shouted: ‘Away with the magician! For he has corrupted all our wives’ (15). Is it credible that a crowd would have uttered such accusations or is this a situation that could occur only in a work of fiction? Fortunately, we have an interesting parallel. The philosopher Apuleius happened to visit an old friend from Athens, Pontianus, in the small town of Oea in modern Libya. Here his friend persuaded him to marry his widowed mother, Pudentilla, even though she was ten years older. But the couple liked each other and her wealth may have been an additional inducement to Apuleius. The marriage proved to be a bone of contention for her late husband’s brothers and her son’s father-in-law, Herennius Rufus, who accused Apuleius of magic. From Apuleius’ surviving defence speech we learn that one of their proofs was a Greek letter which Pudentilla had written to her son. Herein she declared: ‘Apuleius is a magician (magos) and he has bewitched me to love him. Come to me, then, while I am still in my senses’. Rufinus took this letter to the market-place, opened it in everybody’s presence and loudly exclaimed in Latin: ‘Apuleius is a magician (magus). She herself says what she feels and suffers. What more do you want?’ Evidently, it was thought very damaging to accuse somebody of magic, even of erotic magic, in public. In Greek law, there had not been an action against magic per se, but this had

36  For Perpetua’s knowledge of Greek, see J. den Boeft and J.N. Bremmer, ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae II’, VigChris 36 (1982) 383–402 at 391–92; A.A.R. Bastiaensen, ‘Heeft Perpe­ tua haar dagboek in het Latijn of in het Grieks geschreven?’, in A.Hilhorst (ed.), De heiligenverering in de eerste eeuwen van het christendom (Nijmegen, 1988) 130–5; this volume, Chapter  26.3. 37  Den Boeft and Bremmer, ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae IV’, VigChris 45 (1991) 105–22 at 109, and ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae V’, VigChris 49 (1995) 146–64 at 149–50 (with full bibliography). Illustrations: L. Robert, Etudes Anatoliennes (Paris, 1937) 102–3 with plate II.2; P. Herrmann on TAM V.2.1326 with plate XIX.

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changed in Roman times when magic gradually became a very serious crime.38 The crowd knew this and therefore shouted: ‘Burn the lawless one!’ (20). The arrest of Paul, and later that of Thecla, enabled the author of the AThe to present in detail their court case. This is one of the earliest descriptions of a process against Christians and the subsequent execution, even though a failed one in the case of Thecla. It is therefore interesting to compare this representation with the original Acta martyrum in order to see to what extent the author has mixed fiction with faction.39 Naturally, the apostle was brought before the semi-circular tribunal, the bêma (16), where the pro-consul and his councillors were sitting.40 The Romans had instituted a legal system in which the pro-consul held judicial assizes at the principal towns of his province. In this system suspects had often to wait a long time before a pro-consul arrived in their city, and it is only in fiction that he is immediately available.41 Iconium was a perfectly suitable place for such a conventus, but it is perhaps a bit rash to deduce from the passage that in the second century Iconium was indeed the seat of a Roman court.42 Thamyris accused Paul ‘with a loud voice’ that he ‘does not allow maidens to marry’ and asked to ‘let him declare before thee for what cause he teaches these things’ (16). The Roman legal procedure was accusatory, not inquisitorial, of nature and Thamyris had therefore to come forward with a formal accusation; it belonged to the procedure that the accusation had to be made with a loud voice.43 The specific accusation was evidently hardly persuasive, and the sinister duo Demas and Hermogenes advised him: ‘Say that he is a Christian, and you will immediately destroy him’ (16).44 This was a clever move, since the Acta martyrum abundantly show that the simple confession of being a Christian 38 Apuleius, De magia 82. For a full analysis of this highly interesting case, see F. Graf, Magic in the Ancient World (Cambridge MA and London, 1997) 65–88. For some considerations on the definition of magic in Late Antiquity, see C.R. Phillips III, ‘Nullum Crimen sine Lege: Socioreligious Sanctions on Magic’, in C. Faraone and D. Obbink (eds), Magika Hiera (New York and Oxford, 1991) 260–76. 39  For a comparison of the Acta martyrum with the AAA, see A. Hilhorst, ‘The Apocryphal Acts as Martyrdom Texts: The Case of the Acts of Andrew’, in Bremmer, Apocryphal Acts of John, 1–14. 40  For the bêma, see L. Robert, Le martyre de Pionios, prêtre de Smyrne (Washington, 1994) 107–08; this volume, Chapter  8.3. 41  Assize system: Den Boeft and Bremmer, ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae III’, VigChris 39 (1985) 110–30, 119; W. Ameling, ‘Drei Studien zu den Gerichtsbezirken der Provinz Asia in republikanischer Zeit’, Epigraphica Anatolica 12 (1988) 9–24, 233; Mitchell, Anatolia, 1.64– 65. Delays: Robert, Pionios, 93. 42  As is done by Ameling, ‘Drei Studien’, 23 note  75; Mitchell, Anatolia, 2.60. 43  Accusatory nature: G.E.M. de Ste Croix, Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy (Oxford, 2006) 120. Loud voice: Robert, Pionios, 72, who overlooked this example. 44  Schneelmelcher, in NTA 2.243 translates ‘...and so thou wilt destroy him’, but the reading eutheôs instead of houtôs is not only more dramatic but also guaranteed by the Coptic edition.

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would be sufficient to pronounce a death sentence; in fact, this confession seems to have made ‘Christian’ the favored self-designation of the followers of Christ.45 Somewhat abruptly, though, these considerations disappeared out of sight, and the proconsul asked: ‘Who are you, and what do you teach?’(16). The first question is only natural, but also the second part of the question, which of course enables the author to let Paul expound the Christian faith, is not without a parallel. In the Acts of Justin the prefect Rusticus asked Justin: ‘What are the doctrines that you practise?’ (2.3B). It is hardly chance that these two cases belong to the earliest processes when Christianity was perhaps not that well known. After Paul had explained his teachings, the pro-consul ordered to lead him off to prison ‘until he should find leisure to give him a more attentive hearing’ (17). That reaction is not persuasive. In the Passio Scillitanorum of AD 180 the governor Saturninus denounces the Christian faith as ‘madness’ (8: dementia) and in Luke’s Acts Festus had already called Paul’s words ‘madness’ (26.24: mania).46 A Roman governor would hardly have spent more time on this case, let alone ‘heard Paul gladly about the holy works of Christ’ (20). In prison, Paul was visited by Thecla, who had bribed the door-keeper and the goaler to provide her access to the apostle (18). Bribery of the prison authorities must have been normal and is well attested in the Greek novel and the acta martyrum.47 The scene shows both the wealth of Thecla, who has (golden?) bracelets and a silver mirror, and her independent behaviour. After she had been found out, they were brought again before the pro-consul, who with pain in his heart condemned Paul to be scourged and Thecla to be burnt alive. The author evidently tried to picture the governor as positive as possible, but this judgment certainly raises the question as to why Paul was scourged and Thecla burned. In addition to obvious narrative reasons, the contemporary Christian reader will perhaps not have been that surprised. He knew from Luke’s Acts and Paul’s Letters that Paul was a Roman citizen,48 whereas Thecla clearly was not, and in the early Roman Empire citizens could expect a less severe sentence than aliens.49 Thecla was brought into the theatre, without any clothes. This sight moved the proconsul and ‘he admired the power that was in her’ (22). The braveness of Thecla is seen through the eyes of her judge – a strong narrative ploy! Thecla 45 

See this volume, Chapter  1.3. J. den Boeft and J.N. Bremmer, ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae’, VigChris 35 (1981) 43–56 at 44–45; Robert, Pionios, 111 f. 47 Cicero, In Verrem 2.5.118; Lucian, Toxaris, 31; Achilles Tatius 6.2; Passio Perpetuae 3.7; Mart. Pionii 11.5; Palladius, Historia Lausiaca 65.3 Bartelink, cf. Robert, Pionios, 76 f. 48  This is demonstrated by P. van Minnen, ‘Paul the Roman Citizen’, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 56 (1994) 43–52. 49  P. Garnsey, ‘Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire’, in Finley, Studies in Ancient Society, 141–65 at 160–61; K. Coleman, ‘Fatal Charades: Roman Executions Staged as Mythological Enactments’, JRS 80 (1990) 44–73 at 55–57. 46 

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voluntarily climbed up on the pyre after having taken on the shape of the Cross.50 This attitude was not unusual among martyrs. In various cases, there is a clear reference to the posture of Moses during Israel’s battle against Amalek in Exodus 17.8–13, where Israel gained the upper hand whenever Moses raised his hands.51 Thecla, then, climbed upon the pyre in a victorious posture. And indeed, she is proved to be victorious, since God quenched the pyre with a great thunder storm (22). The scene then suddenly shifts to a tomb outside the city, where Paul was staying with Onesiphorus and his family. After a while, they managed to find Thecla, who said to Paul that she wanted to cut her hair and to follow him wherever he goes. But Paul rejected both suggestions. In the later part of the second century, the complicated coiffures that had been so popular in the first century had gone out of fashion,52 but the author of AThe may still have thought it wise not to antagonise the upper-class women amongst his readers (§  3). Paul also refused her request to baptise her: she had to be patient. Then he sent Onesiphorus and his family back to Iconium and left with Thecla to Antioch. This change of scene ends the first part of the AThe and acts as a hinge in the story. Both Paul and Thecla play important roles in this first part. Paul is instrumental in converting Thecla. Thecla herself has left her mother and her fiancé and accepted the faith in Christ. In this first part, Thecla is also represented as being focused on Paul, but the relationship changes in Antioch where her final test will take place.

3.  Paul and Thecla in Antioch In Antioch, Paul and Thecla met Alexander, ‘a Syrian’ and ‘a first of the Antiochenes’ (26). But which Antioch did the author mean: Pisidian or Syrian Antioch? On the basis of his idea that Schmidt’s estimation of the size of PHeid(elberg) would leave insufficient space for Paul’s adventures in Damascus, Jerusalem and Syrian Antioch, Schneemelcher has left the choice open. But his reconstruction of the beginning of the Acts of Paul is far from certain, and the designation of Alexander as a Syrian would have been superfluous in Syrian

50  Schneemelcher, in NTA 2.243 wrongly translates: ‘making the sign of the Cross’. The meaning is well paraphrased by the Latin translation Ba: Illa autem extensis manibus similitudinem crucis faciens ascendit super pyram. 51  Den Boeft and Bremmer, ‘Notiunculae V’, 155 f. 52  J.J. Herrmann, Jr., ‘Rearranged Hair: A Portrait of a Roman Woman in Boston and Some Recarved Portraits of Earlier Imperial Times’, Journal of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 3 (1991) 35–50.

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Antioch,53 although it remains unclear to me why the author made Alexander a Syrian. Alexander evidently thought that Thecla belonged to Paul and tried to win him over with gifts and money, but Paul pretended not to know her. Paul’s attitude may seem surprising, but his answer left the field free for Thecla to prove the quality of her faith. She brusquely repelled her suitor when he tried to embrace her. What did he think! She was ‘a first of the Iconians’ and thrown out of Iconium because she had refused to marry Thamyris. In other words, she had not preserved her chastity in Iconium in order to lose it in Antioch. To demonstrate her firm decision, she ‘ripped his cloak, took off the crown from his head, and made him a laughing-stock’ (26). Who was Alexander that he went about in this splendid attire? The Syrian and Armenian versions are informative in this respect, since they add an interesting detail about the crown, viz. that it carried a figure of Caesar. There can be little doubt that these versions have added this detail to the original text,54 but they were clearly well informed, since they had recognised the crown for what it was: the crown of the imperial priest, which could display up to fifteen busts of reigning emperors and their family. Once again, the AThe relates a local usage, since these crowns have been mainly found in Asia Minor, with some examples in the islands and mainland Greece. The imperial priests were always members of the local elite, as in our case (‘first of the Antiochenes’), and also responsible for the organisation of the venationes during the provincial or local festivals connected with the imperial cult, as again happened in our case.55 Alexander could impossibly tolerate such an insult and he brought Thecla to the pro-consul, who immediately condemned her to the beasts. In fact, we nowhere hear of Antioch as an assize centre, and the detail is probably added to make the ordeal of Thecla more impressive. It is highly interesting that the author let the women present at the trial cry out ‘An evil judgment. A godless judgment’ (27). The words virtually recur in the Greek version of the Martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus and Agathonice in reaction to the condemnation of Agathonice: ‘Bad judgment and unjust decrees!’. Do we here have a case of a stereotype reaction of the crowd or did the author of the lost Greek version, which 53  Schneemelcher, in NTA, 2.220, whose reconstruction is persuasively rejected by Bauckham, ‘The Acts of Paul’, 115 f. 54  As Willy Rordorf informs me. 55  For the identification and particulars, see S.R. Price, Rituals and Power (Cambridge, 1984) 62 (local elite), 124 (festivals; see also the full bibliography in Robert, Pionios, 102), 170–71 (crown); M. Aurenhammer, ‘Fragment einer bronzenen Büstenkrone aus Metropolis’, in F. Blakolmer et al. (eds), Fremde Zeiten. Festschrift für Jürgen Borchhardt, 2  vols (Vienna, 1996) 1.387–91; J. Rumscheid, Kranz und Krone: Zu Insignien, Siegespreisen und Ehrenzeichen der römischen Kaiserzeit (Tübingen, 2000) 7–51; M. Horster and Th. Schröder, ‘Priests, Crowns and Priestly Headdresses in Imperial Athens’, in B. Alroth and Ch. Scheffer (eds), Attitudes towards the Past in Antiquity. Creating Identities (Stockholm, 2014) 233–39.

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was the basis for the corresponding Latin translation, know the AThe?56 The presence of the women is part of the change from Iconium to Antioch. In the first part of the AThe virgins are often mentioned, but in the second part adult women play the main role. Evidently, the AThe is directed not only at virgins but at the group of women at large. Thecla asked the pro-consul ‘that she might remain pure until she was to fight against the beasts’. This probably meant that she feared to be put into a brothel until the moment of her execution, which had to take place during a festival (above). Such a penalty is well attested in Christian literature and also occurs in the ancient novel.57 The judge permitted her request and she was taken into the care of a rich woman, Queen Tryphaena, who had just lost her own daughter (27). The name is interesting, since we know that there once indeed existed a queen called Tryphaena, daughter of king Polemon I of Pontus, who had been married to the Thracian king Kotys and lived in Pontus with her son, king Polemon II. She was a cousin of Claudius, as the author knew (36), but there is no reason to believe that she had actually settled in Antioch – historical reality was not one of the aims of the author.58 The reason why the queen took pity on Thecla is motivated psychologically: Thecla replaced her deceased daughter Falconilla – an interesting, if rare, notice about the grief of ancient parents.59 The name Falconilla is not unique, but occurs in a contemporary Athenian inscription in honour of Pompeia Sosia Falconilla, whose husband M. Pontius Laelianus was consul in AD 163; we also find the name Falco in a Pontian inscription of AD 224/5. Falconilla is a name at home in south-west Asia Minor, 60 where the author will have read her name on a local honorific inscription, just like, presumably, the name of Tryphaena. However, the name also supplies a terminus 56 For the date (Decius) and the history of the text of the martyrdom, see C.P. Jones, ‘Notes on the Acta Carpi and Some Related Martyr-Acts’, in M. Cassia et al. (eds), Pignora Amicitiae: Scritti di Storia antica e di Storiografia offerti a Mario Mazza (Rome, 2012 [2014]) 259–68. For such acclamations by the public, see D. Potter, ‘Performance, Power and Justice in the High Empire’, in W.J. Slater, (ed.), Roman Theater and Society (Ann Arbor, 1996) 129– 59. 57  For this Roman practice, see F. Augar, Die Frau im römischen Christenprocess (Leipzig, 1905); add AB 80 (1961) 12. 58  The brilliant identification was made by A. von Gutschmid, “Die Königsnamen in den apokryphen Apostelgeschichten. Ein Beitrag zur Kenntniß des geschichtlichen Romans”, Rheinisches Museum NF 19 (1864) 161–83 and 380–401 at 178–79, reprinted in his Kleine Schriften II (Leipzig, 1890) 340–94 at 355–57. Polemon I: Strabo 12.6.1; Appian, BC 5.75.319; R.S. Sullivan, ‘Dynasts in Pontus’, in ANRW II.7.2 (1980) 913–30 at 922–23; P. Thonemann, ‘Polemo, son of Polemo (Dio, 59.12.2)’, Epigraphica Anatolica 37 (2004) 144–150. 59 M. Golden, ‘Did the Ancients Care When Their Children Died?’, Greece&Rome 35 (1988) 152–63. 60  SEG 26.261; AE 1993.828, cf. W. Eck, ‘Senatorische Familien der Kaiserzeit in der Provinz Sizilien’, ZPE 113 (1996) 109–28; PIR 2, vol. VI (Berlin and New York, 1998) 303–04; C. Marek, ‘Ein neues Zeugnis aus Kaunos für den Senator Pompeius Falco’, Museum Helve­ ticum 57 (2000) 88–93; D. Okoń, ‘Der Konsul Q. Pompeius Sosius Falco – Ein Nachfolger von Kommodus?’, Eos 95 (2008) 109–13.

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post quem for the date of the AP, which will not have been written before the mid 160s. It was normal that those meant to be killed at a festival, such as the sacrificial animals, gladiators and criminals, were paraded in town to show the munificence of the giver of the games and whet the appetite of the public. 61 This also happened to Thecla, who was tied to a fierce lioness. Some of the Latin translations rightly do not believe this and add that she was put on top of the cage of the lioness. Once again, the women and their children, whose presence is perhaps more believable in town than in the amphitheatre, uttered protests. After the parade, Tryphaena again took Thecla into her home, since her late daughter had appeared to her in a dream, requesting that Thecla would pray for her so that she could pass ‘to the place of the just’. Thecla fulfilled her request and Tryphaena mourned that ‘such a beauty was to be thrown to the beasts’ – once again we see one of Thecla’s qualities through the eyes of somebody else. In his famous book about the birth of purgatory, Jacques le Goff (1924–2014) has rightly compared Thecla’s prayer with that of Perpetua for her brother Dinocrates (§  1): in both cases we can see the early contours of Purgatory. 62 At dawn the next morning, Alexander came to fetch Thecla for the fight against the animals (30). It was indeed the custom in Roman games for the damnati ad bestias to perform in the morning, whereas in the afternoon the gladiatorial games proper took place; similarly Perpetua and her fellow-martyrs were led to the amphitheatre, as soon as illuxit dies (Passio P. 18.1).63 Tryphaena managed to chase him away, but she had to give in to the soldiers sent by the pro-consul (31). The soldiers stripped her virtually naked (33–4), as they had done before putting her on the stake (22).64 Near-nudity also is mentioned in the case of Perpetua and Felicitas (Passio P. 20.2). Undoubtedly, there is a sexual aspect to this particular treatment, but it must be stressed that males as well were executed naked:65 it was normal for Romans to strip their condemned criminals in order to humiliate them. 66 After the first onslaught of wild animals had been unsuccessful through the help of a fierce lioness,67 Thecla jumped in a pool in the amphitheatre and bap61  G. Ville, La gladiature en Occident des origines à la mort de Domitien (Rome, 1981) 364–65; Price, Rituals and Power, 110. 62  J. le Goff, La naissance du Purgatoire (Paris, 1981) 76. 63 Ville, La gladiature en Occident, 393–94; Coleman, ‘Fatal Charades’, 55. 64  For a good discussion of the passage, see A. van den Hoek and J. Hermann, Jr., Pottery, Pavements, and Paradise (Leiden, 2013) 83 f. 65  This is overlooked by B. Shaw, ‘The Passion of Perpetua’, Past & Present 139 (1993) 3–45 at 8, who also misinterprets Mart. Lugd. 56 by suggesting that Blandina was dressed in a dia­ phanous net, cf. Mart. Pion. 18.1; Acta Cypriani 2 4.1 Bastiaensen; Robert, Pionios, 115. 66  For the element of humiliation in Roman executions, see Coleman, ‘Fatal Charades’, 46–47: D. Potter, ‘Martyrdom as Spectacle’, in R. Scodel (ed.), Theater and Society in the Classical World (Ann Arbor, 1993) 53–88 at 65. 67  For an excellent discussion of the damnatio ad bestias, with many interesting illustra-

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tised herself. Fortunately, a heavenly fire killed the seals – not sharks, as Peter Brown suggests68 – that were awaiting her and hid her nudity from the spectators (34). This small scene is a most welcome, if neglected, testimony for the Roman custom to have pools in some of their amphitheatres; even the seals are mentioned by Calpurnius Siculus (7.65–6). 69 After more animals had been set loose at her and Alexander had her tied to bulls, Tryphaena could no longer stand the spectacle and fell in such a deep coma that her servants thought her to have died. Alexander became frightened that the emperor might hear about the ‘death’ of his cousin and asked for her release. The pro-consul who has been continuously depicted as ill at ease with the execution of Thecla, was only too happy to respond to his request. He ordered to bring her clothes and in answer to his question as to what protection shielded her, Thecla gave a short exposition of the Christian faith (36–7). When the pro-consul then released her, the women present ‘cried out with a loud voice and as with one mouth gave praise to God, saying: “Unique is God, who has delivered Thecla”’ (38). In the context of this amphitheatre, the formula still has some of its usual, agonistic force.70 When Tryphaena was told the ‘good news’ (euangelistheisan), she embraced Thecla and said: ‘Now I believe that the dead are raised up!’, thus once again stressing the importance of the theme of the Resurrection.71 Thecla stayed with her for eight more days and preached ‘the word of God’. The Queen converted and with her most of her female slaves. It seems not unlikely that we see here also something of the effect of the conversion of upper-class women. Tryphaena will hardly have been the only case, where female slaves followed their mistress into the new faith (39).72 Having completed her task in Antioch, Thecla rejoined Paul, who was staying in Myra. With her, she took young men and female slaves and she sewed her mantle into that of a man. In this way, she could follow Paul without arousing tions, see Van den Hoek and Hermann, Jr., Pottery, Pavements, and Paradise, 65–106 (‘Thecla the Beast Fighter’) and 404–34 (‘Execution as Entertainment: the Roman Context of Martyrdom’, by Van den Hoek). 68  P. Brown, The Body and Society (New York, 1988) 158. Seals: B. Lavagnini, ‘S. Tecla nella vasca delle foche e gli spettacoli in acqua’, Byzantion 33 (1963) 185–90; H. Schneider, ‘Thekla und die Robben’, VigChris 55 (2001) 45–57; H.-J. Klauck, Die apokryphe Bibel (Tübingen, 2008) 107–10. 69  This testimony has to be added to K. Coleman, ‘Launching into History: Aquatic Displays in the Early Empire’, JRS 83 (1993) 48–74. 70  On the formula, see Versnel, Ter unus, 234–6, 243 (with full biliography). 71  See P.J. Lalleman, ‘The Resurrection in the Acts of Paul’, in Bremmer, Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla, 126–41. 72  For similar conversions in the AAA, see C. Aloe Spada, ‘Esempi di conversioni femminili negli Atti apocrifi degli Apostoli’, in G. Sfameni Gasparro (ed.), Agathè Elpís. Studi storico-religiosi in onore di Ugo Bianchi (Rome, 1994) 375–82; G. Aragione, ‘Tecla di Iconio e Ipparchia di Maronea: modelli di conversione al femminile?’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo 2 (2005) 133–55; this volume, Chapter  12.

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any suspicion of a sexual nature.73 Paul was of course glad to see her and she told him about her own baptising (40). Subsequently, she went to Iconium with the blessing of Paul: ‘Go and teach the word of God!’ Thecla left Paul part of the money and clothes, which Tryphaena had given her, ‘for the diakonia of the beggars’ (41) – charity being an important part of the activities and attractions of the early Christian church.74 In Iconium (42), she attempted to convert her mother Theoclia and then left to Seleucia, where she continued to preach and, finally, quietly passed away (43). We do not know why she went to Seleucia, but the city certainly made the most of this mention and her local cult long remained popular.75

4.  Composition, name, date, place of origin, author, and aims of the AP As the notice of Tertullian (De baptismo 17.5) shows, which speaks about the AP but mainly mentions the AThe, the AThe must in his time already have been part of the AP and therefore will have always been an integral part of this work.76 At the same time, the notice supplies a terminus ante quem of about AD 200. A second-century date is also suggested by the hitherto neglected reference to Thecla and her confrontation with the seals in the Physiologus (40). Unfortunately, we cannot be absolutely certain about the date of this work, but the passage belongs to that layer of the text that Francesco Sbordone (1911–1983) identified as the most original and which he dated to the second century.77 Given that the AP used the Acts of Peter (this volume, Chapter  9), the work will have been written in the 190s. As we have seen, both Thamyris and Thecla are called ‘first of the Iconians’, and Alexander is a ‘first of the Antiochenes’. The terminology of ‘first of the 73  Her ‘travesty’ served as a model for other women, see J. Anson, ‘The female transvestite in early monasticism: the origin and development of a motif’, Viator 5 (1974) 1–32; E. Patlagean, ‘L’histoire de la femme déguisée en moine et l’évolution de la sainteté féminine à By­ zance’, Studi Medievali III.17 (1976) 597–623, reprinted in her Structure sociale, famille, chrétienté à Byzance (London, 1981) Ch. XI + Addenda, 2. 74  Add the case of Tryphaena, who is obviously a widow, to those in this volume, Chapter  4. For the charity of rich women, see also this volume, Chapter  3. 75 G. Dagron, Vie et miracles de Sainte Thècle (Brussels, 1978); T.J. Kraus, ‘“Knowing Letters”: (Il)literacy, Books, and Literary Concept in the Life and Miracles of Saint Thecla (Mir. Thcl. 45)’, ASE 23 (2006) 283–306; various studies in J.W. Barrier et al. (eds), Thecla: Paul’s Disciple and Saint in the East and West (Leuven, 2017). 76  For the composition of the Acts of Paul, see now my ‘Onomastics and Provenance of the Acts of Paul’, 77  F. Sbordone (ed.), Physiologus (Rome, 1936; reprint Hildesheim and New York, 1976). For the date, see K. Alpers, ‘Untersuchungen zum griechischen Physiologus und den Kyraniden’, Vestigia bibliae 6 (1984) 13–87 and ‘Physiologus’, in TRE 26 (1996) 596–602.

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city’ is not unique. In a number of Greek cities a member of the elite within the elite called himself or herself (or was called) prôtos tês poleôs, ‘first of the city’, belonging to hoi prôteuontes, ‘the first’, or ek tou prôtou tagmatos, ‘of the first rank’. Now we are fortunate in having a relatively large corpus of Ephesian and Smyrnaean inscriptions, which shows that this terminology was not at home in either Ephesus or Smyrna; in fact, Carl Schmidt had already noted that the author of AP was not really acquainted with Ephesian geography.78 Although these expressions occasionally occur elsewhere in the Greek world, the centre of this aristocratic self-designation was Aphrodisias and Northern Lycia. Thus it is not surprising that we also find this vocabulary in Chariton’s novel Callirhoe, which was written in Aphrodisias, probably in the mid first-century AD:79 Demetrius is called a ‘first of the Milesians’ (2.5.4), Dionysius ‘a first of Ionians’ (4.4.3) and Chaereas a ‘first of Sicily’ (4.3.1) and ‘first of the city’ (6.7.10).80 The vocabulary is also at home in Eastern Phrygia, Galatia and Pisidia where Antiochene Jews stirred up ‘the first of the city’ against the apostle Paul (Acts 13.50);81 on the other hand, the related terminology of prôtopolitês is exclusively found in Syria, Palestine and Egypt.82 78  C. Schmidt, Acta Pauli: Überzetzung, Untersuchungen und koptischer Text (Leipzig, 19052) 205 f. This is equally true regarding the author of the Acts of John, who also seems to be ignorant of Ephesian geography, cf. H.-J. Klauck, The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles (Waco, 2008) 18; A. Weiss, ‘Lokalkolorit in der Apostel-geschichte des Lukas und in den apokryphen Apostelgeschichten – Realitätseffekt oder Authentizitätsmarker? Ein Vergleich’, in J. Thiessen (ed.), Die Apostel-geschichte des Lukas in ihrem historischen Kontext (Münster and Zürich, 2013) 9–28 at 16–18. 79 For the date, see the recent consensus in P. Fullmer, Resurrection in Mark’s Literary-Historical Perspective (London, 2007) 73–93, to be added to S. Tilg, Chariton of Aphrodisias and the Invention of the Greek Love Novel (Oxford, 2010) 36–79 and A. Henrichs, ‘Missing Pages: Papyrology, Genre, and the Greek Novel’, in D. Obbink and R. Rutherford (eds), Culture in Pieces. Essays on Ancient Texts in Honour of Peter Parsons (Oxford, 2011) 302–22 at 309–13. 80  From the other surviving Greek novels, the terminology only recurs in Achilles Tatius, where we find Thersandros, ‘in birth a first of all the Ionians’ (6.12.2), Leukippe, ‘a first of the Ephesians’ (5.19.4) and ‘wife of a first of the Tyrians’ (6.16.5) and Melite ‘a first of the women’ (7.3.6). 81  L. Robert, Études Anatoliennes (Paris, 1937) 342; P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Scritti agio­ grafici II (Rome, 1962) 18 n.  4; F. Schindler, Die Inschriften von Bubon (Nordlykien) (Vienna, 1972) no.  8 , 12–13; M. Wörrle, Stadt und Fest im kaiserzeitlichen Kleinasien (Munich, 1988) 56–57 and 135; R. MacMullen, Changes in the Roman Empire (Princeton, 1990) 342 n.  10; F. Quass, Die Honoratiorenschicht in den Städten des griechischen Ostens (Stuttgart, 1993) 51–5; S. Sahin, Die Inschriften von Arykanda (Bonn, 1994) no.  42, 49, 50; M. Adak, ‘Claudia Anassa – eine Wohltäterin aus Patara’, Epigraphica Anatolica 27 (1996) 127–42; Th. Schmitz, Bildung und Macht (Munich, 1997) 97–101; S. Zoumbaki, ‘On the Vocabulary of Supremacy: The Question of Proteuontes Revisited’, in A.D. Rizakis and F. Camia (eds), Pathways to Power. Civic Elites in the Eastern Part of the Roman Empire (Athens, 2008) 221–39; SEG 31.1316 (Lycian Xanthos); 41.1343, 1345–6, 1353 (Lycian Balboura); 42.1215 (Pisidian Etenna); 46.1524 (Lydian Sardis); 51.1811 D.II.11 (Pisidian Termessos); 55.1492 (Lycian Rhodiapolis), 60.1115 (Carian Iasos). The institutional background of the phrase is not recognised in any of the standard commentaries on Acts.

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The social terminology, then, provides the place of origin of the AP, which obviously must be sought in south-west Asia Minor; the mention of the Via Sebaste perfectly fits in with this location. Antioch would of course be a possibility, but it is unwise trying to be precise in this respect: the name Falconilla rather points to Lycia (§  2). The location in Asia Minor is also confirmed by the mention of diogmitae (§  1) and the crown of the imperial priest (§  2). These data prove that Tertullian was well informed about the authorship of the AP and, thus, there is no reason to doubt his information that the author of the AP was a male presbyter. The important position occupied by Thecla in the AP shows that upper-class virgins and women were one of the targets of this work. Moreover, the way in which the author portrays Thecla suggests that these women were conscious of their high status and were used to a kind of independency which we not normally associate with Greek women. Yet more recent investigations have demonstrated that the upper-class women of Asia Minor had gathered great wealth and influence in the early centuries of the Roman Empire, as is attested by hundreds of inscriptions of Asia Minor.83 The AP, then, did not need to have a liberating effect on these women; they were liberated already – at least as far as that was possible in those times. The situation was different in other areas of the Roman Empire. For example, in Carthage we do not find these rich Christian women, but a text is not tied to its place of origin. Once the AP travelled the Mediterranean outside south-west Asia Minor, women could appropriate the example of Thecla and aspire for the same independence, despite a dissimilar social position. The Acts of Paul and Thecla, then, not only testifies to the power of the Word but also demonstrates the power of a text.84

82  F. Vattioni, ‘A proposito di πρωτοπολίτης’, Stud. Pap.  16 (1977) 23–29 (add SEG 38.1586); M. Blume, ‘A propos de P.Oxy. I, 41’, in L. Criscuolo and G. Geraci (eds), Egitto e Storia Antica dall’ Ellenismo all’ età Araba. Bilancio di un confront (Bologna, 1989) 271–90 at 286; M. Al-Najem and M. Macdonald, ‘A New Nabataean Inscription from Tayma’, Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 20 (2009) 208–17 at 211 f. 83 MacMullen, Changes in the Roman Empire, 162–76; M.T. Boatwright, ‘Plancia Magna of Perge: Women’s Roles and Status in Roman Asia Minor’, in S. Pomeroy (ed.), Women’s History & Ancient History (Chapel Hill and London, 1991) 249–72; R. van Bremen, The Limits of Participation (Amsterdam, 1996). 84  I am most grateful to Kathleen Coleman, the late Olivier Masson and Johannes Nollé for information, to Ton Hilhorst for the scrutiny of my manuscript, and to Stephen Harrison for the helpful correction of my English.

Chapter 11

The Acts of Thomas: Place, Date and Women With the Acts of Thomas (ATh) we come to the last of the great Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. Where and when was it written? These simple questions are not easily answered. In fact, most introductions to the more recent translations give only a general indication and refrain from a more detailed discussion, as a re­ presentative selection may illustrate. Fré Klijn (1923–2012) suggested Syria in the third century, Han Drijvers (1934–2002) opted for ‘the beginning of the 3rd century in East Syria’, Paul-Hubert Poirier and Yves Tissot go for ‘Édesse dans la première moitié’ du IIIe siècle, and Keith Hopkins (1930–2004) thought that the author probably was ‘a member of Edessene high society’.1 These answers are clearly on the right track, but can they be substantiated or can we even improve upon them? Let us start with the place of composition. Poirier’s and Tissot’s location is of course supported by the tradition that Thomas was buried in Edessa, but his tomb there only starts to appear in the fourth-century Ephraem Syrus (Carmina Nisibena 42) and the pilgrim Egeria, who visited Edessa in AD 384 (Iti­ nerarium 17.1, 19.3). For earlier indications pointing to Edessa, an important argument must be the influence of the Edessene philosopher Bardaisan (Greek Bardesanes: AD 154–222) on the ATh.2 Moreover, in the Syriac version of the Hymn of the Pearl the protagonist is called pasgriba (48a).3 Although the title also occurs outside Edessa, for example in Hatra, it is important to note that in a Syriac document of the year AD 240 the father of the ruling Edessene king 1  A.F.J. Klijn (ed.), Apokriefen van het Nieuwe Testament, 2   vols (Kampen, 1985) 2.56, 65–66 and The Acts of Thomas (Leiden, 20032) 15; H.J.W. Drijvers, ‘The Acts of Thomas’, in NTA 2.322–411 at 323, whose translation I quote; P.-H. Poirier and Y. Tissot, in F. Bovon and P. Geoltrain (eds), Écrits apocryphes chrétiens, 2  vols (Paris, 1997–2005) 1.324; K. Hopkins, A World Full of Gods (London, 1999) I76. 2  For Bardesanes and his influence, see Drijvers, ‘Acts of Thomas’, 327, 336, who compares cc. 27, 32, 50, 82, 91 and 148; J. Teixidor, Bardesane d’Édesse (Paris, 1992); S.K. Ross, Roman Edessa (London and New York, 2001) 129–33 and passim. 3  For documents and title, see P.-H. Poirier, L’Hymne de la perle des Actes de Thomas (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1981) 212–23; J. Teixidor, ‘Deux documents syriaques du IIIe siècle ap. J.-C., provenant du Moyen Euphrate’, CRAI 1990, 144–66 at 161; S. Ross, ZPE 97 (1993) 192–3; H.J.W. Drijvers and J.F. Healey, The Old Syriac Inscriptions of Edessa and Osrhoene (Leiden, 1999) no. P2; A. Luther, ‘Abgar Prahates filius rex (CIL VI.1797)’, Le Muséon 111 (1998) 345–57 at 348–52; T. Gnoli, ‘“Pasgriba¯” at Hatra and Edessa’, in A. Panaino and G. Pettinato (eds), Ideologies and Intercultural Phenomena (Milano, 2002) 79–87.

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Abgar X (239–242) is called ‘Ma‘nu the crown-prince’ (pasgriba).4 The same title occurs in an inscription from the Edessan citadel, dating to the first half of the third century, naming ‘Salmath, the queen, daughter of Ma‘nu the crownprince’.5 The Hymn probably existed separately before the ATh and was written, at the latest, at the beginning of the third century in an aristocratic milieu with close Parthian contacts, as is indicated by its many Iranian loan words and titles. 6 The proximity of the Hymn to the Cologne Mani Codex (CMC) suggests that it was interpolated by Manichaeans in the course of the third century.7 The Manichaeans had also been influenced by Bardaisan, 8 and Mani himself wrote letters to Edessa (CMC 63.16.22), a strong indication of the importance of the city for the movement. Yet the name of one of the protagonists, Mygdonia (§  1), the wife of a relative of the king, is also relevant. In real life, it was an extremely unusual name, mentioned only twice in literature, only thrice in fairly late inscriptions, and in papyri not at all.9 As Strabo tells us that Mygdonia was the name given by the Macedonians to the land surrounding Nisibis, which was also called Mygdonian Antioch (11.14.2, 16.1.23), its presence here does point to a link of the ATh with Nisibis, which was also an intellectual centre, just like Edessa. In any case, the social hierarchy of the ATh also suggests an eastern origin. The French classicist Suzanne Saïd has persuasively argued that with the last great pagan novel, the Acthiopica of Heliodorus, one enters the world of late antiquity, as the palace now supersedes the agora.10 And indeed, whereas the earlier AAA all derive from Asia Minor and their non-apostolic characters are firmly situated among the local aristocrats, the ‘firsts of the cities,11 the ATh and 4  For the rule of Ma’nu, see A. Luther, ‘Elias of Nisibis und die Chronologie der edesseni­ schen Könige’, Klio 81 (1999) 180–98 at 193–94; L. Cotta Ramosino, ‘Edessa e i Romani fra Augusto e i Severi: aspetti del regno dii Abgar V e di Abgar IX’, Aevum 73 (1999) 107–43. 5  Drijvers and Healey, Old Syriac Inscriptions, no. As1, tr. F. Millar, The Roman Near East, 31 BC - AD 337 (Cambridge MA, 1993) 477. 6 The strong Parthian influence in the area is well documented by G. Widengren, lranisch-semitische Kulturbegegnung in parthischer Zeit (Cologne and Opladen, 1960); see also G. Luttikhuizen, ‘The Hymn of Jude Thomas, the Apostle, in the Country of the Indians (ATh 108–113)’, in J.N. Bremmer (ed.), The Apocryphal Acts of Thomas (Leuven, 2001) 125– 42. 7 Poirier, L’Hymne, 310–17. 8  See, with extensive bibliographies, S.N.C. Lieu. Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire and Medieval China (Tübingen, 1992) 55–59 and Manichaeism in Mesopotamia and the Roman East (Leiden, 1994) 38–44. 9  See the discussion of the two fourth-century Eastern Mygdonii by S. Corcoran, The Empire of the Tretarchs (Oxford, 20002) 281–2 (with thanks to Peter van Minnen). Inscriptions: AB 31 (1912) 192 (twice: ca. 303 and 303–05 AD); D. Feissel, Recueil des inscriptions chrétiennes de Macédoine (Paris, 1983) no.  60.4 (V/VI AD). 10  S. Saïd. ‘The City in the Greek Novel’, in J. Tatum (ed.), The Search for the Ancient Novel (Baltimore, 1994) 216–36 at 223. 11  See this volume, Chapter  10.3.

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Heliodorus clearly reflect the situation of Edessa and Emesa, where political structures lacked the Greek tradition. Now if the ATh was written in Edessa, but probably by somebody with close links to Nisibis,12 when did that happen? A terminus post quem is AD 212/213 when King Abgar was deposed.13 Moreover, the ATh already betrays Roman influence: the royal palace is called praitôrion (3.17–19: the normal term for the headquarters of a Roman governor), the name of King Misdaeus’ wife is Tertia (134), and that of Mygdonia’s nurse Marcia (120). The Edessene kings started to assume Roman names around AD 200,14 and ATh’s interest in India suggests a time not long after the reign of Elagabalus (AD 218–22) when Bardaisan met an Indian embassy to the Emperor and composed a book about India and its customs.15 These dates point to the 220s or 230s as the time of composition of the ATh,16 the very time when Edessa no longer had a king, but a close relative of king Abgar still called himself ‘crown prince’ (above).17 Such a date also fits an observation by Carl Schmidt (1868–1938), on the basis of both Eusebius’ quotation from the third book of Origen’s commentary on Genesis (HE 3.1) and the mention of AAA elsewhere in his work, that from the AAA Origen knew only those of John, Peter, Paul, Andrew and Thomas.18 Finally, the date also fits the ATh, since it is the decade just before Shapur I was to cast his formidable shadow over the region: it is also just before the Romans definitively abolished the briefly restored monarchy by turning Edessa into a colonia in AD 241.19 Can we say something about the author of the ATh? Drijvers has noted that he belonged to ‘a learned milieu, to which symbolism and typology were familiar and in which a certain form of biblical exegesis had already developed’.20 We may add that our author was also well versed in the AAA. He had certainly

12  Thus S. Myers, Spirit Epicleses in the Acts of Thomas (Tübingen, 2010) 34–40, whose arguments for an origin from Nisibis are certainly well stated, but hardly decisive. 13  Luther, ‘Elias von Nisibis’, 193. 14  Luther, ‘Abgar Prahates’, 355 f. 15 Bardesanes FGrH 719 F l (= Porphyrius, fr. 376F1 Smith) and 2 (= De abst. 4.17); Hier, Adv. Jov. 2.14); O. de Beauvoir Priaulx, ‘On the Indian Embassies to Rome from the Reign of Claudius to the Death of Justinian’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 19 (1862) 274–98; J. Ryckmans, Bibliotheca Orientalis 21 (1964) 282; F. Winter, Bardesanes von Edessa über In­ dien (Thaur, 1999), to be read with the review by A. Dihle, JAC 43 (2000) 221–24. 16  Less persuasively, Meyers, Spirit Epicleses, 44–54 opts for the second half of the third century. 17 Millar, The Roman Near East, 476–77; Luther, ‘Elias von Nisibis’, 193. 18  C. Schmidt, Die alten Petrusakten im Zusammhang der apokryphen Apostelliteratur (Leipzig, 1903) 63–4, 130 n.  1, accepted by A. Harnack, Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur bis Eusebius II (Leipzig, 19582) 172. 19 Millar, The Roman Near East, 152; Ross, Roman Edessa, 57–64. 20  Drijvers, ‘Acts of Thomas’, 327.

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read the AJ and the AA,21 and most likely also the APt and AP,22 although his acquaintance with the last has repeatedly been denied.23 Since eastern Syria was highly Hellenised,24 Greek literary influence should not surprise us. Actually, considering the many parallels with motifs from pagan novels, there can be little doubt that our author had read some of those as well, particularly Achilles Tatius, whose popularity in Edessa is confirmed by his being used in the Book of the Laws of Countries.25 Ephraem Syrus tells us in his commentary on the Third Letter of Paul to the Corinthians, which is preserved only in Armenian, that the AAA had been written by the followers of Bardaisan. As the influence of the latter philosopher on the ATh is clear, we may perhaps look for the author in the same milieu as the great Edessene philosopher, if not in the circle of his pupils. After its composition in Greek, the ATh was soon translated into Syriac and, subsequently, appropriated by various groups, which have left their imprint on the text.26 Unfortunately, it is impossible to trace this process in great detail and we will therefore look at the text as a whole. Given that until now the interest in our text has been mainly theological and liturgical, it might be useful to take a look at the social aspects as well. In line with my earlier investigations I will discuss here the role of women in the ATh (§1), except those who are clearly allegorical such as the daughter of the king in the wedding hymn (7).27 We conclude with a short discussion of two more recent studies on the role of women in emerging Christianity (§2).

21  AJ: E. Junod and J.-D. Kaestli, Acta Iohannis, 2 vls (Turnhout, 1983) 517 n.  2 and L’histoire des actes apocryphes du IIIe au XIe siècle (Geneva, 1983) 38–39; P.J. Lalleman, The Acts of John (Leuven, 1998) 108. AA: J.M. Prieur, Acta Andreae, 2  vols (Tumhout, 1991) 1.393. 22  APt and AP: E. Peterson, Frühkirche, Judentum und Gnosis (Freiburg, 1958) 183–208 (although Peterson maintains the priority of the ATh); Klijn, Acts of Thomas, 168 (AP). 23  For example by P. Devos, ‘Actes de Thomas et Actes de Paul’, AB 69 (1951) 11–30; Drij­ vers, ‘Acts of Thomas’, 323. 24  For an overview of this influence, see G. Bowersock, Hellenism in Late Antiquity (Ann Arbor, 1990) 29–40; SEG 39.1558 (a Greek mosaicist’s signature in Nisibis). 25  Bremmer, ‘Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus in Christian East Syria’, in H. Vanstiphout (ed.), All those nations …Cultural Encounters within and with the Near East (Groningen, 1999) 21–29 at 23–25. 26  The priority of the Greek version is persuasively argued by L. Roig Lanzillotta, ‘A Syriac Original for the Acts of Thomas? The Theory of the Syriac Priority Revisited, Evaluated and Rejected’, in I. Ramelli and J. Perkins (eds), Early Christian and Jewish Narrative: The Role of Religion in Shaping Narrative Forms (Tübingen, 2015) 105–33. 27  H, Kruse, ‘Das Brautlied der syrischen Thomas-Akten’, Orientalia Christiana Perio­ dica 50 (1984) 291–330; Drijvers, ‘Acts of Thomas’, 329 f.

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1. Women The first woman whom we encounter in the ATh is the daughter of the king, whose wedding is celebrated (4), when the apostle arrives in Andrapolis. Here the apostle is meant to convert the king, but how will he talk to him in a foreign language? The problem is solved by the introduction of a Jewish flute girl, who apparently had recognised his origin and ‘played at his head a long time’ (5). The mention of the language problem is somewhat unexpected in such a fictional text, but it may well reflect the situation in Edessa, where aristocrats like Bardaisan could read Greek but wrote in Syriac, the local language of the region.28 However, the flute girl was not just an interpreter. In the contemporary world her status cannot have been very high. Among the Greeks, flute girls had a particular reputation, which is well reflected in the praise of Phylarchus (FGrH 81 F42) that in Keos ‘neithcr courtesans nor flute girls’ were seen. Flute girls could be auctioned off at a symposium (Persaios FGrH 584 F4), but the attractive ones could also make lots of money (Theopompus FGrH 115 F248) or become the king’s favourite, such as Lamia with Demetrius Poliorcetes (Athenaeus 13.577c). This doubtful status was still prevalent in the times of the ATh, as appears from the conjunction of flute girls with courtesans in fragments of a gospel of the Synoptic type (P.Oxy. 4.840) and the Gospel of the Nazarenes (18).29 In fact, Syrian flute girls enjoyed a special fame in this respect.30 Despite her status, the girl is the only person who understands the apostle and through her we hear that he is the ‘most handsome among those present’ (8). She continuously gazes at him, just like Thecla at Paul, but he does not respond and keeps staring at the ground, apparently to avoid the suspicion of being sexually attracted. And it is she who reveals the true nature of the stranger to those present, after a dog has brought back the hand of a wine pourer who had struck the apostle. She throws away her flute, the symbol of her trade, and exclaims: ‘This man is either a god or an apostle of God’ (9) – an interesting illustration of the widely attested belief in antiquity that people with special powers had to be gods.31 Although Thomas does disappoint the girl by not taking her along to India, she is eventually allowed to instruct the king (16). The incident shows the power of the apostle, but also already sounds the theme of chastity, which is of cardinal importance in the ATh.

28  For Syriac and Greek, see R. MacMullen, Changes in the Roman Empire (Princeton, 1990) 324. 29  See also J. Davidson, Courtesans and Fishcakes (London, 1997) 81–2; B. Stumpp, Prostitution in der römischen Antike (Berlin, 1998) 45–46; Klijn, Acts of Thomas, 28. 30 M. Eichenauer, Untersuchungen zur Arbeitswelt der Frau in der römischen Antike (Frankfurt, 1988) 64 f. 31  See this volume, Chapter  9.2.

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Some women receive much less emphasis than the flute girl, as when Thomas confronts a serpent who confesses to have killed a handsome youth: he had intercourse with a woman of a neighbouring village, with whom he also did other ‘shameful things’ (31), presumably of a sexual nature. More interesting is another anonymous woman. In the Acts of Peter, the adulterous woman Rufina is paralysed the moment she wants to take the Eucharist from Paul (2). We find a similar case in the ATh. When a young man took the Eucharist with his mouth, ‘his two hands withered up’. The reason for the punitive miracle was a murder by the youth. Having seen a beautiful girl in an inn, the youth had fallen in love with her and, after having heard Thomas, he had tried to persuade her to live with him in chastity. When she declined, he ‘took a sword and slew her’. Both passages are very interesting, since they show the high esteem in which the early Christians held the Eucharist;32 they may also be an additional argument for the knowledge of the APt by the author of the ATh. We find the same esteem in the West where Cyprian (De lapsis 25–26) relates that a pagan woman who secretly participated in the Eucharist had terrible pains, as if she had taken poison. The scene in the ATh also gives us a glimpse of the low life in Edessa, as a girl living in an inn surely was a prostitute. Another example would be Mary, the niece of the hermit Abraham of Qidun, a village near Edessa, who for two years lived as a prostitute in an inn.33 The inn itself was situated outside the city (51) and had a courtyard (53). A chance find several decades ago has actually given us a view of such a pandocheion. Some 17 kilometers outside Edessa, excavations have brought to light an inn of about AD 260 which consisted of three caves, probably used as stables, and a platform for the travellers. As an inscription above the central cave mentions, there was also a well. The inn had been built by the governor of Osrhoene, Dasius, which shows the importance of the institution for an area where travelling must have often been a gruelling activity.34 After Thomas had let the youth wash his hands and had sealed him with the cross, he charged the youth to resurrect the girl with the very hand with which he had killed her (54), a kind of reversed ius talionis. This is of course symbolic, but the act also is one more testimony of the healing function of the hand, which is often attested.35 Whereas pagan magicians always seem to resurrect the dead by themselves, Thomas let somebody else do it. This is a specific feature of the 32  For the Eucharist in the ATh, see G. Rouwhorst, ‘La célébration de l’eucharistie selon les Actes de Thomas’, in C. Caspers and M. Schneiders (eds), Omnes circumadstantes. Contributions Towards a History of the Role of the People in the Liturgy (Kampen, 1990) 51–77. 33 T.J. Lamy, Sancti Ephraem Syri hymni et sermones IV (Malines, 1902) 1–84, tr. S.P. Brock and S.A. Harvey, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1998) 27–39. 34  H. Petersen, ‘A Roman Prefect in Osrhoene’, TAPA 107 (1977) 265–82; C. Mango, ‘A Late Roman Inn in Eastern Turkey’, Oxford Journal of Archaeology 5 (1986) 323–31 (= SEG 36.1277). 35  O. Weinreich, Antike Heilungswunder (Giessen, 1909) 14–62, 127 n.  3.

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AAA where the recently converted personally resurrect others (AJ 24, 47, 82–83; AAla 19). Naturally, the girl ‘immediately’ sat up: such an instant effect is a standing element of miracle healings.36 As is usual in the novel and the AAA, the miracle is also witnessed by a ‘great crowd that stood by’.37 Of even greater interest, perhaps, is the experience of the woman during her period of death (55–57). As she relates, a black man led her to a place that is clearly a kind of hell.38 It cannot be here the place to discuss in detail the genre of the ‘tours of hell’ or the penalties,39 but we may make a few observations. There are important differences here between the Greek and the Syriac versions. In the Greek version there is a variety of sins, whereas the Syriac version concentrates solely on sexual transgressions. Regarding women, the Greek version mentions adulterous females and reports that ‘those that are hung by the hair are the shameless who have no modesty at all and go about in the world bareheaded’ (56).40 The Syriac version equally mentions adulterous women but, in addition, ‘maidens, who have not kept their state of virginity’. Apparently, the original Greek version has been reworked, since the references to penalties for greed in the Greek description fit the general stress in the ATh on the relative value of worldly possessions (83). Naturally, after this impressive report the people believed. For us it is interesting to note that as an effect of their faith they contributed much money in order to support the widows, whom Thomas ‘had gathered in the cities’ (59). This sudden appearance of widows is somewhat surprising. Klijn thinks of an influence from the New Testament,41 but it seems more persuasive to think of the prominence of widows in the early Church, which also in Syria was not negligible, witness the Syriac Didascalia Apostolorum.42 After these anonymous women in the first half of the ATh, we meet more specific ones in the second half. Mygdonia, whose name we have already discussed, is the wife of Charisius, a close kinsman of king Misdaeus (134). She is represented as rather young, since she has no children as yet and has been married less than a year (100). We may compare the wife of Vazan, the son of king Misdaeus, who married his wife when he was fourteen years old, his wife there36 

Add this example to Weinreich, Antike Heilungswunder, 197 f. For the role of the crowd, see R. Söder, Die apokryphen Apostelgeschichten und die romanhaften Literatur der Antike (Stuttgart, 1932, repr. Darmstadt, 1969) 153–62; note also G. Theissen, Urchristliche Wundergeschichten (Gütersloh, 1974) 78–81; R.l. Pervo, Profit with Delight (Philadelphia, 1987) 34–39; Saïd, ‘The City in the Greek Novel’, 221–22. 38  For the negative valuation of black, note also the black dog (8) and the black men (64); this volume, Chapter  9.1. 39  M Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell (Philadelphia,1983); this volume, Chapters 18 and 20. 40  For the penalties, see S. Lieberman, Texts and Studies (New York, 1974) 43 f. 41 Klijn, Acts of Thomas, 139 compares Rom 15.25–26 and 2 Cor 8–9. 42  C. Schlarb, ‘Die (un)gebändigte Witwe’, in M. Tamcke et al. (eds), Syrisches Christentum weltweit (Münster, 1995) 36–75; C. Back, Die Witwen in der frühen Kirche (Frankfurt, 2015) 220–30; this volume, Chapter  4. 37 

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fore surely younger.43 The moment she appears on stage, she is carried in a litter. Cassius Dio, a perhaps somewhat older contemporary of our author, briefly discusses the history of the Roman habit of being carried around in a covered chair. He notes that some Romans were also carried in litters ‘such as women still affect even at the present day’ (60.2. tr. E. Cary). In the case of Mygdonia she is portrayed as a grande dame, who is impatient and not loath to use her worldly power: when the litter makes insufficient progress, she asks her husband to send officers to repulse the crowd and beat them (82). When the apostle saw the people carrying her, he started a long oration, in which he exhorted his audience to abstain from sins like adultery and murder and to indulge Christian virtues like holiness, friendliness and goodness (84–85). The culmination of the oration is an exhortation to gentleness (86). The term used, praotês, fits the circumstances of the oration much better than the Syriac ‘humility’, since the servants of Mygdonia had just demonstrated harshness, such as will be typical of her husband Charisius (92) and king Misdaeus (138). The quality of ‘gentleness’ is a virtue that is often extolled in Greek civic inscriptions, but from a civic virtue it gradually evolved into a personal quality, as is the case in this passage.44 Having descended from her litter, Mygdonia prostrated herself in front of the apostle and entreated him to pray for her (87). The apostle commanded her: ‘rise up from the ground and compose thyself”. After another apostolic exhortation to sexual abstention, she ‘falling down did him obeisance and departed to her house’. Thus Drijvers, but Festugière and Poirier and Tissot translate with ‘adora’, like Klijn’s ‘bad ... aan’. The latter translation comes close to the Syriac ‘she bowed down and prostrated herself before him, because she thought that he was Jesus’. Yet this explanatory version seems clearly later, since Mygdonia in the beginning of c.87 invokes the apostle as ‘pupil of the living God’, not as Jesus himself. It is better therefore to stick to Drijvers’ translation which is supported by c.129 where Mygdonia stands up from a sitting position and performs a proskynêsis for the apostle, just like Mnesara in c.155. The gesture makes Charisius say to Thomas: ‘Do you see how she fears and honours you, and willingly does everything that you command?’ The Greek verb used, prosekynêse, refers to the Persian custom of proskynêsis, which, in cases of a great social distance, consisted of prostrating oneself and, perhaps, throwing a kiss towards the social superior.45 This Persian custom is also attested among the Parthians and Sassanians, and thus seems to be a local detail.46 43  Add this example to those in this volume, Chapter  9, Introduction. Note also that discussions about the age of marriage do not take into account these literary examples. 44  J. de Romilly, La Douceur dans la pensée grecque (Paris, 1979) 269–70; this volume, Chapter  8 , Introduction. 45  E. Bickerman, ‘A propos d’un passage de Chares de Mytilène’, Parola del Passato 18 (1963) 241–55; P. Briant, Histoire de l’empire perse de Cyrus à Alexandre (Leiden, 1997) 23–41. 46  W. Sundermann, ‘Zur Proskynesis im sasanidischen lran’, Mitteilungen des Instituts für

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After Mygdonia had came home, her husband Charisius returned from the baths (89). When his wife did not show up for dinner, he went to her bedroom. It is interesting to note that the couple apparently slept in separate bedrooms, as was also the case with Maximilla and Aegeates in the AA (13, 15) – perhaps a custom in the upper classes? Charisius reproached his wife for having left the house and thus forsaken her status as a free woman. There can be little doubt that in Asia Minor upper-class women were frequently visible in public, but this may have been different in Syria. In fact, a passage from Heliodorus (2.19) suggests that girls were not used to walking long distances. The confrontation between Charisius and Mygdonia now gradually reaches a climax. At first, the husband is afraid to deal with her directly, since she was ‘superior both in wealth and in understanding’.47 He therefore slanders Thomas as a poor person, who has only one garment (96), perhaps a reflection of Jesus’ commandment to his disciples to dress in such a way (Mt 10.10; Mk 6.9), but also typical of the ancient philosopher, pagan or Christian.48 When her husband tries to sleep with her, she flees the bed naked and dressed only in a curtain, a typically novel-type saucy detail.49 She takes refuge with her nurse, who slept in the court (120), and spends the night there. The trusted nurse is of course already a familiar figure from tragedy, and it is impossible to decide whether she owes her existence here to literature or to life – or to both.50 The name of the nurse is in Syriac Narqia, but in Latin Marcia, which is perhaps a calque on the Syriac. Considering that the AAA regularly use names of historical persons, the name could conceivably refer to Marcia, the concubine of Commodus, who had Christian sympathies.51 After another confrontation with her husband, Mygdonia left for the prison where king Misdaeus had locked up Thomas after an intervention by Charisius. She took ten denarii to bribe the gaolers, a practice well attested in antiquity.52 However, on her way to the prison, she met Thomas, who had already left the Orientforschung 10 (1964) 375–86; H. Gabelmann, Antike Audienz- und Tribunalszenen (Darmstadt, 1984) 171–74. 47  For such unequal marriages, see M.-Th. Raepsaet-Charlier, ‘Tertullien et la législation des mariages inégaux’, Revue internationale des droits de l’antiquité 29 (1982) 254–63. 48 J.N. Bremmer, ‘Symbols of Marginality from Early Pythagoreans to Late Antique Monks’, Greece & Rome 39 (1992) 205–14. 49  For such details, see the reflections of E. Castelli, ‘Visions and Voyeurism: Holy Women and the Politics of Sight in Early Christianity’ = Protocol of the Colloquy of the Center for Hermeneutical Studies NS 2 (1995). 50 For nurses, see L. Robert, ‘Enterrement et épitaphes’, Antiquité Classique 37 (1968) 406–48 at 441–44, reprinted in his Opera Omnia Selecta VI (Amsterdam, 1989) 82–124; K. Bradley, Discovering the Roman Family (New York and Oxford, 1991) 13–36; A. Capo­ macchia, ‘Nutrice di eroi: ruolo e valenza di un personaggio “minore” della tragedia greca’, SMSR 60 (1994) 11–24. 51 Hippolylus, Ref. 9.12.10–11; Cassius Dio 73.4.7. 52 J.-U. Krause, Gefängnisse im Römischen Reich (Stuttgart, 1996) 306–8; this volume, Chapter  10.1.

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prison in order to baptise Mygdonia (120–21), just as he will do with Vazan and various women (150–58). Similarly, Paul left the prison to baptise Artemilla (AP 7 [PHeid 3]): one more testimony to the dependence of the ATh on the AP. Thomas shone like a light in the dark, which made Mygdonia think he was a noble (118). According to Klijn (ad loc.), the man is ‘obviously the leader of the keepers of the prisoners’, but why is this obvious? More likely, it is an interesting testimony to the splendour of the local aristocrats, who could afford torch bearers to go in front of them. After the conversion and baptism of Mygdonia there is room for another woman of the highest circles. Enter Tertia, the queen. When sent by her husband to Mygdonia to advise her to keep away from Thomas, she is instead converted by the apostle (136). When she came home, the king reproached her for going on foot, ‘which is not fitting for free-born women like thee’ (137). Charisius made a similar reproach to his wife that she did not have regard ‘for her position as a free woman’ by leaving the house (89). The king touches here upon one of the subthemes of the ATh: the difference between the earthly status of a (surely high-bom) free woman and the real liberty of the Christian, even if a slave on earth. The theme is sounded first when the ass’s colt addresses the apostle with the words: ‘fellow-worker of the Son of God, who being free didst become a slave and being sold didst lead many to freedom’ (39).53 We find this ‘freedom’ when Mygdonia is anointed and the apostle says: ‘Let thy power come: let it be established upon thy slave (doulên) Mygdonia and heal her through this freedom’ (121). Following a suggestion by Bonnet, Drijvers emends ‘freedom’ (eleutherias) to ‘unction’ (elaiothêsia), but the emendation not only neglects the force of the opposition slavery/freedom in this passage. It also neglects Mygdonia’s request to Marcia to bring her bread and a mixture of water and wine for the Eucharist, ‘having regard for my freedom’ (120), which here surely means ‘spiritual freedom’ not ‘free birth’ (Drij­ vers and the Syriac translation).54 Thomas himself sounds the theme three more times towards the end of his life. In prison he tells Vazan and Siphor with his family: ‘behold, I am set free from slavery and called to liberty’ (142). Held by his executioners, he exhorts them to conversion and ‘to conduct your lives in all freedom’ (166), and in his final prayer he says: ‘1 have been a slave; therefore today do I receive freedom’ (167). For the author of the ATh, then, freedom is primarily a spiritual matter, not a matter of earthly status. The last important woman is Mnasara, the sickly wife of the son of king Misdaeus. She had been married for seven years to Vazan, but they had not consum53  For the prominence of animals in the period, also in the AAA, see Weinreich, Antike Heilungswunder, 126–29 at 127 n.  2; J. Spittler, Animals in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles (Tübingen, 2008). 54  See also M. Pesthy, ‘Thomas, the Slave of the Lord’, in Bremmer, Apocryphal Acts of Thomas, 82–91; Klijn, Acts of Thomas, 205.

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mated their marriage. Her husband was already Christian, but she herself had not yet converted. When her husband visited Thomas in prison, where also Mygdonia, Tertia and Marcia had bribed their way in (151), Thomas miraculously enabled them to leave through closed doors in order to be baptised (154).55 Vazan went ahead to prepare his house, but half way there he met his wife. It is typical of the Christian Vazan that, unlike Misdaeus, he did not reproach his wife for walking, but just inquired how in her unhealthy state she had been able to get up. It was (she said) an invisible ‘young man’, who had helped her. Klijn and Lalleman identify this youth with Jesus,56 but Mnesara says that Jesus delivered the youth to her. And when she complains that she no longer can walk after the disappearance of the youth, Thomas reassures her that ‘Jesus shall lead thee by the hand henceforth’ (155). It is the husband, though, who is the most important in this scene. Although Mygdonia is allowed to anoint the women (just as Marcia anoints Mygdonia in the Syriac version: 121), Thomas himself anoints Vazan first (157). We now approach the end of the apostle’s life. He returns to his prison and refuses Tertia, Mygdonia and Marcia – note the descending order of status – to join him (159). They returned home where they resisted their husbands’ pressure to defect from Christianity,57 encouraged by Thomas’ appearance in a dream. Once again the interest in women has been considerable. Would women have liked the ATh? We don’t know, but Edessene women were certainly interested in religion. A century later, Ephraem Syrus complains about the ease with which ascetics could impress local women. However this may be, assuming that the final chapter is a later addition, we notice that the last word is not about women but about men: Siphor will be a presbyter and Vazan a deacon. However valuable women’s contributions to the early Church were, for the author of ATh men remained more important.

2.  Women and the AAA Having studied in successive volumes the role of women in the major AAA,58 we may perhaps conclude our survey of the ATh with asking in what way the women of the AAA help us to understand the role of women in the Christian movement. The question has become once again relevant, since Keith Hopkins and Rodney Stark have tried to rethink the place of women within the rise of Chris55 

For the miracle, see this volume, Chapter  8.1 and Chapter  25 on c. 16.2. Lalleman, ‘Polymorphy of Christ’, in J.N. Bremmer (ed.), The Apocryphal Acts of John (Kampen, 1995) 97–118 at 109; Klijn, Acts of Thomas, 238. 57  For such unions, see M. MacDonald, ‘Early Christian Women Married to Unbelievers’, Studies in Religion/Sciences religieuses 19 (1990) 221–34. 58  See this volume, Chapters 3, 4, 7, 8.1, 9.1, 10 and 14.3. 56  P.J.

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tianity. Both approaches are new in so far as that they try to work with modern demographic and sociological models. Stark has summarised his conclusions as follows. Firstly, through their prohibitions against infanticide and abortion the Christians rapidly developed a surplus of females. Secondly, being in the majority women therefore enjoyed a substantially higher status among Christians than the women among their pagan contemporaries. Thirdly, given a surplus of pagan men and Christian women there were many mixed marriages that produced secondary converts. Fourthly, ‘the abundance of Christian women resulted in higher birth-rates – that superior fertility contributed to the rise of Christianity’.59 Hopkins is less clear. Although he recognises that women played an important role in the earliest Christian churches, he suggests that the stress on female presence in Christian sources ‘arises precisely from women’s social visibility and rarity’. He also states that ‘aneient pagan criticisms that Christianity was particularly attractive to women and slaves were a literary cliché, expressing a depreciatory attitude towards women and Christianity more than cool observations’.60 Let us start with Hopkins, whose observation is hardly supported by the evidence of either pagan texts or the AAA. It is of course possible to belittle the pagan texts, although it would be hard to find pagan equivalents for the prominence of widows among the Christians as mentioned by Celsus and Lucian. 61 It is even more important to note that a depreciatory attitude is completely absent from the AAA. In fact, here we find an astonishing variety of women, from a royal family, ‘firsts of the city’ and wives of Roman governors, via rich women like Eubola, to those at the lower end of the social scale such as old women, widows and flute-girls. Although women are of course also prominent in the pagan novel, these novels do not contain the same variety as in the AAA. Finally, Christian women are not a rarity but appear as soon as we are able to attain a closer look at the ancient social reality.62 It is surely hard to accept that somebody like Tertullian would write books De cultu feminarum or Dc virginibus velandis, when women were no more than exotic spectacles on the Roman scene, like freaks in an American circus at the beginning of last century. Some of Stark’s observations are more attractive. I am not sure that Christian rejection of abortion and infanticide would soon produce a surplus of females, since the effects of Christian attitudes in this matter are totally invisible in our sources. Neither am 1 convinced that Christian women were very successful in converting their husbands. We do not find any evidence in this direction in our 59 

R. Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton, 1996) 95–128 at 128. Hopkins, ‘Christian Number and Its lmplications’, JECS 6 (1998) 185–226 at 204. Note that Hopkins wrote from a Roman perspective and took the Greek evidence much less into account. 61 Lucian, Peregrinus 12; Origen, CC 3.55; this volume, Chapter  4. 62  See this volume, Chapter  3. 60  K.

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more documentary sources, and the AAA certainly do not unequivocally support this idea, witness Thamyris in the AP and Charisius and Misdaeus in the ATh. On the other hand, Christians may well have had a superior fertility rate and the female majority certainly gave women a more special place in the Christian church. An ordo viduarum is unthinkable without a substantial female re­ presentation in the early Church. The harvest of the application of modern models to the age-old problem of the reasons for the Christian victory seems relatively small. Still, modern studies of new cults may open our eyes to neglected aspects of the problem. On the basis of modern evidence, Hopkins postulates a higher incidence of young adults as possible sources of recruitment.63 Now the everyday life of young adults, their frustrations and aspirations, rarely appears in our sources, but the protagonist of the Acts of Paul and Thecla (1) is a young adult and she sees many girls entering the house of Onesiphorus in order to listen to Paul (7). Moreover, in the Book of the Laws of Countries Bardaisan rebukes his pupil Awida, who had started to put theological questions to his own friends, by saying ‘You should learn from somebody older than them’ (p.  5 Drijvers). 64 However this may be, the fact that the AAA point to a considerable presence of women among the emerging Christian church cannot be seriously doubted. 65

63 

Hopkins, ‘Christian Number’, 205; this volume, Chapter  2.3. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (Harmondsworth, I986) 312 concludes, surely wrongly, from the passage that ‘age-mates’ did not discuss these things amongst each other. 65  For comments I am most grateful to Glen Bowersock and Ton Hilhorst. 64 R.

Chapter 12

Conversion in the Oldest Apocryphal Acts In that fateful year 1933, the Harvard Frothingham Professor of the History of Religions, Arthur Darby Nock (1902–1963) published his study Conversion with the subtitle The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo.1 The book is rightly considered a classic and, together with William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience of 1902, it may be considered the only book from before the Second World War that people still read on the topic, certainly the only ancient history book. Yet if we want to have a good idea of what conversion meant in antiquity, should we still turn to Nock? There are several ways of answering this question, and I will try to do so here by looking at conversion in the Apocryphal Acts. Their illustration of the reasons and motivations for the choice to convert, namely mostly miracles and social aspects, will serve as a starting point to make some observations on the phenomenon of conversion in second-century Christianity. In his book, Nock supplies us with a wide ranging survey of conversion in the ancient world, but the part about Christianity is hardly the strongest. Nock’s heart was not really with Christianity in the later centuries, and his best work concentrated on the Jewish, Christian and pagan interrelationships at the turn of the Christian era.2 That is perhaps why for his work on conversion he did not take a look at the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles (AAA). It must be admitted, of course, that our present time is much more interested in apocryphal literature than the generation of Nock, but their absence from his work, just like a proper study of the martyrs’ acts, suggests that Christianity comes a bit short in his 1  A.D. Nock, Conversion (Oxford, 1933). In the main text I refer to the book just by page numbers; see also Nock, ‘Bekehrung’, in RAC 2 (1954) 105–18. For Nock’s book, see J.N. Bremmer, ‘Arthur Darby Nock’s Conversion (1933): a balance’, in J. Weitbrecht et al. (eds), Zwi­schen Ereignis und Erzählung. Konversion als Medium der Selbstbeschreibung in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Berlin and Boston, 2016) 9–29. 2  For Nock and his work, see the obituaries by A.-J. Festugière, Rev. Arch. 1 (1963) 203–05; M.P. Nilsson, Gnomon 15 (1963) 318–19 and H. Chadwick and E.R. Dodds, JRS 53 (1963) 168–69; Z. Stewart et al., ‘A Faculty Minute. Arthur Darby Nock’, HSCPh 68 (1964) xi-xiv; note also W.M. Calder III, ‘Harvard Classics 1950–1956’, Eikasmos 4 (1993) 39–49 (41–42) and J.P. Harris and R.S. Smith (eds), Men in Their Books (Hildesheim, 1998) 233–34; rather ungenerous, S. Price, ‘The Conversion of A.D. Nock in the Context of His Life, Scholarship, and Religious View’, HSCPh 105 (2010) 317–39. Note also Mario Mazza’s valuable introductory essay to the Italian translation of Conversion: La conversion. Società e religione nel mondo antico (Rome, 1974) i–xlvi.

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still highly readable and inspiring book. Yet the AAA constitute an important window into Christian life in the second half of the second century, and it will be the aim of this article to explore its contents in order to gain a better view of early Christian conversion. Now the usage of the AAA as a historical source is of course not without pitfalls. But before we will turn to the methodological questions that their usage raises, I will first turn to the Acts themselves. Recent research has made it probable that we should read them in the chronological order Acts of John,3 Andrew, Peter and Paul, which all date from the period AD 160–200, and Thomas, the latter clearly being somewhat later than the other four. The earlier four all seem to derive from the same area, Anatolia (the first three probably from Bithynia and the last one from southwest Asia Minor), and clearly precede the Acts of Thomas.4 However, from these early Acts, the manuscript tradition of the Acts of Andrew is particularly poor. The only primitive textual witness is the Codex Vaticanus graecus 808, which does not contain any conversion scenes.5 I will limit myself therefore to the Acts of John, Peter and Paul.

1.  The Acts of John In the Acts of John (AJ) the apostle John arrives in Ephesus, the first place of his wanderings. Here he is approached by Lycomedes, a member of the executive council of the city. He tells John that he was wondering what to do about his wife Cleopatra who had been paralysed for seven days. But while he is lamenting his wife’s fate, somebody whose identity remains unrevealed, but who, as we learn only shortly later (21), looks like being God himself, tells him in a vision that God has sent a man from Miletus who will lift up his wife. Interestingly, Lycomedes approaches John at the moment that he enters the city, as he is at the gate when this conversation takes place. In other words, from the moment of entry into Ephesus the apostle has to do God’s work (19). When they arrive at Cleopatra’s bed, Lycomedes bursts out into a moving lament that betrays his already alluded to, but not elaborated, idea of committing suicide before he sees Cleopatra dying. Moreover, he ascribes the bad condition of his wife to the influence of magic: the evil eye of his enemies had hit 3  Probably, our present version is a second, revised edition, written in Alexandria at the beginning of the third century, cf. I. Czachesz, ‘Eroticism and Epistemology in the Apocryphal Acts of John’, Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift 60 (2006) 59–72. For a possible case of intertextuality of this revised version with the Acts of Peter, see K. Sier, ‘Zum Text der Martyrien von Petrus und Paulus’, ZPE 173 (2010) 35–44 at 39. 4  See this volume, Chapters 7–11, 14.2. 5  This has been overlooked by K.C. Wagener, ‘Repentant Eve, Perfected Adam. Conversion in the Acts of Andrew’, SBL Seminar Papers 1991 (Atlanta, 1991) 348–56; cf. L. Roig Lanzillotta, Acta Andreae Apocrypha (Geneva, 2007) 36.

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him because of their envy,6 an interesting glimpse into the role of magic in everyday life of even the elite (20).7 The apostle, however, reproaches him for his lamentations and tells him to call upon the Lord and to entreat him for her life and health. But Lycomedes does not do so, but continues to lament in such a manner that he finally gives up the ghost. It seems that we have here a moment of skilful retardation of the plot, as the apostle now starts to reproach God for having send him but not having given him the glory that a voice from heaven promised him on his way to Ephesus. It is characteristic of the intellectual level of the AJ that we do not hear of God manifesting him in person. In fact, even Homer is rather sparing in his description of a divinity during his or her epiphany.8 In the enlightened world of Greek and Roman intellectuals an anthropomorphic epiphany would probably have been too much. We should remember that in the ancient novel it is always the less educated or socially inferior who believe in a real epiphany.9 As he was complaining, a huge crowd assembled in front of Lycomedes’ house, and John uses this crowd as an argument for Christ to intervene at this moment. Having touched the face of Cleopatra, he told her to get up. And this she did, while crying out with a loud voice: ‘I arise, Lord, save your Cleopatra’ (23). When Cleopatra asks for her husband, John guides her to the other bedroom where she sees him lying. But she controls herself and John orders her to address her husband and to tell him to rise. So she does, and Lycomedes duly returns from the dead. But instead of thanking God, he falls to the ground and kisses John’s feet, who of course declines this honour. After being entreated by Cleopatra and Lycomedes, John decides to stay with them instead of going to Kleobios, as he intended to do before (25). We next read a miracle performed on behalf of old women. In other words, we go from the pinnacle of society to the very bottom, as old women were in very low standing in antiquity.10 John dismissed the crowd that had assembled at 6  For this omnipresent belief in Late Antiquity, see M.W. Dickie, ‘Plutarch and Heliodorus on the Evil Eye’, CPh 86 (1991) 17–29 and ‘The Fathers of the Church and the Evil Eye’, in H. Maguire (ed.), Byzantine Magic (Washington DC, 1995) 9–34; J.D.M. Derrett, ‘The Evil Eye in the New Testament’, in Ph. Esler (ed.), Modelling Early Christianity (London, 1995) 65–72; R. Kalmin, ‘The Evil Eye in Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity’, in B. Isaac and Y. Shahar (eds), Judaea-Palaestina, Babylon and Rome. Jews in Antiquity (Tübingen, 2012) 111–38; J.H. Elliott, Beware the Evil Eye: The Evil Eye in the Bible and the Ancient World II: Greece and Rome (Eugene, 2016). 7  See this volume, Chapter  13. 8  Iliad II.182, X.512, XX.380, cf. the perceptive comments of P. Pucci, The Song of the Sirens (Lanham, 1998) 81–96. 9  T. Hägg, Parthenope. Studies in Ancient Greek Fiction (Copenhagen, 2004) 141–55 at 146. 10  For an excellent recent bibliography, see J. Masséglia, ‘“Reasons to be Cheerful”. Conflicting Emotions in the Drunken Old Women of Munich and Rome’, in A. Chaniotis (ed.), Unveiling Emotions (Stuttgart, 2012) 413–30; add J.N. Bremmer, ‘The Old Women of Ancient

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Lycomedes’ house and asks them to reconvene in the theatre the next day in order to witness the power of God, as he will heal the sick and paralytic among those old women.11 His explicit intent of this healing is the conversion of some of those present in the theatre. Another stratêgos, Andronicus, also heard of this promise and was curious to see how the apostle would work ‘the impossible and incredible’. But he also requested John to appear naked without holding anything in his hands and not to mention ‘the magical name’ of Jesus (31), another interesting indication of the place of magic in contemporary society.12 In the theatre John tells the crowd that Christ will convert them from their unbelief and shameful desires through letting him raise the old women that are exhibited in the theatre, thus even convincing the stratêgos. But before he proceeds to the healing he gives a speech in which he censors all kinds of wrong desires and practices, such as greed, envy, adultery, cruelty, sorcery, swindling etc. – all of them leading to the final judgment of being condemned to eternal fire. The threat was apparently such stock-in-trade of early Christian preaching that even Celsus notes that Christians ‘threaten others with these punishments’ (CC 8.48).13 In other words, John’s method of conversion consists of both the carrot and the stick: healing and resurrecting from the dead but also threats of eternal doom (36). Unfortunately, the text with the episode about the healing of the old women and its consequences has been lost, and we proceed with John’s preaching of the gospel to a group of men as well as Drusiana, the wife of Andronicus. John concentrates on the polymorphy of Christ (88–93) and the mystery of Christ’s passion (94–102), which need not concern us here. But it is interesting to note that they ‘in some ways were not yet established in the faith’ (87). Conversion is clearly seen as a process and not only as a sudden event or decision. This fits better modern views of conversion, and we will have to come back to it. Having listened to John’s oration, we next move to the episode of the destruction of the Temple of Artemis (37–47). The apostle ascends a high platform and tells the ‘men of Ephesus’ that they remained unchanged in their hearts regarding ‘the true religion’ despite the miracles they had seen. He even threatens them that God might kill them, and then prays to God to show mercy and to convert Greece’, in J. Blok and P. Mason (eds), Sexual Asymmetry. Studies in Ancient Society (Amsterdam, 1987) 191–215; this volume, Chapter 7.3. 11  For the central place of the theatre in public life in later Antiquity, see A. Chaniotis, ‘Theatricality Beyond the Theater. Staging Public Life in the Hellenistic World’, Pallas 47 (1997) 219–59 and ‘Theatre Rituals’, in P. Wilson (ed.), The Greek Theatre and Festivals (Oxford, 2007) 48–86; D. Elm, ‘Mimes into Martyrs. Conversion on Stage’, in I. Henderson and G. Oegema (eds), The Changing Face of Judaism, Christianity, and Other Greco-Roman Religions in Antiquity (Gütersloh, 2006) 87–100. 12  For the name of Jesus in magic, see M. Smith, Jesus the Magician (London, 1978) 114; B. Kollmann, Jesus und die Christen als Wundertäter (Göttingen, 1996) 350 f. 13  See this volume, Chapter 2.5.

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them. In response, the altar of Artemis split into pieces and half the temple falls down, killing the priest of Artemis in the process. This is enough to convince the Ephesians, who cry out ‘unique is the god of John, unique is the god who has mercy upon us; for thou alone art god! We are converted, now that we have seen thy marvellous works!’ (42). And after John has berated those Ephesians that have fallen to the ground or tried to flee and has scolded Artemis, the Ephesians once again call out: ‘The god of John [is the] only [God] we know; from now on we worship him, since he has had mercy upon us’ (44). And when they request John to stay, he tells them that he will stay until, as he says, ‘I have weaned you like children from the milk of the nurse, and have set you upon a solid rock of faith’. Here it is clearly a moment in time that converts the Ephesians. And it is the marvellous work of God that makes them to proclaim these acclamations,14 which we of course also know from other, Christian and pagan, sources. It is important to note that an important part of this description, mutatis mutandis, could have been found in a pagan work as well, as it is typical of ancient religiosity that the great works of a mortal can lead to his deification or at least to him being called a god, as we can even see in our Acts where Lycomedes says to John when the latter questions him about having commissioned a portrait of him: ‘But if besides that God we may call our earthly benefactors gods, etc.’ (27).15 Important too is the stress on seeing: they have seen the marvellous works. It is typical of ancient culture that seeing was rated above hearing.16 Moreover, we notice that conversion, as described in the Acts, is not an intellectual process of gradually realising the truth, but a change of heart caused by being impressed by ‘marvellous works’. Yet the apostle realises that this is only a beginning. From a modern point of view, then, one must credit the apostle with a realistic look at his new converts. After the conversion of the Ephesians of the crowd, the Acts proceeds with a perhaps even more impressive conversion. A kinsman deposits the body of the priest of Artemis before the door of Andronicus’ house where John was staying and then joins the crowd inside the house. Naturally, this does not escape the apostle who charges him to resurrect the priest. When the latter is raised, the apostle exhorts him to believe so that he could live for all eternity. ‘And’, as the Acts tell us, ‘there and then he believed in the Lord Jesus, and from that time kept company with John’ (46–47). In this case, too, it is the ‘marvellous work’ 14  For interesting observations on these acclamations, see H.S. Versnel, Coping with the Gods (Leiden, 2011) 239–307. 15  J. Strubbe, ‘Cultic Honors for Benefactions in the Cities of Asia Minor’, in L. de Ligt et al. (eds), Roman Rule and Civic Life (Amsterdam, 2004) 315–30; P. Gauthier, Études d’histoire et d’institutions grecques (Geneva, 2011) 577–91 (originally published in 2003), both overlooked by Versnel, Coping with the Gods, 487 note  145 (with further bibliography). 16  See, most recently, P. Finglass on Sophocles, El. 761–63.

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of the resurrection that makes the priest believe in God. One would have thought that the author of the Acts would have exploited this particular conversion more, but perhaps he himself realised that this conversion was rather exceptional, albeit hard to accept as true, and therefore remained somewhat reticent about it.17 The next case concerns a parricide, the murder of one’s father being one of the worst crimes imaginable in ancient Greece.18 As can be expected at this point, John raises the murdered father, who naturally starts to believe (52). The murdering son repents so much that he castrates himself and throws his testicles before the woman for whose sake he had murdered his father.19 But when he has told John about this, the apostle does not heal him but stresses that he should control his thoughts, not cut off the members that show the thoughts. Once again we notice the stress in John’s preaching on self-control, which is clearly important for the author of the Acts, although not to the same degree as in the Acts of Andrew.20 The young man repents of his sins and stays with John. Here it is not the demonstration of supernatural qualities, as with the priest of Artemis, but the message of self-control that seems to be the most important part of the episode (54). Our final case concerns an even more sensational conversion as it concerns necrophilia, which is not a common theme in Greek literature, but also not wholly unknown.21 Apparently, John has returned to Ephesus where, as we are told, a certain Callimachus falls in love with Drusiana, who after her conversion no longer has intercourse with her husband (63). But as he does not succeed in winning her favours, Callimachus lapses into a state of melancholy. This depression distresses Drusiana to such an extent that she becomes ill and, rather improbably, dies ‘because of the bruising of the soul of that man’ (64). Andronicus also grieves too much, if not to the same degree as Lycomedes. He regularly bursts into tears in the company of others so that John repeatedly has to silence him (65) – one more sign of the importance attached to self-control in these Acts. After her burial, Drusiana is not yet free from her suitor. On the contrary, together with Fortunatus, the corrupt steward of Andronicus, Callimachus breaks into her tomb in order to commit necrophilia (70). They are on the point of succeeding with their perverse plan and have already started removing Dru17  For the Ephesian priests of Artemis, see J.N. Bremmer, ‘Priestly Personnel of the Ephesian Artemision: Anatolian, Persian, Greek, and Roman Aspects’, in B. Dignas and K. Trampedach (eds), Practitioners of the Divine in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, 2008) 37–53. 18  J. Lightfoot, Parthenius of Nicaea (Oxford, 1999) 398 f. 19 M. Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch (Chicago, 2001) 262, unpersuasively connects this self-castration to that of the followers of Cybele and Attis, the galli. 20  Roig Lanzillotta, Acta Andreae, 238–43 and passim. 21  See the evidence collected by Lightfoot, Parthenius, 535, where our case has to be added.

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siana’s last garment, the rather expensive dikrossion,22 when suddenly a huge snake appears, fatally bites the steward, and remains on Callimachus after he falls to the ground (71).23 The next day Andronicus, John, and some other brothers go to the tomb. As they have forgotten the keys, the apostle opens the doors by a simple order (72), a motif deriving from pagan literature, 24 as does another detail in this scene. When they enter the tomb, they see an attractive, smiling young man (73). The same smiling figure is also encountered in the Acts of Paul, where a smiling youth of great beauty loosens Paul’s bonds (7), and in the Acts of Peter, where Jesus appears smiling to Peter in his prison (16). The motif is well known from pagan epiphanies where the god traditionally smiles to reassure anxious mortals.25 Andronicus considers Fortunatus unworthy of being saved but asks John to resurrect Callimachus in order that he should confess exactly what had happened (74), not – we may observe – so that he should convert. After John has also raised Drusiana (79–80), she generously asks the apostle to resurrect Fortunatus as well, even though Callimachus opposes her request. When John points out that God prefers repentance above retribution, he charges Drusiana to do so (81), and she performs the resurrection with enthusiasm (82–83). Fortunatus, however, does not convert but runs away and dies shortly after (83, 86). Apparently, he is the model for what happens when people do not convert, thus, presumably, reflecting the reality of the frequent rejection of conversion. With this negative result we have come to the end of the Acts of John and turn to the Acts of Peter.

2.  The Acts of Peter The oldest part of these Acts, the so-called Actus Vercellenses, immediately starts with a conversion. Claudia, the wife of the prison officer of Paul, becomes converted by the words of Paul, and in turn converts her husband (1) – the con22  The discussion by P.J. Lalleman, The Acts of John. A two-stage initiation into Johannine Gnosticism, Leuven 1998, 258–59 has now to be corrected in the light of the very full collection of references to this type of garment in F.R. Adrados (ed.), Diccionario Griego-Español, vol.  5 (Madrid, 1997) s.v. dikrossion and dikrossos. 23  For the snake, see J. Spittler, Animals in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles (Tübingen, 2008) 110–16. 24 The classic study is O. Weinreich, Religionsgeschichtliche Studien (Darmstadt, 1968) 45–290 (first published in 1929). For more passages and the most recent bibliography, see J.J. Smoolenaars, Statius Thebaid VII. A commentary (Leiden, 1994) 40–41; this volume, Chapter  25 on c. 16.2. 25  Many parallels: O. Weinreich, Antike Heilungswunder (Giessen, 1909) 3 note  2 ; J. Nollé, Kleinasiatische Losorakel (Munich, 2007) 144, 272; A. Chaniotis, ‘The Ithyphallic Hymn for Demetrios Poliorcetes and Hellenistic Religious Mentality’, in P.P. Iossif et al. (eds), More than Men, Less than Gods. Studies in Royal Cult and Imperial Worship (Leuven, 2011) 157–95 at 178; this volume, Chapter  7.2.

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version of prison officers being a kind of topos in early Christian literature since the canonical Acts of the Apostles (16.26–34). After this so-to-speak happy conversion, the scene shifts to Paul for the distribution of the Eucharist. When a woman called Rufina also wants to participate, Paul refuses her because she lives with an adulterer. She falls down fully paralysed on one side of her body. Interestingly, this sight frightens the newly converts, who now remember their own sins (2). But afterwards Paul leaves Rome and embarks on a ship to a destination not mentioned (3), but of which we later hear that it was Spain (6). The religious vacuum created by Peter’s departure is filled by Simon Magus, who impresses people by seemingly being able to fly and thus threatens to be accepted as a new god, instead of the Christian God (4). It is only now that Peter arrives from Jerusalem via a boat trip, during which he converts the captain Theon by telling him of ‘the wondrous works of God’, his being chosen as an apostle and the reason for sailing to Italy. When the sea is calm and the rest of the crew laying in drunken stupor the captain is baptised and given the Eucharist (5). We just note here that it is the most important member of the crew that converts, just as it is usually the chief of the prison. After his arrival in Rome, and rather different from the Acts of John and Paul, Peter concerns himself now with those who have become apostates because of Simon Magus, with their most prominent representative being a senator, Marcellus. He goes up to the latter’s house and charges a dog to speak to Simon Magus, who indeed tells Simon that Peter is standing at the door. When Simon is lost for words because of this speaking dog, Marcellus repents and asks for forgiveness, which he duly receives.26 But when a possessed youth kicks a statue of the emperor to pieces, he threatens to fall back in his unbelief. Fortunately, Peter manages to let him see the error of his ways, and Marcellus sprinkles water over the statue that is restored to its former glory. It is this miracle, the text stresses, that makes him believe (11). As he grows in faith, Marcellus eventually acquires the strength to throw Simon Magus out of his house (14). Although the dog persuades some of those present by his speaking to become Christian, others request another sign as Simon Magus had also performed miracles. In answer to their requests Peter lets a dried fish come to life again and even eat bread. This is enough to persuade ‘a great number’ to follow him and to believe in the Lord (13).27 Afterwards Marcellus tells Peter that he has purified his house, and invited the widows and aged to come to his house in order to give them a piece of gold (19). Among them is a blind widow whom Peter heals by laying his right hand on her (20). When he is on the brink of leaving, other blind widows, who say that they believe in Christ too, naturally also request to be 26  For a fine discussion of the scene with the dog, see Spittler, Animals, 130–48; for dogs in antiquity, see also J.R. Harrison, ‘Every dog has its day’, in S.R. Llewelyn and J.R. Harrison (eds), New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity 10 (Grand Rapids, 2012) 126–35. 27  For the miracle, see Spittler, Animals, 148–154.

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healed. And indeed, Christ appears in a polymorphous manner and heals them by, according to some, touching their eyes. Here belief seems to precede the healing instead of, as is normally the case, following it. Peter then sees to the ‘virgins of the Lord’ (22), once again, presumably, poor young women that found support in the Christian community, surely a not negligible side of Christian conversions. When Peter and Simon Magus have come together on the Forum, the prefect requests Simon to kill a man and Peter to raise him. Simon kills one of the prefect’s slaves by whispering some words into his ear, whispering being characteristic of magic in antiquity.28 Immediately afterwards, virtually at the same time, one of the widows of Marcellus’ house cries out that her son, of course her only son and life’s support in this kind of dramatising literature, has died. So Peter sends out 30 young men, who are also prepared to believe, to fetch the corpse of the youth (25). In the meantime, the prefect urges him to raise the youth killed by Simon Magus. Peter does so, as he does with the son of the widow (26–27). These resurrections, which give rise to acclamations of God’s uniqueness but do not seem to lead to conversions, induce the mother of a senator to ask also for the resurrection of her son, who presumably has just died. Peter assents to do so, and the mother lets her slaves, whom she has freed for the occasion, bring the body as if it was prepared for a proper funeral. When the funeral procession has arrived at the Forum, Peter challenges Simon to resurrect the body. He accepts the challenge on the condition that if he succeeds in doing so, the crowd will chase Peter out of Rome. Although he manages to make the boy move, he cannot properly raise him in contrast to Peter, who properly resurrects him. Not surprisingly, the senator now believes, but it is not said that the crowd starts to believe neither do we hear anything anymore about Simon (28). On the contrary. The crowd now starts to venerate Peter as a god, just as they had already done with Simon after witnessing the latter’s tricks (4). These passages are highly interesting testimonies to ancient ruler cult and deserve more attention than they have received so far. Naturally, after these impressive feats the people also brought sick people to Peter, and those were healed who believed in Jesus Christ ‘and very many were added every day to the grace of the Lord’. Here once again believing precedes healing but can hardly be separated from it (29).29 28  L. Soverini, ‘Hermes, Afrodite e il susurro nella Grecia antica’, in S. Alessandri (ed.), Historie. Studi Giuseppe Nenci (Galabina, 1994) 183–210; E. Valette-Cagnac, La lecture à Rome (Paris, 1997) 42–7; P.W. van der Horst, Hellenism-Judaism-Christianity (Leuven, 19982) 300–02; D.K. van Mal-Maeder, Apuleius Madaurensis, Metamorphoses: Livre II (Groningen, 2001) 60; L. Moscadi, Magica Musa. La magia dei poeti latini: figure e funzioni (Bologna, 2005) 165–74 (‘“Murmur” nella terminologia magica’, 19761); M. Andreassi, ‘Implica­ zioni magiche in Meleagro AP 5.152’, ZPE 176 (2011) 69–81 at 74–75; C. Schneider, [Quintilien], Le tombeau ensorcelé (grandes déclamations 10) (Cassino, 2013) 171 f. 29  For a more detailed discussion of these resurrections, see this volume, Chapter  13.3.

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The confrontation with Simon is definitively concluded to Peter’s advantage by him shooting, so to speak, Simon out of the air when he is flying over Rome. This even convinces one of Simon’s greatest supporters, Gemellus, that he is not a god and he desires ‘to be one of those that believe in Christ’. Simon, on the other hand, goes to Aricia and next to Terracina where he stays with a certain Castor who had been chased from Rome on a charge of sorcery, one last sign of his being a magician. Here he ends his life (32). Peter remains in Rome, but things go wrong when the four (!) concubines of the prefect Agrippa come to him and renounce sexual intercourse with the prefect after hearing Peter’s sermons on purity and other ‘words of the Lord’ (33). Their example is followed by other women and even men. It is this trend towards sexual abstention that causes his downfall, as the prefect and the husband of another abstaining wife have him arrested and executed (34–39).

3.  The Acts of Paul The protagonist of the Acts of Paul is of course the apostle Paul, whose wanderings are related, beginning probably from Damascus – the text has come to us only incompletely – , where he himself converted.30 But we get a glimpse of Paul’s activities in his subsequent stay in Syrian Antioch. Here he raises the son of Phila and Anchares from the dead. Just as John was considered to be meddling in magic (§  1), Paul too is considered to be a magician by Phila (Ant. 1; note also APTh 15, 20; Ephesus 24). This suspicion must be a reflection of reality, as the accusation of magic is the underlying theme in the Acts of Peter, where Peter defeats Simon Magus (§  2). But Anchares testifies of his belief surely because of the resurrection of his son. However, the rest of the population is not convinced, and Paul is chased out of the city (Ant. 3). If this passage is fairly traditional, we see a most interesting new aspect of Christianity’s mission in the passage about Paul’s stay in Iconium. Here Paul’s sermons in the house of Onesiphorus are followed by a young girl Thecla, who sits at a near-by window, and Paul’s words are enough for her to become a believer.31 This is a rather unique case in the AAA, as in virtually all other cases people are converted through ‘marvellous works’, not by persuasive discourses. Interestingly, the text notes that many women and virgins went into Onesipho-

30  For Paul’s conversion, which has often been discussed, see J.N. Bremmer, Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible and the Ancient Near East (Leiden, 2008) 224–32. 31  For an interesting discussion, see K. Cooper and J. Corke-Webster, ‘Conversion, Conflict, and the Drama of Social Reproduction: Narratives of Filial Resistance in Early Christianity and Modern Britain’, in B.S. Bøgh (ed.), Conversion and Initiation in Antiquity: Shifting Identities – Creating Change (Frankfurt, 2014) 169–83.

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rus’ house (APTh 7, see also 9, 12; Myra 332). The passage suggests that Christianity appealed to rather young people, and, on the basis of modern evidence, the late Keith Hopkins (1934–2004) has indeed postulated a higher incidence of the young as possible sources of Christian recruitment.33 And indeed, around the 160s (?), that is, the probable time of our Acts, both Tatian (Or. 32.1, 33.1) and Celsus (Origen, CC 3.44) mention the presence of young boys and girls among the Christians. We may also note the more or less contemporary fifteen-year old Ponticus in Mart. Lugd. 53 as well as the young Perpetua and Felicitas in the Passio Perpetuae.34 In this connection, we also note that Thecla takes young men and women with her when looking for Paul in Myra (40). In Pisidian Antioch, Thecla manages to convert the noble Tryphaena, whose deceased daughter Falconilla she replaces to some extent. When seals have failed to kill her due to the intervention of Jesus (34), and the Roman governor has released Thecla (38), Tryphaena starts to believe and takes Thecla into her house, who instructs not only Tryphaena in the word of God, but also the majority of her maidservants (39). The passage is fairly unique, but must reflect one of the ways Christianity took hold: when a rich lady converted, her slaves surely would convert often too. Thecla now disappears from sight and we follow Paul to Myra. Here he is approached by a certain Hermocrates, probably a local name like Hermippos below,35 who suffers from dropsy. Unfortunately the papyrus with the scene is rather fragmentary, but it is clear that Paul heals Hermocrates, who surely converts as he is subsequently baptised with his wife. His two sons, however, display different reactions. The older one, Hermippos, had wanted his father to die in order to get hold of the inheritance, whereas the younger one, Dion, ‘heard Paul gladly’ (2). It is clear that the author tries to vary his ‘novel’ a bit and employs the motif of feuding brothers that was well known to him from both the Greek and the biblical tradition.36 From our text it is unclear how it happened exactly, but Dion dies because of a fall. Naturally, the apostle raises him (4), even if we do not know how because a leaf of the papyrus is missing. The next day Hermippos, accompanied by a group of young men armed with cudgels, tries to kill Paul, but instead he is blinded, presumably by the apostle. Hermocrates 32  For Myra I follow the chapter order of Willy Rordorf in F. Bovon and P. Geoltrain (eds), Écrits apocryphes chrétiens, 2  vols (Paris, 1997–2005) 1.1142–46. 33  K. Hopkins, ‘Christian Number and Its Implications’, JECS 6 (1998) 185–226 at 205. 34  For more, sometimes later, examples, see this volume, Chapter  2.3. 35  For names in Lycia with the element ERM-, see S. Colvin, ‘Names in Hellenistic and Roman Lycia’, in Yale Classical Studies 31 (2004) 44–84 at 61–62; J.-S. Balzat, ‘Names in EPM- in Southern Asia Minor. A Contribution to the Cultural History of Ancient Lycia’, Chiron 44 (2014) 253–84. For the complicated interplay of Greek and Lycian in these names, see especially D. Schürr, ‘Ermasortas: ein lykischer Männername im kaiserzeitlichen Patara’, in Festschrift for Havva Iskan Isik, forthcoming. 36  See Bremmer, Greek Religion and Culture, 57–72.

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now sells his goods and gives the proceeds to the widows, an important category in the early Christian Church.37 Moreover, it seems that Hermippos also converts, although the papyrus is too fragmentarily to say exactly how. Our narrative becomes more accessible when we are back in Ephesus, partially because of the more recent publication of the Coptic Bodmer papyrus with this part of the text.38 Here en route Paul meets a speaking lion whom he manages to convert and to baptise.39 The conversion of the lion is so complete that it immediately renounces sexual intercourse with a lioness it encounters.40 Understandably, hearing this report the crowd is amazed and immediately ‘was added to the faith’ (11). Among them, it seems, is a rich woman, Procla, who is also baptised together with all her household: one more testimony of the influence the conversion of wealthy citizens must have exerted on their slaves. However, also Artemilla (perhaps also inspired by a native Lycian name here),41 the wife of the Roman governor Jerome, becomes interested in Paul and after having been berated by him because of her clothes and her jewellery she, together with Euboula, the wife of Jerome’s freedman Diophantos, requests to be baptised. Paul was in chains in prison, but at the appearance of an extremely attractive child, his chains loosen themselves. Subsequently the gates of the prison opened spontaneously (§  1), and the apostle with his female followers go out to the sea preceded by a young man whose radiance made a torch superfluous. Here he baptises Artemilla. On his return into the prison, he presents her with the Eucharist and then sends her home (19–21). The next morning he is led into the arena where a fierce lion awaits him, of course the one he has baptised before. In the end, an enormous hailstorm kills all the other animals and even tears off the ear of Jerome. The people present flee, and the lion returns to the mountains and no longer speaks with a human voice. Jerome, apparently, prays for the healing of his ear and presumably converts just like his wife. But Paul has already left for Macedonia where we meet him again in Philippi. No more clear conversions are now reported in the surviving Acts until we have arrived in Rome where Paul will be martyred. Here he preaches in a barn outside Rome where he once again gains many followers and converts, in particular from Caesar’s household (14.1). A wine pourer of Nero with the name of Patroclus, once again a young man, listens to him but falls 37 

See this volume, Chapter  4. Kasser and P. Luisier, ‘Le Papyrus Bodmer XLI en édition princeps. L’épisode d’Ephèse des Acta Pauli en Copte et en traduction’, Le Muséon 117 (2004) 281–384. 39  Lions were present in southern Anatolia until the nineteenth century and may well have been familiar to the readers of the Acts of Paul, cf. Nollé, Kleinasiatische Losorakel, 171. 40  C.R. Matthews, ‘Articulate Animals. A Multivalent Motif in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles’, in F. Bovon et al. (eds), The Apocryphal Acts of Apostles. Harvard Divinity School Studies (Cambridge, 1999) 205–32; Spittler, Animals, 182–87. 41  For the complicated question of names with Artemis in Lycia, see Colvin, ‘Names in Hellenistic and Roman Lycia’, 60 f. 38 R.

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from the window from where he was listening. After he has been resuscitated by the apostle and has converted, he is arrested by Nero together with some other prominent members of his household. It is with these important conversions that we have to take leave of the Acts of Paul and move on to the conclusions.

4. Conclusions and general observations 1. As already noted in our introduction, we should first reflect about our s­ ources and the value we can attach to them in mining them for historical data. The relationship between fiction and history is of course not an easy one to analyse. Fiction can represent reality as closely as possible, as for example, in a realistic novel, but it can also subvert reality or portray a utopian world. In other words, there is no direct road from fiction to facts, and we always have to correlate the world of fiction to other data available. No historical reality can be reconstructed from fiction alone. 2. In a fine article on conversion as used and described by the apologists, Jakob Engberg also touches on the insoluble question of the intended readership of the apologies.42 In his discussion, he neatly distinguishes between offensive and defensive uses of the accounts of conversion, that is, accounts to counter false allegations and accounts to influence other potential converts, and from his discussion it is clear that the apologies are aimed at an intellectual readership. It should be noticed that in the AAA we find a rather different approach to conversion. These Acts, as I argue,43 are probably aimed at women of the higher classes. Although they do contain many discursive passages, as we can see from my survey, the scenes with conversion are nearly all in a narrative mode. In other words, we have to be attentive to the genre of the conversion accounts. 3. Nock has rightly noted that conversion is not part of the polytheistic world of antiquity, but belongs to the rise of Judaism and Christianity, the only contemporary monotheistic religions, but he was still under the influence of William James’ mainly psychological approach, which has to be seen against the background of contemporary American revivalism.44 This means that Nock’s famous definition of conversion, ‘the reorientation of the soul of an individual, his deliberate turning from indifference or from an earlier form of piety to another, a turning which implies a consciousness that a great change is involved, 42  J. Engberg, ‘“From among You are We. Made, not Born are Christians.” Apologists’ Accounts of Conversion before 310 AD’, in J. Ulrich et al. (eds), Continuity and Discontinuity in Early Christian Apologetics (Frankfurt, 2009) 49–79. 43  See this volume, Chapter  14.3. 44  For an excellent contextualisation of modern conversion studies, see H. Zock, ‘Paradigms in Psychological Conversion Research. Between Social Science and Literary Analysis’, in J.N. Bremmer et al. (eds), Paradigms, Poetics, and Politics of Conversion (Leuven, 2006) 41–58.

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that the old was wrong and the new was right’, neglects the social factor in conversion.45 Moreover, his emphasis on the personal experience obscures the fact that only the new Christians had become members of an exclusive, totalising community.46 4. However, we can also look at our fictional sources and ask how they portray the reasons for conversion, who is the object of conversion, and what was the measure of success of a conversion. Regarding the portrayal, looking at our AAA we notice that they in general follow what I would call the Paul model of conversion. In (almost?) all cases, the reasons for conversion are a demonstration of divine power /miracles, yet usually mediated also by other Christians – the social aspect. Moreover, conversion is depicted as a sudden event, as was the case with Paul on the road to Damascus. This presents us with a problem. Engberg has persuasively argued that the apologists’ accounts can be considered as normative sources for the study of conversion in antiquity. But how does this compare with the accounts of the AAA? Are they not normative? The trouble of course is that most of the healings or resurrections cannot have happened in reality. Yet the persistent occurrence of the sudden conversion in these AAA make me wonder if in antiquity things did not go different than in modern times. In this respect, I would like to point once again to the passages in which the people call Peter a god after a spectacular miracle. This kind of reaction was not abnormal in antiquity. Given that people could start worshipping mortals as gods after impressive feats, it does not seem impossible that people also converted suddenly after some impressive event. It is perhaps a sign of our own reflexive time that we prefer to think of conversion as a long lasting process. This we can certainly observe too in antiquity – Constantine and Augustine are obvious cases47 – but we should perhaps keep an open mind regarding the actual process. 5. Who were the converts? Nock looked at the ancient world very much from the point of view of an intellectual and focused his interest more on the upper 45 Nock, Conversion, 7, cf. N.H. Taylor, ‘The Social Nature of Conversion in the Early Christian World’, in Esler, Modelling Early Christianity, 128–36; Z. Crook, Reconceptualising Conversion (Berlin, 2004), although his insistence on loyalty as an important factor in conversion is less persuasive. 46  This is well argued by J. Rives, ‘Religious Choice and Religious Change in Classical and Late Antiquity. Models and Questions’, ARYS 9 (2011) 265–80; see also H. Leppin,‘Christianisierungen im Römischen Reich: Überlegungen zum Begriff und zur Phasenbildung’, ZAC 16 (2012) 247–78 at 265–76. 47  Augustine: among the many studies, see especially P. Brown, ‘Conversion and Christianization in Late Antiquity. The Case of Augustine’, in C. Straw and R. Lim (eds), The Past Before Us. The Challenge of Historiographies of Late Antiquity (Turnhout, 2004) 103–17; R Lane Fox, Augustine: Conversions and Confessions (London, 2015) passim; J. Engberg, ‘Exarsi ad imitandum: Augustine’s Confessiones an Account, an Understanding and a Process of Conversion Shaped by Tradition?‘, in Weitbrecht, Zwischen Ereignis und Erzählung, 31–58; J. Grethlein, ‘Lucian’s Response to Augustine: Conversion and Narrative in Confessions and Nigrinus’, Religion in the Roman Empire 2 (2016) 256–78. Constantine: J.N. Bremmer, ‘The Vision of Constantine’, in A. Lardinois et al. (eds), Land of Dreams (Leiden, 2006) 57–79.

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classes than the ‘man in the street’, whom he clearly dismissed as credulous.48 This means that he hardly had an eye for a more varied study of the nature of the newly converts. It is therefore perhaps understandable – also given his time of writing – that he had little interest in the conversions of women, although there also is perhaps a personal aspect to this as Nock was not at ease with women.49 But we note of course also that among the apologists studied by Engberg there is not a single woman. Thus the AAA present us with a different view of early Christian conversion by focusing on the women, of whom we know that they constituted an important part of the early Church. Moreover, the AAA show us different types of women: rich upper class ladies, virgins as well as old crones and widows. As such, the AAA can give us a more differentiated view of the early Christian converts. Rather striking too is the attention to the young. When we take into account Rodney Stark’s rational choice theory we may perhaps conclude that the costs for women and the young were less than for the upper class males: whereas we know plenty of female and young converts,50 there are no Christian senators known and few knights before Constantine.51 6. Were the conversions successful? It is interesting to note that our texts repeatedly stress the fact that the newly converts still have to be further educated in the faith.52 In other words, they depict conversion as a process. This process will have been an obvious fact for many of the fresh Christian converts as the Christians had instituted the catechumenate to instruct in the faith those who wanted to join them. Thus, even if we were witness to an instant conversion, there still would be the social process of integration into the Christian community. The occasional attention of the authors of the AAA to this fact speaks for their intermittent realism. 7. The problem with most of these descriptions, though, is that either the miracles themselves, such as a resurrection, or their effects, such as conversions of whole towns, are highly improbable.53 Evidently, we have to do with a kind 48 Nock,

Conversion, 90, 224, 226. Price, ‘The Conversion of A.D. Nock’, 330. 50  R. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (Harmondsworth, 1987) 308–11; J.N. Bremmer, The Rise of Christianity through the Eyes of Gibbon, Harnack and Rodney Stark (Groningen, 20102) 56; this volume, Chapter  2.3. 51  W. Eck, ‘Christen im höheren Reichsdienst im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert? Zu zwei Thesen Th. Klausers’, Chiron 9 (1979) 449–64 and ‘Religion und Religiosität in der soziopolitischen Führungsschicht der Hohen Kaiserzeit’, in W. Eck (ed.), Religion und Gesellschaft in der römischen Kaiserzeit. Kolloquium zu Ehren von Friedrich Vittinghoff (Cologne, 1989) 15–51; T.D. Barnes, ‘Statistics and the Conversion of the Roman Aristocracy’, JRS 85 (1995) 135–47; M. Salzman, The Making of a Christian Aristocracy. Social and Religious Change in the Western Roman Empire (Cambridge, 2002); Al. Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (Oxford, 2011) 173–205; A. Weiss, Soziale Elite und Christentum. Studien zu ordo-Angehörigen unter den frühen Christen (Berlin and Boston, 2015). 52  This is well demonstrated by J.A. Snyder, Language and Identity in Ancient Narratives (Tübingen, 2014) 135 f. 53  M. Frenschkowski, ‘Religion auf dem Markt’, in M. Hutter et al. (eds), Hairesis. Fest49 

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of missionary discourse that should not be confused with reality, although its popularity suggests that there was a large market for such stories. This is of course not surprising in a world that hardly knew proper medical care. Surely, just like today, miracles must have often been seen as the only possibility in desperate situations. Reports of miracles may well have produced converts, but our evidence for that result is extremely slim. Yet the reactions of a pagan author like Lucian shows us that such miracle stories were extremely popular in his time. The Christians had realised this niche in the religious market and exploited it as no other contemporary religious cult. 8. Naturally, Nock did not focus on unsuccessful conversions or apostates, a neglected category altogether, but which should not be overlooked in a study of conversion.54 Except for Julian the Apostate, we hardly know anything about such retro-conversions as they perhaps could be called, although the problem of the lapsi would become more urgent after Decius’ persecution.55 Let me here suffice by calling our attention to the problem within the context of conversion. 9. Finally, the focus on the apostles in the AAA leaves us largely in the dark who the ‘brokers’ of the new religion were: male missionaries, women, adolescents, merchants, administrators, soldiers? The AAA suggest that the conversion of upper-class women could lead to the conversion of whole households, which does make sense. But what about the reading of the AAA? Did that promote early Christianity? Posing the question shows how little we still know, and how much we are still groping in the dark when we try to understand the rise of Christianity and the phenomenon of early Christian conversion.56

schrift für Karl Hoheisel (Münster, 2002) 140–58. It would transcend the limits of my contribution to discuss here the problem of miracles, which has been an important subject since Hume, but see Bremmer, The Rise of Christianity, 13–14, 35, 71; for Hume, add C. Ginzburg, ‘Une conversation sur les miracles (Hume au Collège de la Flèche, entre 1735 et 1737)’, Asdiwal (published at Geneva) 7 (2012) 55–69. 54  But see J.M.G. Barclay, ‘Deviance and Apostasy: Some Applications of Deviance Theory to First-Century Judaism and Christianity’, in D.G. Horrell (ed.), Social-Scientific Approaches to New Testament Interpretation (Edinburgh, 1999) 287–307; S.G Wilson, Leaving the Fold: Apostates and Defectors in Antiquity (Minneapolis, 2004) 66–99; Z. Crook, ‘Agents of Apostasy: Apostasy in a Collectivistic Culture’, in Bøgh, Conversion and Initiation in Antiquity, 119–34; C. Hornung, Apostasie im antiken Christentum. Studien zum Glaubensabfall in altkirchlicher Theologie, Disziplin und Pastoral (4.–7. Jahrhundert n. Chr.) (Leiden, 2016); L. Hurtado, Why on Earth Did Anyone Become a Christian in the First Three Centuries? (Milwaukee, 2016) 94–103. 55  Cf. W. Ameling, ‘The Christian lapsi in Smyrna, 250 A.D. (Martyrium Pionii 12–14)’, VigChris 62 (2008) 133–60. 56  For information, I am grateful to Patrick Finglass. Ton Hilhorst, as always, saved me from various mistakes and improved my argument.

Chapter 13

Magic in the Apocryphal Acts Apart from some references to Jesus or the demise of magic in the Later Roman Empire, Christian texts are clearly not seen as useful or interesting sources in the more recent major studies on ancient magic.1 This is, I dare say, a mistake, as I want to illustrate on the basis of a specific corpus of texts from the later decades of the second and the earlier decades of the third century. In those years, Christians produced a series of works, the so-called Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles (AAA), in which anonymous authors made the case for their versions of Christianity. Overall, these works were discursive rather than narrative, but in their narrative parts they closely resembled the ancient novel. The corpus consists of five Acts, those of the apostles John, Andrew, Peter, Paul and Thomas. In addition to these five Christian ‘novels’ we have one more novel that deserves to be included. Around AD 230, an author, probably in Edessa, wrote a ‘novel’ with the Roman bishop Clemens as its protagonist. The ‘novel’ itself has been lost, but two rewritten versions survive, the Greek Homilies (just before the middle of the fourth century) and the Recognitions (not much later), which survived only in a Latin translation by Rufinus. Comparison of the two versions regularly allows us to reconstruct the so-called Grundschrift, the lost original of the two revised ‘novels’.2 In many ways, these rewritten versions enable us to see what the original AAA must have looked like, since the latter have often lost their discursive parts in favour of a later, narrative approach. In fact, Gregory of Tours explicitly states in his Latin epitome of the AA that he has cut out the orations because they were not attractive enough for his readers. My contribution is a synthesis of my work on magic in these ‘novels’.3 I would like to show that this corpus (which is fairly homogeneous in time, place and genre) has been wrongly neglected by students of ancient magic, whereas, in fact, it provides valuable information on the changes and tensions occurring 1  See, for example, A. Bernand, Sorciers grecs (Paris, 1993); F. Graf, Magic in the Ancient World (Cambridge MA, 1997); R. Gordon, ‘Imagining Greek and Roman Magic’, in B. An­ karloo and S. Clark (eds), Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Ancient Greece and Rome (Philadelphia, 1999) 159–275; M.W. Dickie, Magic and Magicians in the Greco-Roman World (London and New York, 2001). 2  See this volume, Chapter  15. 3  I have freely used, but always adapted, expanded and updated, my contributions on magic in the earlier chapters of this volume as well as my ‘La confrontation entre l’apôtre Pierre et Simon le Magicien’, in A. Moreau (ed.), La Magie, 4  vols (Montpellier, 2000) 1.219–231.

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in the Roman Empire through the gradual rise of Christianity – even if in a limited period of time. I will therefore first look at some realities and representations of magic (§  1), then at exorcism (§  2), thirdly at the confrontation between Peter and Simon Magus (§  3), and close with a few observations on the place of this episode of magic in the longue durée from Late Antiquity until the Middle Ages (§  4).

1.  Realities and representations of magic Let us start with the simple question of the inventor of magic.4 For various, not totally transparent reasons the Greeks first ascribed the invention of magic to the Persians or, to be more precise, to a tribe of the Medes, the Magi.5 As they also knew that the founder of Persian religion was called Zarathustra, or in the Greek transcription Zoroaster, it is no wonder that already in the fourth century BC the pseudo-Platonic Alcibiades (155a) ascribed the origin of mageia to ‘Zoroaster, the son of Horomasdus’.6 The Roman Pliny (Natural History 30.2.3) followed this tradition in an excursus on magic, for which he drew on Greek sources, about whom ‘all authorities agreed’. That is to say, all authorities except the Christians, who had their own ideas about the origin of magic. Admittedly, Christians sometimes followed pagan tradition closely by ascribing the invention of magic to humans, such as the Persian Ostanes, the Greek Typhon or the Egyptian Nectabis, whereas in other cases they followed their Jewish predecessors by ascribing the invention to the Fallen Angels.7 However, they also appropriated pagan tradition into their own ideas about the origin of magic. This happens in the Recognitions (1.30.2–3), where we first hear of one of Noah’s grandsons as the inventor of magic, the altar for demons, and animal sacrifice. Later we learn that the inventor really is 4  In this and the following section I elaborate somewhat Chapter  8 .2, but it proved too disruptive to remove the overlaps. 5  For this process, see J.N. Bremmer, Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible and the Ancient Near East (Leiden, 2008) 235–47 (‘Persian Magoi and the Birth of the Term “Magic”’, first published in 1999). 6  For the name Zarathustra/Zoroaster, see, more recently, I. Gershevitch, ‘Approaches to Zoroaster’s Gathas’, Iran 33 (1995) 19–24; R. Schmitt, ‘Onomastica Iranica Platonica’, in C. Mueller-Goldingen and K. Sier (eds), Lenaika. Festschrift für Carl Werner Müller (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1996) 81–102 at 93–8 and ‘Iranische Personennamen bei Aristoteles’, in S. Adhami (ed.), Paitimāna. Essays in Iranian, Indo-European, and Indian Studies in Honor of Hanns-Peter Schmidt (Costa Mesa, 2003) 275–299 at 283–84; B.A. Olsen, ‘Zarathustra and the Needle’s Eye of Etymology’, in A.M. Byrd et al. (eds), Tavet Tat Satyam. Studies in Honor of Jared S. Klein on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday (Ann Arbor and New York, 2016) 236–45. 7 Humans: Tertullian, De anima 57.1. Angels: Tertullian, De cultu feminarum 1.2.1, 2.10.2–3.

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Noah’s son Ham, who taught the art to his son Mestraim, ‘the ancestor of the Persians’, whom his contemporaries called Zoroaster. 8 In other words, this is a combination of the proverbial Antiquity of Zoroaster, who according to Eudoxos had lived 6000 years before Plato, and the curse on Ham’s son Kanaan in Genesis (9.25). In addition to magic itself, we also hear some interesting details about magicians. In the Coptic fragment of the AA, a magician says before ‘attacking’ a Christian girl: ‘If I have spent five and twenty years under the instruction of my master until I was trained in his skill, this is the beginning of my craft’ (AAco 10). The passage is also an interesting testimony to the ancient belief that magic could only be learnt after many years of instruction. In the Recognitions (1.5) Clemens planned to travel to Egypt to become instructed by local priests and to hire a magician to perform necromancy.9 A similar teacher-pupil relationship perhaps underlies the episode of Exuos, an upper-class youth, who had left his parents in order to follow Andrew. When the inhabitants of Patras tried to smoke out the apostle with the help of a military cohort, their son extinguished the fire with a dish of water. The parents realised that their plan had failed and exclaimed: ‘Look, our son has become a magician!’ Not wholly surprisingly, they had identified the miracles performing Andrew as a master magician (AAlat 11). It is strange, though, that the text calls our magician ‘young’ after such a long training. Could there be an Egyptian background to this qualification, since in Apuleius’s Metamorphoses the Egyptian priest and magician Zatchlas is also called a iuvenis?10 It is at least remarkable that in the well-known Demotic Second Setne story Siosiris is only twelve years old when he defeats the Kushite magicians.11

8 

For Restraim, see also this volume, Chapter  15.4. ancient necromancy, see, most recently, Dickie, Magic and Magicians, 237–39; D. Ogden, Greek and Roman Necromancy (Princeton and Oxford, 2001), to be read with the review by F. Graf, Class. World 99 (2006) 459–60; C. Faraone, ‘Orpheus’ Final Performance: Necromancy and a Singing Head on Lesbos’, Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica 97 (2004) 5–27 and ‘A Skull, a Gold Amulet and a Ceramic Pot: Evidence for Necromancy in the Vigna Codini?’, MHNH 5 (2005) 27–44; S.I. Johnston, Ancient Greek Divination (Oxford, 2008) 171–5; A. Setaioli, ‘The Revelation of the Corpse’, Prometheus 41 (2015) 229–57; J.N. Bremmer, ‘Ancient Necromancy: Fact or Fiction?’, in K. Bielawski (ed.), Mantic Perspectives – oracles, prophecy and performance (Gardzienice, 2016) 119–41. All recent literature on necromancy has overlooked the new evidence contained in A. Pietersma, The Apocryphon of Jannes and Jambres the Magicians (Leiden, 1994). 10  For the importance of this episode for the study of ancient magic, see the excellent analysis by A. Stramaglia, ‘Aspetti di letteratura fantastica in Apuleio. Zatchlas Aegyptius propheta primarius e la scena di necromanzia nella novella di Telifrone (Met. II, 27–30)’, Annali della Facoltà (Bari) di Lettere e Filosofia 33 (1990) 159–220; Setaioli, ‘The Revelation of the Corpse’, 240–47. 11  F. Hoffmann and J.F. Quack, Anthologie der demotischen Literatur (Münster, 2007) 118–37 at 123. 9 For

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Both Celsus and the Talmud reproached Jesus of having learned magic in Egypt;12 Bishop Cyprian (Confessiones 12) had been ten years with the Memphitic priests training to become a magician, and Lucian’s lover of lies (Lovers of Lies 34–36) had even spent twenty-three years in subterranean chambers of Memphis where Isis had trained him to become a magician. Our author, then, evokes the picture of a magician who is so well trained that he can hardly be defeated by the apostle in a confrontation. Egypt was notorious as a country with a long priestly tradition of magic not only in Greek and Roman culture but also in Jewish circles, as according to the Talmud nine-tenths of the world’s witchcraft had descended on Egypt.13 The young magician did not speak himself, but, according to the apostle, it was the demon Semmath, who had entered him. This demon was presumably related to the demon Sammoth in one of the Leiden magical papyri (PGM XII.79). Magicians were traditionally believed to be accompanied by a demon that helped them perform their magic, the so-called parhedros.14 According to Irenaeus, the heretic Marcus Magus had such a ‘demonic assistant (daimona parhedron), through whom he himself seems to prophesy and through whom he rouses to prophecy those women whom he thinks worthy of participating in the grace’.15 As the assistant was indispensable, he is sometimes even mentioned right at the beginning of a ritual, such as in a Berlin magical papyrus: ‘A [daemon comes] as an assistant who will reveal everything to you clearly and will be your [companion and] will eat and sleep with you’ (PGM I. 1–3). The idea of a parhedros also occurs in the Recognitions (2.13.1–2, cf. Homilies 2.26), where a former pupil of Simon Magus relates that the heretic, in answer to the question as to how things arte magica effici, answered that he evoked the soul of a pure child that had died a violent death, a so-called biaiothanatos. This soul, as Simon explains, ‘I have forced to assist me and it is through it that everything takes place that I order’. The biaiothanatos is a stock character in magic, but not normally employed as a parhedros. How did magicians stay alive? The question may seem odd, but do we know anything about the ways they supported themselves? The answer seems obvious: they took money for their services. It is also obvious that people did not 12 Origen, CC 1.28, 38, 46; Talmud, bSanh 107b; Arnobius, Adv. Nat. 1.43; B. Kollmann, Jesus und die Christen als Wundertäter (Göttingen, 1996) 179–81. 13  For Egypt as the country of magic par excellence, see this volume, Chapter  8 note  46. 14 T. Hopfner, Griechisch-ägyptischer Offenbarungszauber, 2   vols (Leipzig, 1921–1924, repr. Amsterdam, 1974–1990) 1.91ff; L. Ciraolo, ‘Supernatural Assistants in Greek Magical Papyri’, in M. Meyer and P. Mirecki (eds), Ancient Magic and Ritual Power (Leiden, 1995) 279–95; Graf, Magic in the Ancient World, 107–16; A. Scibilia, ‘Supernatural Assistance in the Greek Magical Papyri: The Figure of the Parhedros’, in J.N. Bremmer and J.R. Veenstra (eds), The Metamorphosis of Magic from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period (Leuven, 2003) 71–86. 15 Irenaeus, Adv. haer. 1.13.3, cf. N. Förster, Marcus Magus (Tubingen, 1999) 94 ff.

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like this, given that in descriptions of magicians the fact is often stressed in a negative way. Thus, in Apuleius’s Metamorphoses (2.28) the Egyptian Zatchlas is prepared to perform a necromancy grandi praemio and the baker’s wife persuades ‘an old hag’ (veteratricem quandam feminam) to bring back her husband multisque ... muneribus (9.29); in Lucian’s Lovers of Lies (14) the Hyperborean magician even requires 20 minae, with 4 in advance (sic), for a necromancy and an erotic spell. It is against this background that we must read the observation in the ATh (20) that the friends of the king first think that the apostle is a magician because of his healings and exorcisms, but the fact that he asks no reward is clearly a decisive argument against this idea. Similarly, Siphor stresses that ‘he (Thomas) did not ask for reward, but demands faith and holiness’ (104). The same attitude is found in the AJ, where the apostle answers a request by a father for an exorcism of his two sons by saying: ‘My physician takes no reward in money, but when he heals for nothing he reaps the souls of those who are healed in exchange for the diseases’ (56). The ‘free treatment’ is one of the clear contrasts worked out by the Christians in their efforts to distinguish themselves from pagan magicians (§  4).16 How did people on the popular level react to magic? In an interesting discussion of the growth of the repression of magic, Richard Gordon has paid some attention to popular attitudes as exemplified in the ancient novel.17 He points out that in Apuleius (Met. 1.10) people plan to stone a witch, and in Heliodorus (8.9) a woman accused of being a witch and a poisoner are burnt alive. For such lynching the AAA also supply some examples.18 In the AP, in reaction to the complaints of Thecla’s fiancé, the crowd shouts of Paul: ‘Away with the magician! For he has corrupted all our wives’ (15). And when Paul has appeared before the governor in court, the crowd shouts: ‘He is a sorcerer! Away with him!’ and Thecla’s mother calls out ‘Burn the lawless one!’ (20). In the APt the fickle multitude of Rome also intends to burn Peter after Simon Magus seemed to be the better magician. They immediately start to look for wood and kindling, but when Peter has triumphed they call out ‘let Simon be burned instead of Peter’ (28). As burning is also mentioned as a punishment by a third-century legal source ([Paul], Sent. 5.23.17: ipsi autem magi vivi exuruntur), one may wonder whether that law did not codify typical crowd behaviour.19 Finally, the Pseudo-Clementines contain an interesting notice about the persecution of magicians, which is also neglected by Gordon. In the Recognitions 16  For more examples, see U. Körtner and M. Leutzsch, Papiasfragmente. Hirt des Hermas (Darmstadt, 1998) 463 n.  266. 17  Gordon, ‘Imagining Greek and Roman Magic’, 263–64; Dickie, Magic and Magicians, 158–59 (insufficient). 18  Cf. G. Poupon, ‘L’accusation de magie dans les Actes Apocryphes’, in F. Bovon et al., Les Actes Apocryphes des Apôtres (Geneva, 1981) 71–93. 19  Note also Apuleius, Met. 10.6 for the crowd’s inclination to a summary execution.

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(10.55.3) the centurion Cornelius, a figure lifted from the canonical Acts of the Apostles (10.1), relates that the emperor has given an order to find all magicians in Rome and the provinces and put them to death. Cornelius therefore suggests that people tell Simon Magus that he has been sent to arrest him and have him punished. In a similar passage in the Homilies (20.4–6), Caesar has killed many magicians but not given a general order that they all be arrested. Unfortunately, the passage is absent from the Arabic epitome of the Recognitions, which is based on the original, but lost Greek version of the Recognitions. Apparently, the notice was taken from the later Homilies, as we somehow would suspect, since the persecution of magicians accelerates after the Roman government became Christian. The imperial persecution described in the Homilies, then, may well be inspired by the increasing repression of magic as becoming visible in Late Antiquity.20

2. Exorcism Any reader of the AAA, especially of the AA, will be struck by the multitude of references to demons and exorcism. Exorcism as we know it from the New Testament did not occur in Greece and Rome, but the word ‘exorcism’ and the techniques of the practice are clearly of Jewish origin.21 This origin may be surprising to some, but magic was a flourishing business in the Palestine of Jesus’ days.22 The Jewish origin was probably also the reason that non-Jewish 20  For these measures, see M.Th. Fögen, Die Enteignung der Wahrsager. Studien zum kaiserlichen Wissensmonopol in der Spätantike (Frankfurt, 1993); H. Kippenberg, ‘Magic in Roman Civil Discourse: Why Rituals could be Illegal’, in P. Schäfer and H. Kippenberg (eds), Envisioning Magic (Leiden, 1997) 137–63; V. Neri, I marginali nell’ Occidente tardo antico (Bari, 1998) 258–86; Gordon, ‘Imagining Greek and Roman Magic’, 243–66; Dickie, Magic and Magicians, 251–72; A. Lotz, Magiekonflikte in der Spätantike (Bonn, 2005); M. Kahlos, ‘Artis heu magicis: The Label of Magic in Fourth-Century Conflicts and Disputes‘, in M.R. Salzman et al. (eds), Pagans and Christians in Late Antique Rome (Cambridge, 2015) 162–77. 21  Cf. Z. Ritoók, ‘Horkos und Exorkismos’, in Intellectual Heritage of Egypt = Festschrift L. Kákosy (Budapest, 1992) 503–08; A. Zografou, ’Les formules d’adjuration dans les Papyrus Grecs Magiques’, in M. De Haro Sanchez (ed.), Écrire la magie dans l’antiquité (Liège, 2015) 267–80. 22 P. Alexander, ‘Jewish Elements in Gnosticism and Magic c. CE 70 - c. CE 270’, in W. Horbury et al. (eds), The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol.  3 (Cambridge, 1999) 1052–78; add to his survey P. Schäfer and S. Shaked (eds), Magische Texte aus der Kairoer Geniza, vol.  3 (Tübingen, 1999); G. Fassbeck, ‘Vom Mosaik zur Magie. Die Synagogeninschrift von En Gedi im Kontext des spätantiken Judentums’, in A. von Dobbeler et al. (eds), Religionsgeschichte des Neuen Testaments. Festschrift für Klaus Berger zum 60. Geburtstag (Tübingen and Basel, 2000) 93–117; sometimes too apologetic, N. Janowitz, Magic in the Roman World (New York, 2001); S.I. Johnston, ‘The Testament of Solomon from Late Antiquity through the Renaissance’, in Bremmer and Veenstra, The Metamorphosis of Magic, 35–50; F. García Martínez, Qumranica Minora, 2  vols (Leiden, 2007) 2.109–30; G. Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic: A History (Cambridge, 2008); N. Vilozny, ‘The Rising Power of the Image: On Jewish Magic Art

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exorcists expelled demons with the formula ‘God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob’.23 In this respect, it seems significant that when Lucian wants to represent an exorcist in his Lovers of Lies (16), he introduces ‘the Syrian from Palestine’. We cannot discuss in detail all the relevant passages concerning exorcism, but we can certainly pose several questions: Where are the demons and what do they look like? How do they affect the possessed? How do the apostles approach them and how do they react? How does the victim of demonic possession respond to his exorcism? In what kind of context does exorcism take place? And what is the reaction of the public? Investigation into ancient exorcism has rarely transcended the stage of collecting the facts, but we must always take into account that exorcism is a ritual scenario that takes place between the exorcist, the person possessed, the demon(s) and the public. Any analysis that neglects one of these aspects presents us only with an inadequate view of this ancient ritual.24 Let us start with the demons. These often do not belong to a specific magician but seem to be independent beings that sometimes lurk in specific places. It is rather striking for us moderns to find them regularly in the baths, a belief abundantly illustrated by the AA.25 When the apostle Andrew comes near Sinope, he heals the son of Cratinus, who had been ‘struck’ (see below) by a demon when frequenting the women’s bath (AAlat 5). Subsequently, in Patras he resurrected the wife of the pro-consul Lesbios,26 Callista, who, whilst taking a bath together with her steward, had been ‘struck’ by a demon (AAlat 23). Finally, in Corinth he exorcised both an old man and a youth whom he had met in the baths (AAlat 27). Gregory’s narration supplies no more information about the last case, but in the earlier ones we can easily recognise the underlying pagan, Jewish and Christian objection to mixed bathing.27 from the Second Temple Period to Late Antiquity’, in D.R. Schwartz and Z. Weiss (eds), Was 70 CE Watershed Jewish History?: On Jews and Judaism Before and After the Destruction of the Second Temple (Leiden, 2012) 243–76. 23 Origen, CC 1.22–3, 4.33–4, 5.45, cf. Fassbeck, ‘Vom Mosaik zur Magie’, 111. 24  For exorcism, see the bibliography, this volume, Chapter  8 , note  45. 25  C. Bonner, ‘Demons of the Bath’, in Studies Presented to F. Ll. Griffith (London, 1932) 203–08; Hopfner, Griechish-Ägyptischer Offenbarungszauber, 1 §  195; K Dunbabin, ‘Baia­ rum grata voluptas: pleasures and dangers of the baths’, Papers of the British School at Rome 57 (1989) 6–46. Note also the striking example in Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Gregorius Thaumaturgus, 91–93, ed. Maraval. 26  For the name Lesbios, see D. Berges and J. Nollé, Die Inschriften von Tyana, 2  vols (Bonn, 2000) 1.251, who also accept the possibility of the literary meaning (referring to Sappho and Alcaeus). 27  For mixed bathing, see Pliny, NH 33.153; Martial 7.35, 11.75; Juvenal 6.422–3; Clem. Alex., Paedagogos 3.5.32; G. Schöllgen, ‘Balnea mixta. Entwicklungen der spätantiken Bademoral im Spiegel der Textüberlieferung der syrischen Didaskalie’, JAC, Suppl. 28 (1998) 182– 94; A. Hilhorst, ‘Erotic Elements in the Shepherd of Hermas’, in H. Hofmann and M. Zimmerman (eds), Groningen Colloquia on the Novel IX (Groningen, 1998) 193–204 at 196; Y.Z. Eliav, ‘The Roman Bath as a Jewish Institution’, JSJ 31 (2000) 416–54.

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The demons manifested themselves in rather different ways. The demon that had struck the proconsul’s wife and her steward is just called a daemon teterrimus, but those who beat up Lesbios were ‘Aethiopians’, pitch-black men, a favourite manifestation of ancient demons (AAlat 22).28 Demons could even appear as animals. In Nicaea seven demons lived in tombs along the road (AAlat 5, 7), another place fit for demons. Their number, seven, is typical of groups of demons in the Old and New Testament.29 When the apostle arrived in the city, the Nicaeans approached him with olive branches in the Greek way of supplication. The apostle gave in to their entreaties and ordered the demons to show themselves. At that very moment they appeared as dogs, a fine illustration of the ambivalent standing of the dog among Jews and Greeks.30 How did the demons affect their victims? As the above mentioned examples show, some victims felt ‘struck’, ‘beaten’ or ‘whipped’ by the demons. We do not find this belief in the New Testament, but just as the wife of the proconsul and her steward were percussi by a demon (AAlat 23), so Stratocles’s servant Alc­ manes was ab inpulsu daemonis percussus (2; AAlat 34). Indeed, the explanation of illness or possession as the result of being hit was very widespread and regularly occurs in the magical papyri, where, for example, in a recipe for a love spell the advice is to ‘glue it to the dry vaulted vapour room of a bath, and you will marvel. But watch yourself so that you are not hit’.31 A variant of beating was hitting with a ‘lash’, a belief perhaps reflected in Lesbios’s feeling of being ‘whipped’ by ‘Ethiopians’ (AAlat 22). From the Middle Ages until virtually our own times, people who display socially unacceptable behaviour and extreme signs of motor disorder, often with contortions and dislocations, were considered to be possessed. It is no different in the AAA. The old man in the bath (above) trembled (AAlat 27). Some servants of Antiphanes were ‘grinding their teeth ... and insanely laughing’ (AAlat 29):32 In the ATh (62–4) possessed women are even ‘gnashing their teeth and dashing their heads on the ground’; moreover, the demons ‘throw them down wherever they find them, and strip them naked’. In fact, lying on the ground must have been typical. The son of Cratinus had gone mad and fallen on 28 

See this volume, Chapter  9.1. Tombs: Matthew 8.28; Mark 5.2, 3, 5; Luke 8.27; H. Strack and P. Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch, 6  vols (Munich, 1926–1961) 4.516 ff. Seven: Ezekiel 9.1–2; Matthew 12.45; Mark 16.9; Luke 8.2, 1 1.26; Testamentum Salomonis 8.1. For canine demons, see H.-J. Loth, ‘Hund’, in RAC 16 (1994) 773–828 at 822–823; add Test. Sal. 10.1–4. 30  Loth, ‘Hund’. 31  PGM XXXVI.76; see also PGM VII.282; Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos 3.14; S. Eitrem, Some Notes on the Demonology in the New Testament (Oslo, 19662) 36–37. For the widespread background of this belief, see L. Honko, Krankheitsprojektile (Helsinki, 1959). 32 Teeth: Jerome, Vita Hilarionis 12.10. Laughter: Philostratus, VA 4.20; this volume, Chapter  9.2. 29 

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the ground in front of the apostle (AA 5).33 In the Coptic fragment the soldier fell on the ground and started to foam at the mouth (AAco 9), just like Stratocles’s servant Alcmanes, who was moreover ‘utterly convulsed’ and sitting on a dung heap (AA 2–3; AAlat 34), not a very dignified position. One may at least ask to what extent these possessions, or their descriptions, were dependent on the New Testament where, for example, in Mark (9.18, 20) a dumb spirit ‘convulsed “his” boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth’.34 It could be even worse. The Nicaean canine demons killed the son of old parents (AAlat 7), just as a demon killed the proconsul’s wife and her steward (AAlat 23), and strangled the son of a Thessalonian (AAlat 14). In the latter case one may well wonder whether the narrative here does not exaggerate the feeling of suffocation that is attested for some possessed people. Exaggeration certainly plays a role in the earlier scenes, and this raises a problem to which we will return immediately, viz. to what extent these scenes were stock descriptions rather than representations of reality. How did the apostle react to the demonic powers? Whereas he had taken the initiative in addressing the Nicaean canine demons, it usually was the other way round. For example, in Philippi a youth cried out: ‘What is there between you and me, Andrew? Have you come to chase us from our proper place?’ (AAlat 17). Virtually the same approach takes place in a Corinthian bath, when a youth addresses Andrew with: ‘What is there between you and me? Have you come here to unsettle us from our place?’ (AAlat 27). In the ATh (44–5) an incubus-like demon ‘with a very loud voice said in the hearing of all: “What have we to do with thee, apostle of the Most High?”’35 These initiatives are clearly influenced by the New Testament, where the Gadarene dernoniacs address Jesus first with the words: ‘What have we to do with you, son of God?’ (Matthew 8.29, cf. Mark 1.24, 5.7, Luke 8.28), and they are thus not likely to be authentic. However, in Megara all the demons cried out in unison (unius vocis impetu): ‘Why do you chase us here, holy Andrew?’ (AAlat 29), which makes a more convincing impression. The demonic initiative is probably to be explained from the public arena in which the confrontation takes place. Before the community can accept that the possessed persons are healed, it has to be convinced that the demons 33 

Note also the exorcism in Recognitions 4.7.2. See also Lucian, Lovers of Lies 16; Test. Sal. 12.2, 17.3, 18.21; Talmud, bGiitim 70a. For exorcism in Mark, see G. van Oyen, ‘Demons and Exorcisms in the Gospel of Mark’, in N. Vos and W. Otten (eds), Demons and the Devil in Ancient and Medieval Christianity (Leiden, 2011) 99–116. 35  For the Old Testament background of the formula (I Kings 17.18) see O. Bächli, ‘Was habe ich mit Dir zu schaffen? Eine formelhafte Frage im A.T. und N.T.’, Theologische Zeitschrift 33 (1977) 69–80; P. Guillemette, ‘Mc 1,24 est-il une formule de défense magique?’, Science et esprit 30 (1978) 81–96. 34 

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have actually left. So the demons have to make themselves manifest before they can be properly expelled. Not all demons co-operated, however, and in the magical papyri a magician therefore says: ‘I conjure you, every demonic spirit, to tell whatever sort you may be, because I conjure you by the seal which Solomon placed on the tongue of Jeremiah, and he told’.36 For those who persisted in keeping silent, the papyri supply an effective recipe: ‘If you say the Name to a demoniac while putting sulphur and asphalt to his nose, the demon will speak at once and go away’.37 Normal people might have been frightened by the sudden outburst of the demons, but an apostle was of course not so easily impressed. In the case of the possessed house of Antiphanes, Andrew reacted as if there were nothing strange about the situation (nimis de his admirans: AAlat 29). Similarly, after having been invoked by Maximilla in order to heal Alcmanes who was ‘foaming at the mouth’, he entered ‘smiling’ (AA 3). The reader is left in no doubt that our hero will confront the ‘villain’ and convincingly despatch him. But how does he do it? At first, it may seem surprising how unimpressive the actual exorcism sometimes is. In the case of Alcmanes, the apostle just invokes God in a prayer in the characteristic participle style of prayer: ‘O God, who does not hearken to the magicians ... grant now that my request be speedily fulfilled before all these in the slave of Stratocles, putting to flight the demon whom his kinsmen could not drive out’ (AA 5; AAlat 34).38 In the Coptic fragment, he addresses the soldier as follows: ‘It is now fully time for you to come out from this young man, that he may gird himself for the heavenly palace’ (AAco 14). It is rather striking that in these and other cases the demons are not exorcised in the name of Jesus, whereas we have many testimonies that this was common practice among Christians, as both Justin and Origen indicate.39 This striking absence is clearly one more sign of the less orthodox character of these AAA. And when it does happen, as in the APt (11), where Peter exorcises in nomine domini nostri Iesu Christi, we may well suspect an orthodox intrusion in this late translation.40 In other cases, the apostle seems to be less quiet. To the son of Cratinus he speaks increpans: ‘Go away (discede) from the servant of God, you enemy of the human race’ (AAlat 5), and the same verb is used when he expels the demons from the old man and the youth in the swimming pool (AAlat 27). This approach was probably more like real practice, since both Jesus and Apollonius of Tyana, too, were sometimes agitated while exorcising demons and rebuked 36  PGM IV.3037–41; see also Lucian, Lovers of Lies, 16; Theophilos, Autolycus 2.8; ATh 74; Test. Sal. 5.2ff, 13.2. 37  PGM XIII.242–4; note also Josephus, Antiquities 8.47. 38  For the participle style, see E. Norden, Agnostos Theos (Stuttgart, 1912) 166–68. 39 Justin, Dialogue with Tryphon 35; Origen, CC 1.67, 2.33, 3.24, 28. 40  For the date of the Latin translation, see this volume, Chapter  14.3.

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them.41 Also the order ‘discede’ will have been part of traditional Jewish exorcism, since the comparable Greek command ‘exelthe’ is a recurrent term in New Testament exorcism stories and occurs in the magical papyri,42 but is absent from pagan exorcisms.43 Faced with the supernatural power of the apostle, what could a demon do? In the already mentioned exorcism in the AJ (57) the demons ‘immediately came out from them’, just as in the Recognitions (4.7.2) they leave ‘immediately’. In the Coptic fragment of the AA (AAco 14) the demon quietly leaves the young soldier on the order of Andrew and assures him that ‘I have never destroyed a limb of his’. In the case of Alcmanes, the demon uses the term ‘fleeing’: ‘I flee, servant and man of God, I flee not only from this slave, but also from this whole city’, the terminology of actual exorcistic formulae.44 That was not enough for Andrew. He showed the extent of his power by ordering the demon to stay away from wherever the Christians were (AA 5).45 Not all demons were so placid, however. The demon of Cratinus’s son left multo clamitans (AAlat 5), and a soldier even died when the demon left him (AAlat 18). The last example looks like a narrative exaggeration of a traditional theme in exorcism: the demon’s dramatisation of his departure by an act of physical violence. In the APt (11), a leaving demon kicks a statue of the emperor to pieces,46 and in the ATh (46), when a demon departed, ‘fire and smoke were seen there, and all who stood by there were astounded’. The theme is already present in Mark, where evil spirits leave amid loud shouting (1.26, 9.20) or even destroy a herd of swine (5.13). It seems likely that a certain illusionist performance in this respect must have been part of the contemporary exorcist’s trade.47 Naturally, not only did the demon have to demonstrate his departure, but the exorcised persons also had to show that they had been healed. So Alcmanes rose 41 Eitrem, Some Notes, 51–2, who compares Mark 1.43, 2.12 and Philostratus, VA 4.20; add Mark 9.25; Lucian, Lovers of Lies, 16, 31; Philostratus, VA 3.38. Cf. H.C. Kee, ‘The Terminology of Mark’s Exorcism Stories’, NTS 14 (1967–8) 232–46; K. Thraede , ‘Exorzismus’, in RAC 7 (1969) 44–117 at 51 and 66 (many more examples). 42 Mark 1.25, 5.8, 9.25; Acts 16.18; compare also APt 11 (exi); ATh 73, 74 and 77; Cyprian, Ep.  69.15; PGM IV. 1227, 1242–4, 3007ff and V. 158; Thraede, ‘Exorzismus’, 52; D. Jordan and R. Kotansky, ‘A Salomonic Exorcism (Inv. T 3)’, in M. Gronewald et al. (eds), Kölner Papyri, vol.  8 (Opladen, 1997) 53–69. 43  As is observed by Kollmann, Jesus und die Christen, 202. 44  Kotansky, ‘Greek Exorcistic Amulets’, p.  258 ff. 45 For Geisterbannung in general, see O. Weinreich, ‘Gebet und Wunder. Zwei Abhandlungen zur Religions- und Literaturgeschichte’, in Genethliakon. Wilhelm Schmid zum 70. Geburtstag am 24. Febr. 1929 (Stuttgart, 1929) 169–464, reprinted in Weinreich, Religionsgeschichtliche Studien (Stuttgart, 1968) 1–298 at 13 ff. 46  See this volume, Chapter  9.2. 47  For more examples, see Luke 4.41; Test. Sal. 1.12–14, 3.4, 4.1 1; Philostratus, VA 4.20; ATh 44, 75; C. Bonner, ‘The Technique of Exorcism’, HThR 26 (1943) 39–49 and his supplement, ibid., 27 (1944) 334–36; L. Delatte, Un office byzantine d’exorcisme (Brussels, 1957) 30.1, 54.17, 56.16, 84.11, 90.10, 91.6, 92.2 and 21.

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from the floor and sat down with Andrew ‘sound in mind and tranquil and talking normally’ (AA 5). Once again, these aspects have to be seen against the public character of the ritual. Only when everybody has noticed the expulsion of the demon and the recovery of the possessed, he can function again in the community. The last actor in this scenario to be considered is the public. During resurrections, crowds are always prominently present and acclaim the apostle with traditional formulae such as: Magnus art Deus Christus, quem praedicat servus eius Andreas (AAlat 7),48 Non est similis tibi, Domine (AAlat 24) or Non est similis deo Andreae (AAlat 13), the latter exclamation typically being uttered in the theatre.49 But what about exorcisms? The great Gibbon, who called exorcism ‘the awful ceremony’, thought that the ritual was performed in front of many spectators and so led to the ‘conviction of infidels’.50 In the AA and other early Christian writings, however, we notice nothing of this crowd activity. On the contrary, Christian and pagan authors alike stress that the Christians exorcised in a manner as simple as possible. Apparently, Christians wanted at all costs to avoid the dangerous accusation of being magicians, and thus they practised exorcism without the usual hocus pocus of traditional magicians.

3.  The confrontation between the apostle Peter and Simon Magus In the canonical Acts (8.5–25) it is told that in Samaria a magician named Simon tried to buy the magical powers from the apostles, who indignantly rejected his request.51 The episode made Simon into the prototypical magician, used by the Christians as a kind of bogeyman,52 and as such he also features in the APt. 48 For the acclamation ‘Great is ...’, see H.S. Versnel, Ter unus (Leiden, 1990) 194–6; A. Chaniotis, ‘Acclamations as a Form of Religious Communication’, in H. Cancik and J. Rüpke (eds), Die Religion des Imperium Romanum. Koine und Konfrontationen (Tübingen 2009) 199–218; note also AA Mart. pr. 6. 49  For the theatre as the place of performance in later Antiquity, see this volume, Chapter  8 note  72. 50  E. Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. D. Womersley, 3  vols (London, 1995) 1.472 ff. 51  For an excellent discussion, see F. Heintz, Simon “Le Magicien”: Actes 8, 5–25 et l’accusation de magie contre les prophètes thaumaturges dans l’antiquité (Paris, 1997). 52  For Simon Magus, see K. Rudoph, ‘Simon – Magus oder Gnosticus’, Theologische Rundschau 42 (1977) 279–359; M.J. Edwards, ‘Simon Magus, the Bad Samaritan’, in M.J. Edwards and S. Swain (eds), Portraits (Oxford, 1997) 69–91; Heintz, Simon “le Magicien”; R. Hanig, ‘Simon Magus in der Petrusakten und die Theodotianer’, SP 31 (1997) 112–20; T. Adamik, ‘The Image of Simon Magus in the Christian Tradition’, in J.N. Bremmer (ed.), The Apocryphal Acts of Peter (Leuven, 1998) 52–64; A. Schneider and L. Cirillo, Les Reconnaissances du pseudo Clément (Turnhout, 1999) 559–70; G. Theissen, ‘Simon Magus – die Entwicklung seines Bildes vom Charismatiker zum gnostischen Erlöser. Ein Beitrag zur Frühgeschichte der Gnosis’, in A. von Dobbeler et al. (eds), Religionsgeschichte des Neuen Testaments. Fest-

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Towards the end of the fourth century this ‘novel’ was translated by the Mani­ chaeans in North Africa into Latin, together with the other major AAA,53 but only a few fragments of this translation have survived, the largest of which describes the confrontation between the apostle Peter and Simon Magus. The confrontation was very popular in the Middle Ages and in the time of the Reformation, when the victory by Peter was often cited as an example of how people of authority could directly confront magicians and defeat them.54 The APt starts with the call of Peter to Rome after Simon Magus has succeeded in disturbing the Roman congregation. At that time Simon Magus resided in Aricia (4). The reason for this particular place is not explained, but it can hardly be separated from the fact that Aricia had a famous sanctuary of the goddess Diana, the Roman goddess of the moon and later, of magic. In Rome, Simon promises to fly and, indeed, in a somewhat peculiar way he knows to evoke the idea of a flight. In modem stereotypes of witches, flying is of course one of their most famous powers, but this is only a relatively late development, not attested before AD 1428.55 Was it different in Antiquity? The Norwegian papyrologist Sam Eitrem (1872–1966) interpreted the invitation of the devil to Christ to jump down from the temple (Matthew 4.6) as an invitation to fly, but that seems somewhat far-fetched, although he does mention Simon Magus in this connection.56 The first reliable testimony is a mid second-century papyrus with an enumeration of the powers of the magician: ‘... it will stand still; if I order the moon, it will descend;57 if I wish to prevent the day, night will linger schrift für Klaus Berger zum 60. Geburtstag (Tübingen and Basel, 2000) 407–32; J. Zangenberg, ‘Dynamis tou theou. Das religionsgeschichtliche Profil des Simon Magus’, ibidem, 519– 40; D. Côté, Le thème de l’opposition entre Pierre et Simon dans les Pseudo-Clémentines (Paris, 2001); A. Tuzlak, ‘The Magician and the Heretic: The Case of Simon Magus’, in P. Mirecki and M. Meyer (eds), Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World (Leiden, 2002) 416–26; S. Haar, Simon Magus: The First Gnostic? (Berlin, 2003); A. Pourkier, ‘Simon le Mage et les Simoniens chez Epiphane de Salamine’, Ktema 36 (2011) 57–73. 53  See this volume, Chapter  14.2. 54  M. Melero-Moneo, ‘Iconografía de San Pedro y propaganda papal en la pintura gótica: Pedro y Simón el Mago como imagen de la confrontación del papa aviñonés y el anti-papa romano’, Gesta 36 (1997) 107–121; S. Clark, Thinking with Demons (Oxford, 1997) 568–69; E.P. De Loos-Dietz, ‘Traces de l’Antiquité’, Bulletin Antike Beschaving 73 (1998) 153–75 at 159–162. 55  C. Ginzburg, ‘Deciphering the Sabbath’, in B. Ankarloo and G. Henningsen (eds), Early Modern European Witchcraft (New York, 1990) 121–37 at 124. For flying witches in Europe, see E. Pócs, ‘Feenflug und Hexenflug in Mittel-Südosteuropa. Ritus und Mythos, Erlebnis und Bericht’, in D.R. Bauer and W. Bohringer (eds), Fliegen und Schweben (Munich, 1997) 146–67; G. Henningsen, ‘Der Hexenflug und die spanische Inquisitoren – oder: Wie man das Unerklärliche (weg-)erklärt’, ibid., 168–88; W. Tschacher, ‘Der Flug durch die Luft zwischen Illusionstheorie und Realitätsbeweis’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte 116, Kanonistische Abteilung 85 (1999) 225–76. 56  S. Eitrem, ‘Die Versuchung Christi’, Norsk teologisk tidsskrift 25 (1924) 1–37 at 9, 36 (applauded by M. Smith, Jesus the Magician, New York, 1978, 105). 57  For this famous magical trick, see D.E. Hill, ‘The Thessalian Trick’, RhM 116 (1973)

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on for me; and again, if we demand the day, the light will not depart; if I wish to sail the sea, I have no need of a ship; if1 wish to move through the air, I shall become weightless’.58 The magician in Lucian’s Lovers of Lies can perform resurrections (below) and also fly. As the Peripatetic Cleodemus tells us, ‘I saw him soar through the air in broad daylight and walk on water and go through fire lightly’ (13). Cleodemus adds that he even wore Hyperborean shoes, which confirmed his Northern origin. One may wonder whether this flying magician had to come from the North, since another famous miracle worker from Antiquity who was credited with flying on an arrow, Abaris, also came from the Hyperboreans.59 More or less contemporaneously is the example from Apuleius, although it is somewhat different from Simon Magus. The slave girl friend of the first-person raconteur Lucius tells him that her mistress ‘intended to feather herself as a bird and fly away’. To this end the witch took off her clothes and anointed herself from ‘the tips of her toenails to the top of her hair. After a long, secret (!) conversation with her lamp she began to shake her limbs in a quivering tremor’. Eventually, she turns into an owl. ‘So she let out a plaintive screech and began testing herself by jumping off the ground a little at the time. Soon she soared aloft and flew out of the house on full wing’. 60 The transformation of a witch into a bird already occurs in Ovid and seems to be an older motif. 61 However, it is not as powerful a feat as flying in human form. Apparently, the claims of contemporary magicians surpassed those of the witches of old. In the Recognitions (2.9, varied in 3.47, 57), flying is part of a list of magical feats Simon Magus claims to be able to perform such as being able to disappear and reappear, pass through mountains, untie himself when tightly bound, make statues come alive and throw himself unhurt into a fire. Finally, flying occurs in the magical papyri, where a demon parhedros, ‘the only lord of the air’, will help his magician ‘to carry you [into] the air, and again hurl you into the billows of 222–38; S. Lunais, Recherches sur la lune, vol.  1 (Leiden, 1979) 225–33; B. Marzullo, ‘Aristoph. Nub. 749–755’, Museum Criticum 21–22 (1986–87) 153–76; Gordon, ‘Imagining Greek and Roman Magic’, 223–24; M. Schmidt, ‘Sorceresses’, in E. Reeder (ed.), Pandora (Baltimore, 1995) 57–62 at 61; N. Villagra Hidalgo, ‘Tesalias: brujas ciegas, cojas y sin hijos’, in E. Suárez de la Torre and A. Pérez Jiménez (eds), Mito y Magia en Grecia y Roma (Barcelona, 2013) 69–76. 58  PGM XXXIV.3–7, re-edited by S. Stephens and J. Winkler, Ancient Greek Novels. The Fragments (Princeton, 1995) 173–78 and A. Stramaglia, ‘Il soprannaturale nella narrativa greco-latina: testimonianze papirologiche’, in Hofmann and Zimmerman, Groningen Colloquia on the Novel IX, 29–60 at 39–45. 59  See Heraclides Ponticus F 51c Wehrli 2 for the first mention of the flying Abaris. Earlier sources only mention that he carried the arrow in his hand, cf. J.N. Bremmer, The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife (London and New York, 2002) 33. 60 Apuleius, Met. 3.21, transl. Hanson; note also 2.20, 22. 61 Ovid, Am. 1.8.13–4, F 6.141–2, Met. 15.356–60 (Hyperborean males and Scythian women); Petronius 63; Festus 414L; F. Pfister, ‘Wasser- und Feuertaufe’, Würzburger Jahrbücher für die Altertumswissenschaft 3 (1948) 271–74.

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the sea’s current and into the waves of the sea’;62 incidentally, similar powers were also attributed to late antique monks, since the Egyptian Patermouthios was reputed to have moved through the air.63 With his feat Simon managed to rouse the necessary opposition to Paul who was called a ‘sorcerer’ and ‘deceiver’ (4: magus, planus). 64 In order to counter this bad influence, Peter travelled to Rome and challenged Simon in the house of the senator Marcellus, a great benefactor of the Christians (8). The passage is an interesting, albeit fictitious, testimony to the presence of magicians in the houses of the Greco-Roman elite. 65 Here Simon is chased away by a dog (9).66 After this first triumph, Peter resurrects a dried fish (13). A fish is a somewhat curious object of apostolic attention, but from a literary point of view this first resurrection whets the appetite of the reader, whose curiosity is now raised as to what further miracles Peter will perform. 67 Subsequently Simon is struck dumb by an infant (15); in other words, he has been defeated by categories he should have easily defeated himself if he had possessed any real powers. Moreover, Peter also mentions that in Palestine Simon had attempted to deceive an honest woman, Eubola, with magic incantations, magico carmine, but, after being prevented by Peter from doing so, he had disappeared from Palestine (17). From a narrative point of view, this scene, which is related in great detail, helps to raise the expectations of the reader that Peter will also succeed in defeating Simon in the decisive confrontation. It also indicates that from a moral point of view Simon does not score very highly. The negative manner in which Simon is depicted in the APt has recently been well studied from various perspectives. 68 We may perhaps add one detail which has not yet received the attention it deserves. When Simon comes on stage for the very first time, ‘he spoke to the people voce gracili’ (4), and the low quality of his voice is also remarked upon by the speaking dog, who mentions Simon’s vocem tuam infinnem et inutilem (12). In the first centuries of the Christian era, the voice played an important role in the self-fashioning of the sophists.69 Ac62 

PGM I.191–219. Historia monachorum X.20. 64  For the designation planus, from Greek planos, ‘wanderer, impostor, sorcerer’, see Dickie, Magic and Magicians, 75, 225. 65  Many examples in Dickie, Magic and Magicians, 193–201. 66  For the episode, see J.E. Spittler, Animals in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles (Tübingen, 2008) 141–45. 67 This does not exclude the possibility that the fish also refers to the resurrection of Christ, as argued by E. Norelli, ‘Sur les Actes de Pierre: À propos d’un livre récent’, Apocrypha 11 (2000) 227–58 at 230–31; but see also Spittler, Animals, 148–54; this volume, Chapter  9.2. 68  See G. Luttikhuizen, ‘Simon Magus as a Narrative Figure’, and I. Czachesz, ‘Who is Deviant? Entering the Story-World of the Acts of Peter’, in Bremmer, Acts of Peter, 39–51 and 84–96, respectively. 69  See M. Gleason, Making Men (Princeton, 1995); A. Rousselle, La contamination spirit63 

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cordingly, physiognomists paid much attention to the quality of the voice. Adamantius tells us the kosmios male speaks with a ‘heavy’ voice (2.49) and the so-called Anonymous Latin Physiognomist points out that the voice of a timid man is mollis (91). Simon’s voice, then, is one more indication to the reader that Peter’s opponent is not only dishonest, he is not even a ‘real’ man at all! The ‘shoot-out’ between the apostle Peter and Simon Magus takes place on the Forum Iulium, which had been built by Caesar for the purposes of public, often legal business and not as a market.70 We are at the heart of the capital, in front of the cream of Roman society, senatores et praefecti et officia (23). The place is interesting, since today we think of the magician as performing in private. However, in the first centuries of our era this certainly was not the case. In that period, magic was openly performed in theatres, crossroads, temple precincts and public squares. It is only towards the end of Antiquity that theurgists and magicians started to opt for secrecy.71 At the Forum, Peter challenges Simon to do something that he will undo. The prefect of the city, who wants to look impartial, gives one of his slaves to Simon to be killed and, presumably, resurrected. Simon speaks into the slave’s ear and he dies. We are not told what he said, so we must presume that he whispered as befitted a magician (25).72 Similarly, the Jewish author Artapanus tells how by whispering into his ear Moses caused the Pharaoh to fall mute on the ground, only to be later revived again.73 In the famous fourth-century Paris magical papyrus the formula to cause a trance has to be said seven times into the ear in order to let a man or little boy fall into trance.74 In the fifth-century Actus Silvestri (II.1035–7), the magician Zambri (= Jambres) even kills an ox by whispering the name of God into its ear;75 as the author probably knew the APt,76 the uelle. Science, droit et religion dans l’Antiquité (Paris, 1998) 87–114 (‘Parole et inspiration. Le travail de la voix dans le monde romain’). 70 Appian, BC 2.102; see most recently S. Rizzo, ‘Forum Iulium’, in E.M. Steinby (ed.), Lexicon topographicum urbis Romae V (Rome, 1999) 257–58; M. Maiuro, ‘What was the Forum Iulium Used for? The Fiscus and its Jurisdiction in First-Century CE Rome’, in F. De Angelis (ed.), Spaces of Justice in the Roman Empire (Leiden, 2010) 189–221. 71 Hopfner, Griechisch-Ägyptische Offenbarungszauber, 2. §  47, 51, 150–3 and ‘Mageia’, in RE 4.1 (1928) 391–93; A. Scobie, Apuleius and Folklore (London, 1983) 53 notes 62–63; D ­ ickie, Magic and Magicians, 233–36. 72  For the bibliography, see this volume, Chapter  12, note  29. 73 Artapanus FGrH 726 F 3 (= Clemens, Strom. 1.154.2; Eusebius, PE 9.27). For Moses and magic, see J. Gager, ‘Moses the Magician. Hero of an Ancient Counter Culture?’, Helios 21 (1994) 179–88; S,B, Noegel, ‘Moses and Magic: Notes on the Book of Exodus’, Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 24 (1996) 45–59; R. Bloch, ‘Mose und die Scharlatane’, in F. Siegert and J.U. Kalms (eds), Internationales Josephus-Kolloquium Bruxelles 1998 (Münster, 1999) 142–57. 74  PGM IV.909–10; note also Heliodorus, Aeth. 6.14, 21, 65; Test. Sal. 18.21; PGM XIII.248. 75 I follow the line numbering in the text of P. de Leo, Ricerche su falsi medioevali, 2  vols (Reggio Calabria, 1974) 1.151–221. For the date, see G. Fowden, ‘The Last Days of Constantine: Oppositional Versions and their Influence’, JRS 84 (1994) 146–70 at154 ff. 76  E. Bammel, Judaica et Paulina (Tübingen, 1997) 82 ff.

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scene may well have been inspired by our Acts. In fact, examples of whispering formulae into the ears of children used as mediums are still well-attested in Greek and Jewish texts in early modem times.77 Our curiosity about the reaction of Peter is momentarily left unsatisfied, since at the very moment of the slave’s death a widow intervenes and asks Peter to resurrect her only son, who has just died (25). From a narrative point of view, the widow’s interruption raises the suspense, since, for a moment, we are left wondering whether Peter will perform more than one resurrection.78 However, the impatient prefect adds urgency to his case by mentioning that the slave just killed is also a favourite of the emperor (26). It is interesting that Peter does not resurrect the slave himself but asks the prefect to do it for him by holding the slave’s right hand. This the prefect does and the slave regains his life. Still, this was only a slave, and it is perhaps significant that the author lets the praefectus urbi resurrect a slave, whereas he reserves the resurrection of a free man for the apostle. An indirect resurrection is a typical trait of the AAA. Three times John empowers a person for a resurrection (AJ 24, 47, 82–3), Paul does it once (AP 26), as does Thomas (ATh 53–4). This indirect resurrection seems to be a typically Christian feature, which demonstrates the great power of the apostles. After this indirect resurrection, the apostle immediately resurrects the son of the widow as if not wanting to leave any doubt about his own capacities. In addition, he also carefully imitates Christ, whose words to the paralytic he uses when addressing the widow’s son: ‘rise up and walk’ (27). However, it is only the third resurrection that will be the scene for the great confrontation – not about a slave, not about the son of a widow, but about the son of a senator. Immediately after the first two resurrections, when the crowd is still present in the Forum, the mother of a young senator arrives and asks Peter to resurrect her son who is being taken to his grave in a typically Roman funeral procession. Peter then challenges Simon to resurrect the boy and asks the Roman audience to believe that he is a magus if he is unable to do so. Simon accepts the challenge and ‘went to the dead man’s head, and stooped down three times and stood up three times and showed the people that (the dead man) had raised his head and was moving, opening his eyes and bowing towards Simon’. Impressed by this feat the Roman populace wants to burn Peter, but the apostle points to the only partial success of Simon and ironically asks the boy to get up if he is alive and to remove the wrappings from his chin and call for his mother. These words are

77  S. Daiches, Babylonian Oil Magic in the Talmud and in the Later Jewish Literature (London, 1913) 15; T. Hopfner, ‘Mittel- und neugriechische Lekano-, Lychno-, Katoptround Onychomantien’, in Studies Presented to F.Ll. Griffith, 218–32 at 227. 78  C. Thomas, ‘Revivifying Resurrection Accounts’, in Bremmer, Acts of Peter, 65–83 at 76.

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enough for the prefect to push Simon away with his own hands. Peter resurrects the boy by a mere touch and Simon withdraws in shame (28).79 Resurrection is attested for ancient magicians as well as Christians. Our first example is the sophist Favorinus (ca. AD 85–155), who lived during the reign of the Emperor Hadrian. His embittered opponent Polemon tells us that he was a charlatan in the magic arts. He induced people to believe that he could confer life and death, and because of this enticed men and women to gather round him in crowds. He made men believe that he could compel women to pursue men the way men pursue women, using a hidden voice to make himself credible. He was a master of evil doing, and made a practice of collecting lethal poisons, which he secretly offered for sale.80

Clearly, Favorinus was accused of poisoning, performing love magic and of being able to kill people, as Simon did, and to revive them. Unfortunately, we do not hear anything about how he did these things, but for Polemon it was apparently not unusual that a magician claimed to have mastered the art of reviving people. Resurrection also features shortly in the enumeration of the powers of a Hyperborean magician in Lucian’s Lovers of Lies (13), whose feats comprise ‘sending Cupids after people, conjuring up demons, calling mouldy corpses to life, making Hecate herself appear in plain sight, and pulling down the moon’. This man is clearly a master magician, since the others only resurrect recently deceased persons, not those mouldering in their graves. In fact, already in the Gospel of John (11.39) the sister of Lazarus doubts the possibility of resurrecting her brother, ‘for he has been dead four days’.81 Resurrection must have been a theme of interest in Lucian’s time, since in his Alexander or the False Prophet he relates that Alexander’s Oracle had sent out ‘missionaries’ to spread the fame of the Oracle by including in its memorable feats that ‘it had resurrected some who had already died’ (24). 82 In fact, in his Peregrinus, Lucian observes regarding the Christians that ‘the poor creatures have convinced themselves that they will be completely immortal and live for all time’ (13). Here Lucian is almost certainly referring to the resurrection. 83

79  For the Christian origin of the ‘mere touch’, see P.J. Lalleman, ‘Healing by a Mere Touch as a Christian Concept’, Tyndale Bulletin 48 (1997) 355–61. 80 Polemo, De physiognomonia, pp.  160–164, ed. Forster, transl. Gleason, Making Men, 7. For Polemon’s work, see S. Swain (ed.), “Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul”: Polemon’s Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam (Oxford, 2007). 81  This resurrection is also quoted in a fifth sixth-century Coptic healing amulet as proof of Christ’s healing powers, cf. PGM XI.227. 82  For this fascinating treatise, see U. Victor, Lukian von Samosata, Alexandros oder der Lügenprophet (Leiden, 1997). 83  I follow V. Schmidt, ‘Lukian über die Auferstehung der Toten’, VigChris 49 (1995) 388– 92; for Peregrinus, see this volume, Chapter  5.

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We are better informed about Apollonius of Tyana. In his biography (4.49), Philostratus relates that a girl had died just in the hour of her marriage, a typically melodramatic touch. When she was carried to her grave, the groom followed the bier and ‘the whole of Rome was mourning with him, for the maiden belonged to a family of consular rank’. Philostratus has transferred here to Rome the typical mourning scenes for prominent members of Greek society, which are so well attested for the period in inscriptions and the ancient novel. 84 Apollonius stops the bier and ‘merely touching her and saying some- thing secretly (whispering?) over her, woke up the maiden from her apparent death; and the girl spoke out loud, and returned to her father’s house’. We see here a resurrection very similar to that of Peter, but Apollonius cannot do it by a mere touch. He has to use some kind of magic formula.85 Resurrection also occurs in the magical papyri. In the so-called Eighth Book of Moses, which became incorporated in a fourth-century papyrus,86 we find the following instruction for a magician who wants to resurrect a dead body: ‘I conjure you, spirit coming in air, enter, inspire, empower, resurrect by the power of the eternal god, this body; and let it walk about in this place, for I am he who acts with the power of Thayth, the holy god. Say the Name’ (PGM XIII.279–82). The most interesting parallel, however, comes from Apuleius’s Metamorphoses (2.27–30), a scene that is a mixture of resurrection and necromancy. Once again we are faced with a funeral procession, once again a member of a leading family, but this time a young man. His maternal uncle accuses his wife of having poisoned him and has employed the already mentioned Egyptian prophet Zat­ chlas (§ I), who ‘has contracted with me for a great price to bring my nephew’s spirit back from the dead for a brief time and reanimate his body as it was before his death’. The prophet ‘placed a certain little herb on the corpse’s mouth and another on its chest. Then he turned to the east and silently invoked the rising power of the majestic Sun’ (2.28). As is often argued, the herb on the mouth perhaps evokes the well-known Egyptian ritual of the opening of the mouth,87

84  R. van Bremen, The Limits of Participation (Amsterdam, 1996) 156–63, where this example has to be added; note also the funerals in Apuleius, Met. 8.6, 9.30, which may well depend on Apuleius’s Greek model, which was probably written around AD 170 in southern Asia Minor, cf. Bremmer, ‘The Novel and the Apocryphal Acts: Place, Time and Readership’, in Hofmann and Zimmerman, Groningen Colloquia on the Novel IX, 168–171. 85  For the scene, see also E. Koskenniemi, Apollonius von Tyana in der neutestamentlichen Exegese (Tübingen, 1994) 193–98; G. Bowersock, Fiction as History (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1994) 109 ff. For Apollonius and resurrection, note the often overlooked mention in Historia Augusta, Vita Aureliani 24.3.8. 86  For the development, see M. Smith, Studies in the Cult of Yahweh, ed. S.J.D. Cohen, 2  vols (Leiden, 1996) 1.217–26. 87  H.W. Fischer-Elfert, Die Vision von der Statue im Stein (Heidelberg, 1998).

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but the herb is typical of Greco-Roman magic, 88 as is the silent prayer. His ritual preparations have effect and the young man duly reveals his wife to be the murderer. However, the young man stresses that he returns only ad momenta­ riae vitae officia (2.29). Apparently, magic can bring about only a temporary resurrection not lasting life. A clever magician could probably effect such resurrections by conjuring tricks and ventriloquism.89 In fact, there is often only a fine dividing line between ancient magicians and modern-day illusionists. Considering that pagan resurrections become visible only in the second century, Christian influence seems most probable. It is noteworthy that in the Christian Middle Ages resurrection had virtually disappeared from the magicians’ handbooks: it was now only the Antichrist who would perform such an impressive miracle.90 After his earlier failure Simon tries to make up by letting the lame walk, the blind see, and dead people move, if only for a short time (!). When Peter follows him and every time exposes his feats for the trickery they are, he finally promises that he will fly up to his Father (31). The next day Simon indeed ‘was carried up into the air, and everyone saw him all over Rome, passing over its temples and its hills’. It is only after a prayer by Peter to Christ that he falls down and breaks his leg; after an unsuccessful operation he dies shortly after (32).

4. Conclusions It is time to draw some conclusions. Firstly, our survey has demonstrated that the AAA are an important, if neglected, source for ancient magic. It is indeed striking how many details the authors know to relate, just like their pagan contemporaries Lucian and Apuleius. In modem times, magic is normally connected with secrecy, but, as we noted, this was different in antiquity where magicians preferred publicity. The names of Lucian and Apuleius also show that the 88 Lucan 6.681–84; Pliny, NH 25.5.14; Nonnos, D. 25.529–31, 539–542; Hopfner, Griechisch-Ägyptischer Offenbarungszauber, 2 §  352. 89  For ancient ventriloquism, see J. Katz and K. Volk, ‘“Mere bellies”? A New Look at Theogony 26–8’, JHS 120 (2000) 122–31; S. Torallas Tovar and A. Maravela-Solbakk, ‘Between Necromancers and Ventriloquists: The έγγαστρίμυθοι in the Septuaginta’, Sefarad 61 (2001) 419–38; Dickie, Magic and Magicians, 238ff; K. Cooper, ‘Ventriloquism and the Miraculous: Conversion, Preaching, and the Martyr Exemplum in Late Antiquity’, in eadem and J. Gregory (eds), Signs, Wonders, Miracles: Representations of Divine Power in the Life of the Church (Woodbridge, 2005) 22–45. For a modem parallel, see L.E. Schmidt, ‘From Demon Possession to Magic Show: Ventriloquism, Religion, and the Enlightenment’, Church History 67 (1998) 274–304. 90  L.U. Lucken, Antichrist and the Prophets of Antichrist in the Chester Cycle (Washington, 1940) 63–65; N. Caciola, ‘Wraiths, Revenants and Ritual in Medieval Culture’, Past & Present 152 (1996) 3–45 at 41–44; R. Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites. A Necromancer’s Manual of the Fifteenth Century (Stroud, 1997) 61–64.

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AAA typically belong to the later second and the beginning of the third centuries, when magic apparently was of the greatest interest to the public, from high to low.91 During the Christian empire, magic was marginalised and driven underground,92 although, of course, it never disappeared.93 Secondly, this great pagan interest shows that the Christians were confronted with the problem of how to differentiate themselves with their miracles from their pagan competitors. That is why our sources stress that the apostles perform their miracles without any hocus pocus and often in modest company. That is also why in the AA (4) magicians are shown up in a bad light and proved to be ineffective, and why accusations of magic are immediately refuted (AAlat 18; Martyrium prim. 3–4). On the other hand, even the pagan saint Apollonius of Tyana still has to whisper some words to be effective, just as the Egyptian prophet has to use herbs and a silent, i.e. magical, prayer to the Sun. Moreover, Christian miracles are performed for the improvement of life and soul. That is why Peter enters into a confrontation over the resurrection but does not attempt to impress the Romans by demonstrating that he can also fly. To do so would have been to lower himself to the performance of a trick and thus to equate himself to a magician. Between resurrecting and flying there is an important qualitative difference. Thirdly, it is typical of the AAA that the confrontation takes place mainly on a narrative level, but virtually never on the level of intellectual argument. The case for the Christian miracles is argued only once with an appeal to the fulfilment by prophecy (APt 23–24), whereas this is a stock argument in the Christian apologists.94 Finally, in the short period between the birth of Christianity and the arrival of Constantine and the Christian Empire magic and miracle were strong competitors for attention. After their rise to power the Christians could eliminate the ‘competition’. That is why later Christian literature does not demonstrate the same interest in magic as the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles.95

91  For magic in Apuleius, see especially W. Fauth, ‘Magie und Mysterium in den Metamorphosen des Apuleius’, JAC, Suppl. 28 (1998) 131–44. 92  It is interesting to note that also Manichaeism strongly opposed magic, see P. Mirecki, ‘Manichaean Allusions to Ritual and Magic: Spells for Invisibility in the Coptic Kephalaia’, in id. and J. Beduhn (eds), The Light and Darkness. Studies in Manichaeism and its World (Leiden, 2001) 173–80. 93  For example, H. Maguire (ed.), Byzantine Magic (Washington DC, 1995). 94  F.C.R. Thee, Julius Africanus and the Early Christian View of Magic (Tübingen, 1974) passim; H. Remus, Pagan-Christian Conflict over Miracle in the Second Century (Cambridge MA, 1983) 52–72; J. Kelhoffer, Miracle and Mission (Tübingen, 2000). 95 For information and comments on the various versions I would like to thank Ton Hilhorst and Sarah Johnston. Michael Maas thoughtfully corrected my English.

Chapter 14

The Apocryphal Acts: Authors, Place, Time and Readership It seems appropriate to conclude our study of the major Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles (AAA) with a new discussion of their authors, time, place of composition and readership. The following analysis hopes to demonstrate that such a discussion is especially fruitful when carried out in dialogue with students of the ancient novel. The idea is not new, since in 1932 Rosa Söder (1903–1991) already pointed to a number of similarities between the ancient novel and the AAA.1 However, later students of the novel have not displayed the same interest. Tomas Hägg (1938–2011) and Niklas Holzberg pay some attention to the AAA in their well known introductions to the ancient novel, but they are clearly happy to pass on to more congenial subjects.2 In the 1990s, the three collections by Jim Tatum, John Morgan and Richard Stoneman, and Gareth Schmeling contained between them only three, not always satisfactory contributions on the AAA.3 It was only Kate Cooper, in The Virgin and the Bride, who once again discussed both the ancient novel and the AAA as manifestations of the same literary genre.4 Yet a comparison between the AAA and the ancient novel can still be rewarding as we hope to show in the following discussion of the authorship (§  1), chronology and place of composition (§  2), and readership (§  3) of the AAA.

1.  Authorship, text and message What can we say about the authors of the ancient novel and the AAA? In an important study of the sociology, production and reception of the ancient novel, 1  R. Söder, Die apokryphen Apostelgeschichten und die romanhafte Literatur der Antike (Stuttgart, 1932; repr. Darmstadt, 1969); note also the review by K. Kerényi, Gnomon 10 (1934) 301–09. 2  T. Hägg, The Novel in Antiquity (Oxford, 1983) 154–64; N. Holzberg, The Ancient Novel. An Introduction (London, 1995) 22–26. 3  J. Perkins, ‘The Social World of the Acts of Peter’, in J. Tatum (ed.), The Search for the Ancient Novel (Baltimore and London, 1994) 296–307, repr. in her The Suffering Self (London, 1995) 124–41, 223–24; R. Pervo, ‘Early Christian Fiction’, in J. Morgan and R. Stoneman (eds), Greek Fiction (London, 1994) 239–54 and ‘The Ancient Novel Becomes Christian’, in G. Schmeling (ed.), The Novel in the Ancient World (Leiden, 1996) 685–711. 4  K. Cooper, The Virgin and the Bride (Cambridge MA, 1996).

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John Morgan has observed that the few references to the novel in ancient literature are not very complimentary. Typical is the Emperor Julian’s commentary that ‘as for those fictions in the form of history that have been narrated alongside events of the past, we should renounce them, love stories and all that sort of stuff’ (Epist. 89.301b, tr. Morgan). Morgan persuasively concludes from these and similar comments that it is likely that ‘the whole exercise of writing and reading novels was somewhat ambiguous, even ever so slightly illicit’.5 He draws no further consequences from his conclusion, but it fits his characterisation that until now it has been impossible to demonstrate that one author has written more than one novel. It very much looks as if the novel was a one-time only affair, which the author did not want to repeat. This impression is supported by the AAA, each of which seems to have been written by a separate author. It also may explain the relative obscurity of the authors of the novel, about whom we mostly know very little, often next to nothing, apart from the information supplied by the novels themselves. Even Tertullian, who possessed detailed information about the author of the Acts of Paul (§  3), does not mention any name. This relative anonymity of the author may be partly responsible for a striking characteristic of the text of the novel and the AAA. Papyri and the study of manuscript traditions have shown that the texts of various novels, in particular those of the Alexander Romance and Joseph and Asenath, display a surprising fluidity in variants and scenes. The same situation, even more pronounced, can be found among the AAA. The martyrdom of the apostles soon started to circulate independently, large interpolations occurred within decades, and later authors recycled portions of the text into new stories about apostles or other saints. To a certain extent one may perhaps compare the ‘translation’ by Apuleius of his Greek model, the Metamorphoseis of ‘Lucius of Patrai’. Apuleius not only happily inserts stories, like the famous Amor and Psyche, new episodes and typically Roman details, but in numerous passages he also makes many small changes. Such fluidity was not the case with every ancient text. Alexandrian philologists protected prominent literary authors, and the texts of important philosophers, like Plato and Aristotle, were initially zealously guarded by their followers. The Hebrew text of the Old Testament, another one-time pluriform text as the Dead Sea scrolls have shown, was even declared sacrosanct, as soon as the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed and the priests who had always preserved some kind of fixity of the text had disappeared.6 Admittedly, the textual fluidity of some novels and the AAA cannot be ascribed only to the anonymity 5  J. Morgan, ‘The Greek Novel. Towards a Sociology of Production and Reception’, in A. Powell (ed.), The Greek World (London, 1995) 130–52. 6  A.S. van der Woude, ‘Pluriformity and Uniformity. Reflections on the Transmission of the Text of the Old Testament’, in J.N. Bremmer and F. García Martínez (eds), Sacred History and Sacred Texts in Early Judaism. A Symposium in Honour of A.S. van der Woude (Kampen, 1992) 151–69.

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of the authors: the enormous popularity of some texts must have played a role as well. On the other hand, novels were no bestsellers, and the anonymity of the authors may thus have been a contributing factor to the fluidity of their texts.7 If Erwin Rohde (1845–1898) in his classic study still depreciated the novel, in the late 1920s the Hungarian Karl Kerényi (1897–1973) postulated a connection between the novel and religion, especially Egyptian religion. 8 Kerényi dedicated his book to the memory of Franz Boll (1867–1924), a learned classicist, who had analysed the last book of the New Testament, Revelation.9 The ancient novels, however, are no apocalypses, books par excellence to be decoded, and Kerényi’s approach was immediately rejected by Arthur Darby Nock (1902– 1963).10 This connection with religion became even more strongly argued by Reinhold Merkelbach (1918–2006), who suggested that the true sense of the novels was accessible only to initiates of the mysteries, but his approach has been equally generally rejected.11 Even if the specific theses of Kerényi and Merkelbach are not accepted, the importance of religion in the novels cannot be denied. Can it be that this religious element had made it easier for the authors of the AAA to model their writings partly on the novel? I find it hard to answer the question, but at least it has to be raised.

2.  The chronology and place of origin of the AAA The authoritative translation of the New Testament apocrypha suggests the following dates and places of composition regarding the five major AAA: the Acts of Andrew (AA) were published in perhaps Alexandria about AD 150, the Acts 7  For this fluidity, see the excellent observations of C. Thomas, ‘Stories without Texts and without Authors: The Problem of Fluidity in Ancient Novelistic Texts and Early Christian Literature’, in R. Hock et al. (eds), New Perspectives on Ancient Fiction and the New Testament (Atlanta, 1998) 273–91. 8  K. Kerényi, Die griechisch-orientalische Romanliteratur in religions-geschichtlicher Beleuchtung. Ein Versuch, 19271 (Darmstadt, 19622) ‘mit Nachbetrachtungen’. For Kerényi, see A. Henrichs, ‘Der antike Roman. Kerényi und die Folgen’, in R. Schlesier and R.S. Martínez (eds), Neuhumanismus und Anthropologie des griechischen Mythos. Karl Kerényi im europäi­ schen Kontext des 20. Jahrhunderts (Locarno, 2006) 57–70. 9  F. Boll, Aus der Offenbarung Johannis (Leipzig and Berlin, 1914; repr. Amsterdam, 1967). For Boll, see the obituary by A Rehm, Biographisches Jahrbuch für Altertumskunde 47 (1927) 13–43, 111. 10  A.D. Nock, Essays on Religion and the Ancient World, ed. Z. Stewart, 2  vols (Oxford, 1972) 1.169–175 (= Gnomon 4, 1928, 485–92). For Nock, see this volume, Chapter  12, introduction. 11  R. Merkelbach, Roman und Mysterium in der Antike (Munich, 1962) repeated in his Isis regina - Zeus Sarapis (Stuttgart, 1995) 335–484. His thesis was rejected by Kerényi, Der antike Roman (Darmstadt, 1971) 9 (‘all zu vereinfachte Vorstellung’). On Merkelbach, see W.D. ­Lebek, ‘Nachruf auf Reinhold Merkelbach’, Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Jahrbuch, 2007, 166–79.

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of Peter (APt) perhaps in Rome in the decade 180–190, the Acts of Paul (AP) in Asia Minor in the period between 185 and 195, the Acts of John (AJ) in East Syria in the first half of the third century, and the Acts of Thomas (ATh) also in East Syria at the beginning of the third century.12 Unfortunately, it is not easy to reach a satisfactory relative, let alone absolute, chronology of the AAA, as we have clear indications for an absolute chronology only in few cases. Tertullian comments on the AP around AD 200, and the mention of Falconilla, the daughter of Queen Tryphaena in the AP, supplies a terminus post quem of about AD 170. This rare name is most likely derived from Pompeia Sosia Falconilla, the wife of the Roman consul of AD 163 (M. Pontius Laelianus), who is known from various contemporary inscriptions.13 Moreover, both the interest of the ATh in India and the clear influence by Bardaisan point to a time of composition in the 220s or 230s.14 Finally, the AJ must have been written in the second half of the second century, witness its pre-Valentinian Gnostic tendency and specific docetic Christology.15 A second approach to the chronology is the study of the dependence of individual AAA on the ancient novel. Although none of the AAA has come down to us in its original form, the AJ and AP seem to have been closest to the ancient novel, since they have protagonists from the social elite, in addition to the traditional motifs outlined below (§  3). However, this proximity in motifs does not help us to determine their exact place in time, except for a belonging to the second half of the century. In addition to these limited indications, we can also look at the mutual interdependency of the AAA, since they regularly display signs of intertextuality, just like the ancient novels.16 It is clear that great care is required in this respect, since mistakes made in determining the dependency of one novel on another have been spectacular. One only needs to read again the relevant pages in Rohde’s pioneering work on the novel in order to see that arguments can be often used either way.17 Given that the AJ was probably the oldest of the AAA and the AA is closely related to the AJ, it seems reasonable to locate these two in the 160s and /or 170s. It fits this date that the AA is theologically related to the Syrian Tatian and opposes military service, an opposition that in Christian circles only becomes manifest in the late second century.18 However, we can be reasonably 12 See NTA 2.114–5 (AA: J.-M. Prieur and W. Schneemelcher), 166–7 (AJ: K. Schäferdiek), 234–5 (AP: W. Schneemelcher), 283 (APt: W. Schneemelcher) and 323 (ATh: H.J.W. Drijvers). 13  See this volume, Chapter  10.3. 14  See this volume, Chapter  11, Introduction. 15  P.J. Lalleman, The Acts of John: a two-stage initiation into Johannine Gnosticism (Leuven, 1998) 270; this volume, Chapter  7, Appendix. 16  S. Stephens, ‘Fragments of Lost Novels’, in Schmeling, The Novel, 655–83 at 683 stresses this aspect of the pagan novel. 17  E. Rohde, Der Griechische Roman und seine Vorläufer (Berlin, 19143). 18  See this volume, Chapter  8 , Introduction.

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certain that the APt has used the AJ,19 but is older than the AP, given the latter’s less successful version of the famous Quo vadis? scene.20 This suggests a somewhat later period for the APt, which was probably written in the 170s or 180s. Thus we may infer the following order: AJ, AA, APt, AP and ATh within a period stretching from about AD 160–230. Some parts of the original APt, the AA and, via a later Irish translation, of the AJ have been preserved only because of a Latin translation of the major five Acts. Can we say when this translation was made? The best evidence for determining the date of a text is often an institutional detail.21 In this case, too, there is a passage in the Latin translation of the APt that has not yet received the interest it deserves. When a demon had kicked a marble statue in his atrium to pieces, the senator Marcellus called out: Magnum flagitium factum est: si enim hoc innotuerit Caesari per aliquem de curiosis, magnis poenis nos adfliget (11). Schneemelcher translates as follows: ‘A great crime has been committed; if Caesar hears of this through some busybody, he will punish us severely’.22 However, his translation overlooks the fact that the curiosi were not ‘busybodies’, but a nickname for the agentes in rebus, a kind of imperial secret police.23 It is only from AD 359 onwards that they reported directly to the emperor and, therefore, became feared as spies.24 Consequently, the APt was translated into Latin after that date. Indeed, knowledge of the Latin translation is not attested before St Augustine’s Contra Adimantum (17) of AD 394 and its adoption in Priscillianist

19  E. Junod and J.-D. Kaestli, Acta Iohannis, 2  vols (Turnhout, 1983) 2.698; P.J. Lalleman, ‘The Relation between the Acts of John and the Acts of Peter’, in J.N. Bremmer (ed.), The Apocryphal Acts of Peter: Magic, Miracles and Gnosticism (Leuven, 1998) 161–77. 20  R.F. Stoops, Jr., ‘The Acts of Peter in Intertextual Context’, Semeia 80 (1997) 57–86 (with additional arguments); C. Thomas, The Acts of Peter, Gospel Literature, and the Ancient Novel: Rewriting the Past (Oxford, 2003) 37–39; J. Spittler, Animals in the Apocryphal Acts (Tübingen, 2008) 146–48; O. Zwierlein, Petrus in Rom (Berlin and Boston, 20102) 37–39, 82– 85, 116 and Petrus und Paulus in Jerusalem und Rom (Berlin and Boston, 2013) 214–18. 21  For another example from Late Antiquity, see my dating of the vision of Dorotheüs: ‘An Imperial Palace Guard in Heaven: The Date of the Vision of Dorotheüs’, ZPE 75 (1987) 82–88, reprinted in my The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife (London and New York, 2002) Appendix 3. 22  W. Schneemelcher, in NTA 2.297. 23  As was pointed out by T. Pekáry, Das römische Kaiserbildnis (Berlin, 1985) 139 note  66. 24  Cod. Theod. VI.29.1,4; VIII.5.50, cf. A.H.M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 284–602: a social, economic and administrative survey, 3  vols (Oxford 1964) 2.578–80; J. Triantaphylopoulos, ‘Kouríosos (P. Vindob. Sijpesteijn 22v)’, in Atti dell’ XI Congresso Internazionale di Papirologia (Milano, 1966) 249‑59 and ‘Kouríosos’, Ephemeris Hellenikon Nomikon 32 (1968) 711–12; W. Blum, Curiosi und Regendarii: Untersuchungen zur Geheimen Staatspolizei der Spätantike (Munich, 1969); G. Purpura, ‘I curiosi e la schola agentum in rebus’, Annali del Seminario Giuridico di Palermo 34 (1973) 165‑273; C. Vogler, Constance II et l’administration impériale (Strasbourg, 1979) 201–09; P.J. Sijpesteijn, ‘Another curiosus’, ZPE 70 (1987) 143– 46; W. Formigoni Candini, ‘I curiosi nell’ tit. 29 del Libro VI del Codex Theodosianus’, in S Crogiez-Pétrequin and P. Jaillette (eds), Société, économie, administration dans le Code Théodosien (Villeneuve d’Ascq, 2012) 245–63.

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circles.25 The Latin version of the AJ is also attested first in late fourth-century Africa in Manichaean and Priscillianist circles, 26 just as usage of the complete Latin version of the AP is only attested for the so-called Cena Cypriani, which dates from about AD 400.27 The Latin translation of the AA appears first in Philaster of Brescia’s Diversarum haereseon liber (88.6: about AD 390) and was also used by the Priscillianists.28 The ATh survived only in a later, abbreviated Passio Thomae and a Liber de miraculis beati Thomae apostoli,29 but the analogy with the other translated AAA suggests that Augustine still knew a complete Latin translation, since he is its first witness.30 Around AD 400, both Faustus of Milevis and Philaster refer to a collection of the five major AAA by a certain Leucius Charinus, a Manichaean.31 We therefore conclude that the five major AAA, were translated together by a Manichaean in Africa and immediately adopted in Priscillianist circles. The mention of the curiosi in the APt establishes a terminus post quem of AD 359 for this collection, but we can narrow down its period of origin even more, as Priscillian himself already showed acquaintance with the AAA in his so-called Würzburg tractates.32 Since he was executed in AD 385, the five major AAA must, consequently, have been translated into Latin between that year and AD 359. The chronology proposed for the original AAA is supported by its close coincidence with the heyday of the ancient novel. This must have been the second half of the second century, to judge by chronological tables of the papyrological 25  Cf. G. Poupon, ‘L’Origine Africaine des Actus Vercellenses’, in Bremmer, Acts of Peter, 192–99, who establishes its African origin. Poupon’s conclusion is supported by the typically African credal formulations, see L.H. Westra, ‘Regulae fidei and Other Credal Formulations in the Acts of Peter’, in Bremmer, Acts of Peter, 134–47. 26 Philaster, De haer. 88.6; Faustus apud Augustine, Contra Faustum (AD 397–400) 30.4; Augustine, Contra adversarium legis et prophetarum (AD 421) 1.20. For Manichaean interest in the AJ, see G. Jenkins, ‘Papyrus I from Kellis. A Greek Text with Affinities to the Acts of John’, in J.N. Bremmer (ed,), The Apocryphal Acts of John (Leuven, 1995) 197–216; I. Gardner and K.A. Worp, ‘Leaves from a Manichaean Codex’, ZPE 117 (1997) 139–55; I. Gardner et al., Coptic Documentary Texts from Kellis I (Oxford, 1999) no.  19.62, 73; 21.20; 28.31 (the frequent occurrence of the name Drusiana, on which see this volume, Chapter  7, Appendix). 27  For text, translation, date and AP, see C. Modesto, Studien zur Cena Cypriani und zu deren Rezeption (Tübingen, 1992). 28  J.-M. Prieur, in NTA 2.103. 29  For a fragment of the original Latin translation, see P. Bernard, ‘Un passage perdu des Acta Thomae latins conservé dans une anaphore mérovingienne’, RB 107 (1997) 24–39. 30 Augustine, De sermone domini in monte 1.20; Contra Adimantum 17; Contra Faustum 22, 79, cf. K. Zelzer, Die alten Lateinischen Thomasakten (Berlin, 1977) xxvi. My reconstruction is the first to take into account the evidence of the Latin translations of the other AAA and differs from those by Zelzer, op. cit., and K. Schäferdiek, ‘The Manichean Collection of Apocryphal Acts Ascribed to Leucius Charinus’, in NTA 2.87–100 at 98 note  62. 31  Schäferdiek, ‘The Manichean Collection of Apocryphal Acts’. For the name Leucius, see J. Nollé, Side im Altertum I (Bonn, 1992) 259; for the combination of two names, R. Merkelbach, ‘Über zweite Namen im Griechischen’, ZPE 22 (1976) 200–02. 32  H. Chadwick, Priscillian of Avila (Oxford, 1976) 77 f.

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fragments.33 It is true that the first AAA continued to be ‘recycled’ in the next centuries, but the creativity and freshness of the first major five was virtually never regained except, albeit only to a certain extent, in the fourth-century Acts of Philip.34 Do we find a similar coincidence regarding the location of the AAA? This is not the case. As we have argued before, there is a certain probability that the AJ, AA and APt all derive from Bithynia, most likely Nicomedia, whereas the AP was written in south-western Asia Minor and the ATh in Edessa.35 The reasons for this variety are obscure and will remain so, unless new evidence turns up

3. Readership Having looked at the authorship, dates and places of origin of the AAA, let us now turn to the vexed question of the readership of these writings via a reconsideration of the readership of the ancient novel. The latter problem had roused deserved interest in the 1990s, when we have had even six contributions on the readership of the ancient novel: one by Hägg, Morgan, and Stephens, and three by Bowie.36 As we all accept that most upper class male Greeks and Romans could read and write, the problem mainly boils down to the women. I see here three related questions in particular. First, can we suppose that a reasonable amount of women could read? Secondly, can we presuppose such a potential reading public in Asia Minor and Egypt and, finally, do we have any evidence for female readers of the novel, pagan or Christian? Let us start with the problem of the reading women. In the last three decades, we have had various studies devoted to this problem.37 They clearly show an 33 E. Bowie, ‘The Readership of Greek Novels in the Ancient World’, in Tatum, The Search, 435–59 at 443; G. Cavallo, ‘Veicoli materiali della letteratura di consumo. Maniere di scrivere e maniere di leggere’, in O. Pecere and A. Stramaglia (eds), La letteratura di consumo nel mondo greco-latino (Cassino, 1996) 11–46 at 15 f. 34  F. Bovon et al., Acta Philippi, 2  vols (Turnhout, 1999). 35  See this volume, Chapter  7, Appendix (AJ); 8, Introduction (AA); 9.3 (APt); 10.3 (AP) and 11, Introduction (ATh). 36  E. Bowie, ‘Les lecteurs du roman grec’, in M.-F. Baslez et al. (eds), Le monde du roman grec (Paris, 1992) 55–61, ‘The Readership’ and ‘The Ancient Readers’; T. Hägg, ‘Orality, Literacy, and the “Readership” of the Early Greek Novel’, in R. Eriksen (ed.), Contexts of Pre-Novel Narrative (Berlin and New York, 1994) 47–81; Stephens, ‘Who Read Ancient Novels?’, in Tatum, The Search, 405–18; Morgan, ‘The Greek Novel’, 134–39. 37 S.G. Cole, ‘Could Greek Women Read and Write?’, in H. Foley (ed.), Reflections of Women in Antiquity (New York, 1981) 219–45; W. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge MA, 1989) passim; G. Cavallo, ‘Donne che leggono, donne che scrivono’, in R. Raffaelli (ed.), Vicende e figure femminili in Grecia e a Roma (Ancona, 1995) 517–26 (with extensive bibliography); K. Hopkins, ‘Christian Number and Its Implication’, JECS 6 (1998) 185–226 at 207–13; E. Hemelrijk, Matrona Docta. Educated women in the Roman élite from Cornelia to Julia Domna (London and New York, 1999) 17–96; J. Fabricius, ‘Kleobulines Schwestern. Bilder

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enormous range of reading women, who have now turned up even in Vindolanda, near Hadrian’s wall.38 None of these general studies, however, pays any attention to Christian reading women.39 It is as if the ancient world suddenly stops at some invisible Iron Curtain behind which one is not allowed to peep. However, in one of the visions in his mid second-century Shepherd, Hermas has to make a copy of a book and give it to a woman, Grapte,40 ‘to admonish the widows and orphans’ (Vis. II.4.2); the second-century Dionysius of Corinth wrote a theological letter to Chrysophora, ‘a most faithful sister’; the famous gnostic Valentinus had female followers with poetic pretensions; his pupil Marcus wrote a preserved letter to the rich woman Flora; Hippolytus evidently presupposed that women and maidens could read his work; Origen had many female pupils, and a fourth-century papyrus reads as follows: ‘To my dearest lady sister, greetings in the Lord. Lend the Ezra, since I lent you the little Genesis. Farewell in God from us’.41 It seems as if reading and intellectually interested women immediately become visible, as soon as we have more information about a leading Christian or Gnostic figure. It is therefore not surprising that in the early fourth-century Martyrdom of Agape, Irene and Chione the Roman governor asked these women without further ado: ‘Do you have in your possession any treatises, parchments or books of the impious Christians’ (4.2)?42 lesender und schreibender Frauen im Hellenismus’ and C. Kunst, ‘Lesenden Frauen im anti­ ken Rom’, in G. Signori (ed.), Die lesende Frau (Wiesbaden, 2009) 17–46 and 47–64, respectively. 38 A.K. Bowman and J.D. Thomas, The Vindolanda Writing-Tablets (Tabulae Vindolandeses II) (London, 1994) nos. 291–4 (women of the equestrian officer class). 39  But see R. Lane Fox, ‘Literacy and Power in Early Christianity’, in A.K. Bowman and G. Woolf (eds), Literacy and Power in the Ancient World (Cambridge, 1994) 126–48; P. Rousseau, ‘“Learned Women” and the Development of a Christian Culture in Late Antiquity’, Symbolae Osloenses 70 (1995) 116–47; K. Greschat, Gelehrte Frauen des frühen Christentums (Stuttgart, 2015) 1–16. 40  The name Grapte was rare in Greece and Asia Minor but ‘one of the favourite names in slave and libertine circles of Rome’, where Shepherd was written, cf. M. Ricl, The Inscriptions of Alexandreia Troas (Bonn, 1997) 124; H. Solin, Die griechischen Personennamen in Rom, 3  vols (Berlin and New York, 20032) 3.1256 f. 41  P.Oxy. 63.4365, cf. D. Hagedorn, ZPE 115 (1997) 147–8, who convincingly identifies ‘little Genesis’ as the fragmentarily preserved Book of Jubilees; see also A. Hilhorst, ‘Erwähnt P. Oxy. LXIII 4365 das Jubiläenbuch?’, ZPE 130 (2000) 192. For women’s letters on papyrus, see R. Cribiore, ‘Windows on a Woman’s World. Some Letters from Roman Egypt’, in A. Lardinois and L. McClure (eds), Making Silence Speak. Women’s Voices in Greek Literature and Society (Princeton, 2001) 223–39; R.S. Bagnall and R. Cribiore, Women’s Letters from Ancient Egypt, 300 BC-AD 800 (Ann Arbor, 2006); I. Gardner et al., Coptic Documentary Texts from Kellis, Volume 2: P. Kellis VII (P. Kellis Copt. 57–131) (Oxford, 2014) 13 f. 42  For these and more Christian examples, see this volume, Chapter  3; P. Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York, 1988) 151–2, 184, 193; J.A. Sheridan, ‘Not at a Loss for Words: The Economic Power of Literate Women in Late Antiquity’, TAPA 128 (1998) 189–203; K. Cooper, ‘The Bride of Christ, the “Male Woman”, and the Female Reader in Late Antiquity’, in J. Bennett and R. Mazo Karas

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This Christian evidence may also make us more reticent in putting into doubt Antonius Diogenes’ dedication of his Wonders to his sister Isidora (Photius, Bibl. 111a-b). She must have been an educated woman and it seems a bit farfetched that Antonius would have liked us to see his very own sister to stand for, in the words of Bowie, ‘the avid but gullible reader’. Actually, if we accept the persuasive identification of PSI 117 as a fragment of his Wonders, Antonius does even mention a reading woman within his own novel.43 Unfortunately, we cannot always trace the social position of reading women, but the papyrological evidence of Oxyrhynchus and Vindolanda strongly suggests that the skill of reading was not limited to upper-class women.44 A handicap in our research is that the owners of literary papyri are very rarely known, but we may note that Roger Bagnall has identified a wealthy, third-century lady from Oxyrhynchus, Aurelia Ptolemais, who owned a Sikyonika, the Iliad and Julius Africanus’ Kestoi. Even if she inherited these books from her father, she, surely, was a potential reader of the novel or the AAA.45 We are much less informed about Asia Minor from literary sources, but archaeology has at least furnished us with an ever increasing stream of names of women who occupied a leading, sometimes the leading, position in their community. Highpriestesses, agonothetae, gymnasiarchs, demiurgi, eponymous magistrates or members of boulê and gerousia: there can be no doubt that in the heartland of the novel there was a wealthy and well-educated female public available which in principle could have read and appreciated the various romances.46 But did they actually do so? The problems and evidence at stake have been admirably set out by Bowie, partially in reaction to Hägg, who in turn had reacted to Bowie’s contribution (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 2013) 529– 44. 43  Contra: Bowie, ‘The Readership’, 437–8 and ‘The Ancient Readers’, 103, who follows up a suggestion by S. Stephens and J. Winkler, Ancient Greek Novels: the fragments (Princeton, 1995) 102–03; PSI 117 has been re-edited by Stephens and Winkler, 148–53. The supposed attitude of Antonius also hardly squares with the general impression we have of the brother-sister relationship in Greek culture, see my Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible and the Ancient Near East (Leiden, 2008) 325–33. 44  E. Kutzner, Untersuchungen zur Stellung der Frau im römischen Oxyrhynchos (Frankfurt, 1989) 149–51; J.N. Adams, ‘The Language of the Vindolanda Writing Tablets: An Interim Report’, JRS 85 (1995) 86–134 at 130–1. 45  R. Bagnall, ‘An Owner of Literary Papyri’, CPh 87 (1992) 137–40. 46  See the informative discussions by J. Nollé, ‘Frauen wie Omphale’, in M. Dettenhofer (ed.), Reine Männersache? (Cologne, 1994) 229–59; Van Bremen, The Limits of Participation; Adak, ‘Claudia Anassa’; K. Mantas, ‘Independent Women in the Roman East: Widows, Benefactresses, Patronesses, Office-holders’, Eirene 33 (1997) 81–95; S.J. Friesen, ‘Ephesian Women and Men in Public Office during the Roman Imperial Period’ and U. Soldan, ‘Frauen als Fuktionsträgerinnen im kaiserzeitlichen Ephesos: Die weiblichen Prytaneis’, in H. Friesiner and F. Krinzinger (eds), 100 Jahre Österreichische Forschungen in Ephesos (Vienna, 1999) 107–13, 115–9, respectively.

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to the 1989 Dartmouth conference.47 Bowie usefully distinguishes between intended and actual readership, but his discussion also makes clear that we have very little information about the gender and social status of his actual readers. As the lack of evidence for female readers of the novel has often been pointed out, it is good to realise that there is also very little information regarding males as readers of the novel, as Hägg has stressed.48 It is possible, though, to add a few male readers to Bowie’s collection, since he draws insufficient attention to the intertextuality of the novels themselves. Admittedly, this aspect of the readership of the novels may not have seemed central to his argument, but it must nevertheless be spelled out to present the full picture of ancient readership. As I have argued in the original version of this chapter, Apuleius, Lucian, Lollianus and Achilles Tatius all had read ‘Lucius of Patrai’s’ Metamorphoseis.49 It is also clear that Chariton was read by Xenophon of Ephesus and the author of the AJ;50 the so-called Protagoras novel (Klaus Alpers’ splendid ‘discovery’) by Longus;51 Xenophon of Ephesus by Achilles Tatius and, probably, by the Antheia fragment and the Historia Apollonii;52 Longus by Heliodorus;53 and Achilles Tatius by the author of AA,54 Bardaisan, the author of ATh, and Heliodorus.55 Finally,

47 

See the literature mentioned in note  36. Hägg, ‘Orality’, 55. 49 Bremmer, ‘The Novel and the Apocryphal Acts: Place, Time and Readership’, in H. Hofmann and M. Zimmerman (eds), Groningen Colloquia on the Novel IX (Groningen, 1998) 157–80 at 168 f. 50  J.N. O’Sullivan, Xenophon of Ephesus (Berlin and New York, 1994) has not proved the reverse, however informative the book is on Xenophon’s literary technique; cf. the review by M. Weissenberger, Gött. Gel. Anz. 248 (1996) 176–91; Junod and Kaestli, Acta Iohannis, 2.516–20; P.J. Lalleman, ‘Classical Echoes (Callimachus, Chariton) in the Acta Iohannis?’, ZPE 116 (1997) 66. 51  K. Alpers, ‘Zwischen Athen, Abdera und Samos. Fragmente eines unbekannten Romans aus der Zeit der Zweiten Sophistik’, in M. Billerbeck and J. Schamp (eds), Kainotomia. Die Erneuerung der griechischen Tradition (Freiburg, 1996) 19–55 at 47–8. Alpers’ dating of his novel points to a somewhat earlier date for Longus than is usually accepted, cf. J. Morgan, ‘Longus, Daphne and Chloe: 1950–1995’, in ANRW II.34.3 (Berlin and New York, 1997) 2208–76 at 2229. 52 O’Sullivan, Xenophon of Ephesus, 166–8 (Antheia fragment and Achilles Tatius); G.  Korte­kaas, Historia Apollonii regis Tyri (Groningen, 1984) 130. 53  T. Szepessy, ‘Zur Interpretation eines neu entdeckten griechischen Roman’, Acta Antiqua Hungarica 26 (1978) 29–36; E. Bowie, ‘Names and a Gem: Aspects of Allusion in He­ liodorus’ Aethiopica’, in D. Innes et al. (eds), Ethics and Rhetoric. Classical Essays for Donald Russell on his Seventy-fifth Birthday (Oxford, 1995) 269–80 at 279–80 (Heliodorus and Longus). 54  L. Roig Lanzillotta, Acta Andreae Apocrypha (Geneva, 2007) 271 f. 55  K. Plepelits, ‘Achilles Tatius’, in Schmeling, The Novel, 387–416 at 394–8 (Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius); J.N. Bremmer, ‘Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus in Christian East Syria’, in H. Vanstiphout (ed.), All Those Nations…Cultural Encounters within and with the Near East, (Groningen, 1999) 21–29 (Bardaisan and ATh). 48 

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the author of the elusive Grundschrift of the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies and Recognitions had read Chariton and Xenophon of Ephesus.56 A few more readers can be detected if we take into account the AAA in general, a genre surprisingly neglected by Hägg and Bowie in their discussions of the readership of the novel. As we have seen, Rosa Söder collected motifs shared by the novel and the AAA, but she explicitly denied dependence of the latter on the former. Instead, she suggested that the AAA derived from ‘Zeugen alter im Volke lebender Erzählungen von den Abenteuern, Wundertaten und Lie­bes­ affären grosser Männer’.57 There is not a shred of evidence for this view. In fact, the intertextuality of the AAA with the novel cannot be doubted, if we look at the cumulation of similar motifs, as collected by Söder: shipwrecks, brigands, sale into slavery, putting girls in brothels, unruly crowds, travel around the empire, thinking of suicide,58 sending messages, corrupting a servant, trials, locking up in tombs, endless journeys and loving couples (Platonic or not). We may add that, as in the novel, young elite couples are the protagonists in two of the AAA, the AJ and AP (§  2). In the AJ, the apostle John is met by Lycomedes, an Ephesian stratêgos, who tells him about the paralysis of his wife Cleopatra, who was, he says, a beauty ‘at which all Ephesus was amazed’ (20). As for a second elite couple, Andronicus and Drusiana, the wife is so beautiful that Callimachus, a young ‘first of the city’, tries to commit necrophilia and strips her of her clothes until he arrives at the undergarment, at which point he is fortunately threatened by a snake (70–1). In the AP, the immediate infatuation of Thecla with the apostle Paul is described in stock novelistic terms by her mother to Thecla’s fiancée, Thamyris: ‘For indeed for three days and three nights Thecla has not risen from the window either to eat or to drink, but gazing steadily as if on some joyful spectacle she so devotes herself to a strange man... (she) sticks to the window like a spider, is (moved) by his words (and) gripped by a new desire and a fearful passion’ (7, tr. W. Schneemelcher). Sometimes an author of the AAA even borrowed a less common motif, as when in both Chariton (1.4.12–5.1) and the AJ (48) a kick produces a loss of voice.59 The conclusion is inevitable: the authors of the AJ and AP, at least, had read the contemporary novels and taken from them part of their inspiration. Of course, the similarities should not blind us to the differences. The AAA centre on the martyrdom of an apostle, and chastity is the happy end, not marriage. Moreover, unlike most ancient novels, the AAA happily admit the Ro56 

Bremmer, ‘Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus’. Die apokryphen Apostelgeschichten, 187. 58  Compare, e.g., AJ 19–20 and 49 with Chariton 1.4.7 and 3.1.1; for a discussion of this theme, S. MacAlister, Dreams & Suicides. The Greek Novel from Antiquity to the Byzantine Empire (London, 1996). 59  See the discussion of the similarities in Junod and Kaestli, Acta Iohannis, 2.517–20, 547– 51, where they conclude: ‘La fréquence et l’étroitesse de ces parallèles confirment de manière décisive que notre auteur connaît la production romanesque de son époque’ (550). 57 Söder,

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mans and their world into the fictional world, sometimes even in a humiliating manner, as when the AA depicts the Roman proconsul with an attack of diarrhoea (13). Taking such differences into account, Christine Thomas has well formulated the relationship between the ancient novel and the AAA: ‘though motifs do not a genre make, the ideal romances and the Acts are speaking the same narrative language’. 60 But who were the authors of the AAA and who were their intended or actual readers? The authors of the AJ, AA APt and ATh are unknown, but a presbyter from Asia Minor wrote the AP, as Tertullian informs us:61 a clear case, then, of another male reader of the ancient novel. Tertullian’s notice also supplies another, very valuable, piece of information. He tells us that the Christian women of Carthage based claims for teaching and baptising on the AP. As Carthage contained a substantial number of Greek-speaking inhabitants, 62 the conclusion suggests itself that women were actual readers of the AAA. Now we certainly know that fourth-century Christian women must have read the adventures of Thecla, 63 but we may perhaps also identify an earlier reader. The young upper-class woman Perpetua prayed for her brother Dinocrates (Passio Perpetuae 7–8: below, Chapter  22.4.1), just as in the AP Thecla prayed for the deceased daughter of Queen Tryphaena (29), the only two such known cases in the first Christian centuries. 64 Moreover, before her martyrdom Perpetua saw in a dream a black Egyptian (10), just as in the APt (22) the Roman senator Marcellus saw an awful black woman before Peter’s confrontation with Simon Magus. In both cases, the black person is killed and thus predicts the favourable outcome of the forthcoming battle. The parallelism is so close that it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Perpetua was also acquainted with the APt. If, surely, well-to-do women, then, were actual readers of the AAA, were they also the intended readers? There can be little doubt that this was indeed the case. First, both in the AJ and AP women (virgins, widows and old women) dominate the scene, but it is upper-class women who are the most prominent ones. Both Acts display various couples, such as Lycomedes and Cleopatra or Andronicus and Drusiana in the AJ, and Thecla and Thamyris in the AP, but in both cases women are the heroines and clearly the examples to be followed.65 Secondly, from Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930) to Robin Lane Fox, scholars of early 60 

Thomas, ‘Stories Without Texts’, 278. De baptismo 17.5, cf. A. Hilhorst, ‘Tertullian on the Acts of Paul’, in J.N. Bremmer (ed.), The Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla (Kampen, 1996) 150–63; G. Poupon, ‘Encore une fois: Tertullien, De baptismo 17.5’, in D. Knoepfler (ed.), Nomen Latinum. Mélanges A. Schneider (Neuchâtel and Geneva, 1997) 199–205. 62  J. den Boeft and J.N. Bremmer, ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae II’, VigChris 36 (1982) 383–402 at 391–2; T. Barnes, Tertullian (Oxford, 19852) 67–9. 63 Cooper, The Virgin and the Bride, 70, 112. 64  See this volume, Chapter  10.1. 65  For the AJ, see this volume, Chapter  7; for the AP, this volume, Chapter  10. 61 Tert.

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Christianity have continuously observed that until Constantine women by far constituted the majority of early Christians.66 Thirdly, whereas we do not hear of the Christians or other religious groups targeting upper-class men, there is plenty of evidence that the early Christians, just like Jews and Gnostics, were popular among wealthy Greek and Roman women, not least because they took women seriously on an intellectual level. 67 It has never been disputed, I think, that at least some of the authors of the AAA meant their novels to have a ‘missionary’ effect. 68 In the upper class of Asia Minor, their most obvious targets were women; the conversion of upper-class males, on the other hand, would take much longer and did not take off before the conversion of Constantine. This female focus is supported by the fact that in the AAA women are never executed for their adhesion to the new faith; in the case of Thecla she did not even have to cut her hair. The conclusion seems inescapable: women must have constituted an important part, perhaps the largest part, of the intended and actual readership of the AAA. 69 This is not the position of Keith Hopkins (1934–2004), who has argued that there were very few Christians until the end of the second century and, consequently, very few reading women. Both Hopkins and Rodney Stark agree that one could postulate about 7,500 Christians around AD 100 by assuming 1,000 Christians in AD 40 and an annual growing rate of 40%.70 In fact, Hopkins even assumes that around AD 100 most Christian communities did not have ‘among them a single sophisticated reader or writer’.71 Yet such an assumption would hardly explain the familiarity with Christians in Nero’s Rome and the fact that Pliny (Ep.  10.96) already finds a worrying number of Christians in Bithynia around AD 110, and the many letters written and preserved in the period of early Christianity.72 People like Paul, the pseudo-Pauls, Clement and Ignatius surely expected their letters to be read and circulated. Moreover, it seems hard to accept that early Christianity spread at an amazing rate despite 66  A. von Harnack, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums, 19021 (Berlin, 1924 4) 589–611; Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 310. 67  For examples, see this volume, Chapter  3. 68  Although this is now the case for the AJ: J.A. Snyder, Language and Identity in Ancient Narratives (Tübingen, 2014) 137–39. 69  This suggestion is not refuted by the fact that later papyri, which are in any case very few in number for the AAA, do not suggest a gendered readership, contra: K. Haines-Eitzen, The Gendered Palimpsest: Women, Writing, and Representation in Early Christianity (Oxford, 2012) 53–64; L.W. Hurtado, ‘Who read Early Christian Apocrypha?’, in A. Gregory and C. Tuckett (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Apocrypha (Oxford, 2015) 153–66 at 155. 70  R. Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton, 1996) 4–13; Hopkins, ‘Christian Number’, 193. 71  Hopkins, ‘Christian Number’, 213. 72  See now J. Kloppenborg, ‘Literate Media in Early Christian Groups: The Creation of a Christian Book Culture’, JECS 22 (2014) 21–59.

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the fact that most Christian communities were unable to read a single Christian treatise. Surely, Hopkins takes too little into account that the heavy Jewish contribution to early Christianity must have positively influenced the level of early Christian literacy.73 My own idea would be that the feverish atmosphere in Palestine in the decades after Jesus’ execution must have been even more favourable to the spread of his messianic message than modern quantifications seem to realise. Consequently, I would assume more Christians around AD 160 than the about 60,000 which both Stark and Hopkins suggest, and thus more reading women. It is of course true, as Hopkins argues, that there will have been far less reading women than men. Yet, given the female superiority in numbers in the earlier Christian churches (above) and the fact that upper-class women could become Christian with less cost to their career than upper-class males, a number of Christian communities in Asia Minor must have certainly had a small but significant section of reading women. In any case, we are so used to mass circulation of books that most scholars hardly seem to realise that in antiquity authors, like for example Galen,74 sometimes wrote only for their friends or immediate circle. This could also have been the case with the AAA, which need not have been intended for a widespread circulation in the beginning. Unfortunately, we know nothing about the original Sitz im Leben of the AAA. In addition to being intended for the immediate environment of the author, one may wonder whether they were perhaps read in the context of worship, like some of the letters of Paul. Or did the author first give a ‘public reading’ in his congregation or religious group before publishing them? The latter possibility seems perfectly likely, given the conventions of the time.75 Yet, even if such cases of oral presentation took place, the majority of the audience would still have been female given the composition of the earliest Christian communities. Having considered the female readership of the AAA, we are now in a better position to solve the problem of women as possible readers of the ancient novel. Whereas Rohde inferred female readers from the triviality of the novel, modern scholars think female readers unlikely on the basis of its sophistication: in both cases, male prejudice is evident despite the change in appreciation.76 There are at least three questions that need attention. Firstly, do the novels themselves indicate reading women? Secondly, do we know of actual female readers? And thirdly, does the nature of the protagonists say anything about intended readers? 73  See the considerations by H.Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church (New Haven and London, 1995) 1–41; this volume, Chapter 2.2. 74  T. Dorandi, Le style et la tablette (Paris, 2000) 107. 75 Gamble, Books and Readers, 82–143. 76  Cf. B. Egger, ‘Looking at Chariton’s Callirhoe’, in Morgan and Stoneman, Greek Fiction, 31–48 at 32–33 (with bibliography).

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In an important study, Brigitte Egger has given persuasive answers to all of these questions.77 She shows that in the second-century novel – Chariton, Xenophon of Ephesus and Longus – women were represented as literate without any thematisation of that aspect. In an eleventh-century Persian romance, which is an important source for our knowledge of Parthenope, the heroine is even depicted as a youthful genius. She started studying at the age of two, became an astronomer and a capable scribe at seven, and in her teens, when her father (Polycrates of Samos) ‘examined her in the arts, he found the key of eloquence and the treasures of virtue. In deliberation the cultured child became without need of the instruction of the learned’.78 Unfortunately, the only attested female reader is the already mentioned sister of Antonius Diogenes, Isidora, but as we have seen, male readers are not attested in abundance either. As regards the protagonists, it is hard to disagree with Hägg when he states: ‘Women are the real heroes of the early novels: Callirhoe, Parthenope, Anthia. They are sympathetically drawn and altogether more alive than their pale husbands and lovers. A partly, some would say predominantly female audience thus remains a fair assumption’.79 This remains true, even if one agrees with Egger that the female protagonists, although ‘immensely emotionally powerful and erotically ravishing’, at the same time appear as socially ‘restricted and disempowered’;80 the latter characteristics may well have made them more palatable for the male readers (or their authors). Admittedly, Morgan has defended the paleness of the protagonists: ‘The colourless heroes are perhaps blank screens onto which the reader can project himself more easily than on to a more individualised character’.81 But if this extremely weak argument were valid, surely the most popular works of literature, or of the cinema for that matter, would abound with colourless heroes! None of the recent contributors to the debate on female readership of the novel has taken the AAA into account. Yet, the result of our discussion strongly supports the case for the defence, since it immediately raises an important question. Why would Christian male authors think that women would suddenly become interested in a genre in which they had not been previously interested? It seems much more natural to accept that these authors had noticed the contemporary interest of women in the novel. I stress the word ‘contemporary’. There is no need to think that the novel was ‘invented’ for women. The exam77  B. Egger, ‘Zu den Frauenrollen im griechischen Roman. Die Frau als Heldin und Lese­ rin’, in H. Hofmann (ed.), Groningen Colloquia on the Novel I (Groningen, 1988) 33–66. 78  Hägg, ‘Orality’, 56, quoting from the, at that time, unpublished translation by Bo Utas, see now T. Hägg and B. Utas, The Virgin and her Lover. Fragments of an Ancient Greek Novel and a Persian Epic Poem (Leiden, 2003). 79  Hägg, ‘Orality’, 59. 80  B. Egger, ‘Women and Marriage in the Greek Novels’, in Tatum, The Search, 260–80 at 272 f. 81  Morgan, ‘The Greek Novel’, 145.

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ples of the Iolaus or the so-called Protagoras novel (above) clearly militate against such a view. But nothing prevents us from accepting that, with the emergence in the first and second century of the wealthy female upper-class in Asia Minor, a new audience had developed which comprised males and females, for whom some novelists introduced female protagonists instead of male ones. The female protagonists of the contemporary AAA and their female readership strongly support this view.82

82  For information and comments on the various versions, I am grateful to Glen Bowersock, Ewen Bowie, Ken Dowden, who also skilfully corrected my English, Danielle van Mal-Maeder, Peter van Minnen and Klaas Worp.

Chapter 15

Pseudo-Clementines: Texts, Dates, Places, Authors and Magic Virtually everything is unclear about the work that is commonly known as the Pseudo-Clementines (hence: Clementines). Debates have raged now for over a century, and scholars have not yet reached a full consensus regarding the nature of the work, its sources of inspiration, the time and place of its composition, or the author himself and his milieu. It is clear that we cannot answer all these questions in a short compass, but we can at least offer some considerations of a methodological and historical nature. It seems to me that we first have to determine what text we are talking about (§  1), next establish the dates and places of its composition (§  2), and only then try to determine the background of the authors (§  3). That is what I will do in this contribution before concluding with some observations on the ways magic is treated in the Clementines (§  4).

1. Text Regarding the text, it is now agreed that both the Homilies and the Recognitions go back to a Grundschrift (Basic Writing). Taking into account Ockham’s entia non sunt multiplicanda, it seems reasonable to follow those scholars who have argued that this Grundschrift was called Periodoi Petrou, although the title refers not only to the apostle’s ‘wanderings’ but perhaps also carries the astrological overtone of ‘orbits’.1 Moreover, it seems that in general the Recognitions has preserved the original structure of the Grundschrift more faithfully, while the Homilies better reflects the original thought of the Grundschrift. The author of the Homilies did insert the books of the discussions with Appion (H 3–6), but to gain space he had to abridge other parts.2 That is why he stresses his briefness 1  B. Pouderon, ‘Origène, le pseudo-Clément et la structure des Periodoi Petrou’, Apocrypha 12 (2001) 29–51; F.S. Jones, ‘Eros and Astrology in the Periodoi Petrou. The Sense of the Pseudo-Clementine Novel’, Apocrypha 12 (2001) 53–87 at 77–8 (astrological interpretation), repr. in Jones, Pseudoclementina Elchasaitiaque inter Judaeochristiana (Leuven, 2012) 114– 37; similarly, H.J.W. Drijvers, History and Religion in Late Antique Syria (Aldershot, 1994) Ch. XIV, 321. 2  M. Vielberg, Klemens in den pseudoklementinischen Rekognitionen. Studien zur litera­ rischen Form des spätantiken Romans (Berlin, 2000) 184–94.

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(H 1.6.1) and his lack of repetitions (H 1.17.1), qualities we might have otherwise overlooked. Regarding the Greek Recognitions, Carl Schmidt (1868–1938) has persuasively argued that its author did not appreciate the revision of the Grundschrift by the Homilies and therefore proceeded to a new re-writing. Where the author of the Homilies had abridged a topic too much, the writer of the Recognitions expanded, and vice versa.3 This development means that a study of the whole of the Clementines is a rather complex affair since, essentially, Recognitions and Homilies are works to be studied independently. This has still happened very rarely, given scholars’ fascination with the origin of our text, but this is evidently the future for the study of the Clementines. Like all other literary works, they have to be studied in the context of their own time and place.4 It is clear that much remains to be done in this area, but there is now at least a decent basis since the separate edition of both works in the fifties and sixties of last century.5 It is not necessary to include in my contribution a Forschungsgeschichte, as this has been ably done by Stanley Jones and Frédéric Amsler. 6 Yet we may perhaps, honoris causa, mention our compatriot H.U. Meyboom (1842–1933), as his contributions are neglected in recent studies: Batava non iam leguntur. Meyboom was professor of Church history in our Groningen theological faculty from 1892 to 1913. He was the editor-in-chief of an important series of Dutch translations of ancient Christian writings;7 however, before he undertook that task, he published a synoptic translation of the Clementines in 1902. Such a synoptic approach was first argued by the German theologian Johann Jacob Griesbach (1745–1812), but put into real practice first by the famous classicist Karl Lachmann (1793–1851). 8 Meyboom may have been stimulated too by Her3 

C. Schmidt, Studien zu den Pseudo-Clementinen (Leipzig, 1929) 230–39. It is the great merit of Vielberg, Klemens, to have systematically concentrated on just one version, even if the theological side of the novel comes somewhat short in his discussion. 5  For the editions, see B. Rehm, Die Pseudoklementinen: I Homilien (Berlin, 1953, ed. J. Irmscher; 19672, ed. F. Paschke; 19923, ed. G. Strecker) and II, Rekognitionen in Rufins Übersetzung, ed. F. Paschke (Berlin, 1965; 19942, ed. G. Strecker). 6  F.St. Jones, ‘The Pseudo-Clementines: A History of Research, I and II’, The Second Century 2 (1982) 1–33 and 3 (1983) 63–96, reprinted in E. Ferguson (ed.), Studies in Early Christianity II (New York and London, 1993) 195–262 and in Jones, Pseudoclementina Elchasaitiaque, 50–113; F. Amsler, ‘État de la recherche récente sur le roman pseudo-clémentin’, in Amsler et al. (eds), Nouvelles intrigues pseudo-clémentines – Plots in the Pseudo-Clementine Romances (Lausanne, 2008) 25–45; note also the careful survey of the Pseudo-Clementines, on the basis of the most recent bibliography, by H.-J. Klauck, Apokryphe Apostelakten (Stuttgart, 2005) 203–37. 7 The Oud-christelijke geschriften in Nederlandsche vertaling, 46 volumes (Leiden, 1906– 31). For his bio-bibliography, see G. van den Bergh van Eysinga, ‘Dr Hajo Uden Meyboom Hornhuizen 17/12 1842 – Paterswolde 7/7 1933’, Jaarboek van de Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde 1934, 109–23. 8  S. Timpanaro, The Genesis of Lachmann’s Method, ed. and trans. G.W. Most (Chicago, 2005). 4 

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mann Diels’ (1848–1922) Doxographi Graeci (1879), who also regularly applied the tabular method.9 However new the application of the method was at his time of writing, the procedure presupposes that the two Clementines are basically more or less the same and is therefore not really acceptable. On the other hand, Meyboom produced the penultimate translation of the Homilies, and its many notes make it a useful tool for research. Meyboom’s systematic study of the Clementines from 1904 is also highly useful, and its concluding commentary is the beginning of a project that has not yet been completed by other scholars. Even though his works appeared before the important studies of Hans Waitz (1864–1942: 1904),10 Werner Heintze (1889–1914: 1914),11 and Carl Schmidt,12 it is still the only one that has systematically studied the most important themes of the Clementines.13 If real progress has been made in the analysis of the main existing texts, we are much further away from a consensus in the evaluation of the Grundschrift’s sources. This becomes apparent when we look at the attempts by Bernard Pouderon, who in the 1990s and 2000s flooded the Clementine market with articles in which he proposes a new stemma of the sources of the Grundschrift. His research continues the efforts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century scholars to construct a stemma of works that constituted the main sources of the Grundschrift. Yet his results not only differ significantly from earlier attempts, which still incorporated a Kerygma(ta) Petrou, but he has also introduced new players into the field: a Roman novel of the Julio-Claudian period and a Jewish Alexandrian novel of the period between AD 100 and AD 115–17 or AD 132– 35, the times of the Jewish revolts. Unfortunately, Pouderon does not enter into a proper dialogue with his predecessors and, moreover, manages to publish two different stemmata in one and the same year:14 ce n’est pas très serieux! 9  For the history of the synoptic/tabular method, see J. Mansfeld in id. and D. Runia, ­ ëtiana I (Leiden, 1996) 111–20 and ‘Doxographical studies, Quellenforschung, tabular presA entation and other varieties of comparativism’, in W. Burkert et al. (eds), Fragmentsammlungen philosophischer Texte der Antike – Le raccolte dei frammenti di filosofi antichi (Göttingen, 1998) 16–40; A. Grafton and M.H. Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book (Cambridge MA, 2006) 86–132. 10  H. Waitz, Die Pseudoklementinen, Homilien und Rekognitionen: Eine quellenkritische Untersuchung (Leipzig, 1904); ‘Die Pseudoklementinen und ihre Quellenschriften’, ZNW 28 (1929) 241–72; ‘Neues zur Text- und Literarkritik der Pseudo-klementinen?’, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte III 52 (1933) 305–18 and ‘Die Lösung des pseudoklementinischen Pro­ blems?’, ibid., III 59 (1940) 303–41. 11  W. Heintze, Der Clemensroman und seine griechischen Quellen (Leipzig, 1914). 12 Schmidt, Studien zu den Pseudo-Clementinen. 13  H.U. Meyboom, De Clemens-Roman, 2  vols (Groningen, 1902–1904). 14  Cf. B. Pouderon, ‘Origène, le pseudo-Clément et la structure des Periodoi Petrou’, Apo­ crypha 12 (2001) 29–51 at 50 with Pouderon, ‘Aux origines du Roman pseudo-clémentin’, in S.C. Mimouni and F.S. Jones (eds), Le Judéo-christianisme dans tous ses états (Paris, 2001) 231–56 at 256.

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Given the nature of such an enterprise, it is virtually impossible to refute it.15 Yet one is surprised at the lack of principal questions posed by Pouderon. This becomes clear when he reconstructs the content of the lost pagan novel underlying the lost Jewish novel, which in turn is the basis for the lost Grundschrift. Not only does he supply the names of the protagonists in the first case, but he even reconstructs the plot and, presumably to pre-empt criticism, introduces a proto-Clement and a proto-Appion in this novel. However, the names Mattidia and Faustus, which he keeps from the Homilies, cannot be assigned to the Julio-Claudian era, since in Roman literature the name Matidia is not attested before Fronto.16 Faustus, Faustinus and Faustinianus belong together in the text (R 7.8), and Faustinianus is a rare Roman personal name that in literature equally does not occur before Fronto and in Greek appears only in the second half of the second century AD.17 As has long been seen,18 these names derive from the Antonine period, since Matidia was the name of the granddaughter of Trajan’s sister, whose own daughter Matidia was the sister-in-law of Hadrian.19 The names Faustus, Faustinus and Faustinianus were inspired by Faustina, the wife of Antoninus Pius, whose daughter Faustina Minor was married to Marcus Aurelius.20 Consequently, these names cannot have been part of a novel of the Julio-Claudian era. We must also realise that at that period there are no Roman or Greek novels attested with the names of historical Roman persons. The earliest known examples of that procedure are Apuleius’ Metamorphoses and The Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla with their mention of Queen Tryphaena and the maiden Falconilla. In short, Pouderon is not a reliable guide in the reconstruction of the sources of the Grundschrift.

15  But see the objections of Amsler, ‘État de la recherche récente sur le roman pseudo-clémentin’, 35–37 and P. Boulhol, ‘La conversion de l’anagnorismos profane dans le roman pseudo-clémentin’, in Amsler, Nouvelles intrigues, 151–75 at 155 f. 16 Fronto, Ad M. Caes. 2.1 Van den Hout. 17  Roman: Fronto, Amic. 1.5 Van den Hout. Greek: IG II 2.2103 and 2128, XIV.217; SEG 28.858, 33.584 B 16; I. Ephesus 47.17, 242.17, 494.2, 633.11, 1426.7, 3424, etc. 18 Heintze, Der Clemensroman, 129 note  1; Schmidt, Studien, 299. 19  PIR 2 M 367; H. Temporini-Gräfin Vitzthum, ‘Matidia [1], [2]’, in Der Neue Pauly 7 (1999) 1025, updated by F. Chauson, ‘Une dedicace monumentale provenant du théâtre de Suessa Aurunca, due à Matidia la Jeune, belle-soeur de l’empereur Hadrien’, Journal des Savants 2008, 234–59. 20  PIR 2 A 716, A 623; W. Eck, ‘Faustina [1], [2], [3]’, in Der Neue Pauly 4 (1998) 442–3; P. Weiss, ‘Die vorbildliche Kaiserehe. Zwei Senatsbeschlüsse beim Tod der älteren und der jüngeren Faustina, neue Paradigmen und die Herausbildung des “antoninischen” Prinzipats’, Chiron 38 (2008) 1–45; S. Priwitzer, Faustina minor – Ehefrau eines Idealkaisers und Mutter eines Tyrannen (Bonn, 2009); B. Levick, Faustina I and II: Imperial Women of the Golden Age (Oxford, 2014).

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2.  Place and Date of the Grundschrift, Homilies and Recognitions21 Unfortunately, like so much else regarding the Grundschrift, its place of origin is heavily debated.22 Waitz opted for Rome, Schmidt argued for the Transjordan area, whereas Strecker prefers Hollow Syria.23 The latter is also a favourite among other patristic scholars, although few seem to properly realise the geographical borders of this Roman province, which was created by Septimius Severus and limited to Northern Syria, the Southern part being called Syria Phoenice.24 However, in his survey Stanley Jones singles out as ‘important’ Schmidt’s arguments for a close affinity between the Grundschrift and the Didaskalia.25 Unfortunately, the place of origin of the Didaskalia is equally debated.26 Schmidt himself still thought of Hollow Syria, 27 but in his analysis of the role of the deaconesses in the Didaskalia the French patristic scholar Martimort has made the following observations: the author of the Didaskalia is probably of semitic origin and has Judaeo-Christian sympathies;28 the Didaskalia’s baptismal ritual of women closely resembles that of the Acts of Thomas (157), which was written in Edessa or its environment;29 the Didaskalia remained authoritative among the fourth-century sect of the Syrian Audiani; its Syriac version uses archaic terms and notions typical of Syria and Mesopotamia, and it was very quickly used by the Persian Aphraates (ca. AD 265–345); last but not least, the deaconesses continued to play a role in the ancient baptismal rites of the Nestorians. As Martimort persuasively concludes, together these arguments point to Mesopotamia, possibly even Edessa.30 There is, then, a good possibility that the Grundschrift also was written in Edessa, given the latter’s function as cultural 21  This section updates and elaborates upon my ‘Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus in Christian East Syria’, in H. Vanstiphout (ed.), All those nations …Cultural Encounters within and with the Near East (Groningen, 1999) 21–29 at 25–7. 22  Jones, ‘The Pseudo-Clementines I’, 9–14; J. Wehnert, ‘Abriss der Entstehungsgeschichte des pseudoklementinischen Roman’, Apocrypha 3 (1992) 211–35. 23 Waitz, Die Pseudoklementinen, 75; Schmidt, Studien, 290–93; G. Strecker, Das Judentum in den Pseudoklementinen (Berlin, 19812) 259–60 and NTA 2.485. 24  F. Millar, The Roman Near East (Cambridge MA, 1993) 121 f. 25 Jones, ‘The Pseudo-Clementines I’, 13; Schmidt, Studien, 240–313; add the affinities noted by Strecker, Judenchristentum, 113, 215 note  2, 259 f. 26  For the Didaskalia, see B. Steimer, ‘Didascalia’, in S. Döpp and W. Geerlings (eds), Le­ xikon der antiken christlichen Literatur (Freiburg, 1998) 167–8; add A. Camplani, ‘A Coptic Fragment from the Didascalia Apostolorum (M579 f.1)’, Augustinianum 36 (1996) 47–51; C. Fonrobert, ‘The Didascalia Apostolorum: A Mishnah for the Disciples of Jesus’, JECS 9 (2001) 483–509; M. Aoun, ‘“Laïcs” et “séculiers” dans la Didascalia Apostolorum syriacae. Quelques aspects lexico-sémantiques’, Revue des sciences religieuses 81 (2007) 69–78. 27 Schmidt, Studien, 290. 28  As is also observed, amongst others, by Schmidt, Studien, 289. 29  See this volume, Chapter  11.1, although A.F.J. Klijn, The Acts of Thomas (Leiden, 20032) 15 does not want to go beyond ‘the Syriac speaking Eastern Church’. 30  A.G. Martimort, Les diaconesses (Rome, 1982) 40–41 (with references to the well-known studies of the Didaskalia by F. Nau, F.X. Funk, R.H. Connelly and A. Vööbus). As can be

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centre of Eastern Syria. This location is also the most natural to explain the immediate impact of Bardaisan’s views, which are prominently reported in the Grundschrift.31 Now there is a consensus among leading scholars that the Didaskalia was written in the early decades of the third century, before the persecutions of Decius;32 but when was the Grundschrift written? Schmidt dated it to the period between AD 220 and 230, whereas Strecker prefers the somewhat later date of 260.33 Three arguments seem decisive in this connection. As Origen quotes R 10.10.7–13 in his Commentary on Genesis 1.14, the Grundschrift must antedate AD 232.34 We probably also have two termini post quem. The influence of the Book of the laws of countries on the Grundschrift points to a date shortly after the death of Bardaisan (AD 222).35 Finally, it is striking that the author of the Recognitions (9.29.2) still lets Thomas preach in Parthia and not in India. This was the older tradition before the Acts of Thomas moved the apostle to India.36 Now the Acts of Thomas postdate the years AD 218–22 when Bardaisan met an Indian embassy to the Emperor Heliogabalus and composed a book about India and its customs.37 Consequently, the Grundschrift has to be dated to the period between that embassy and the appearance of the Acts of Thomas, that is, the early 220’s. Moreover, it was probably composed in Edessa. It is much more difficult to get a hold on the place and date of composition of the Homilies and Recognitions, although we can reach a terminus ante quem. The Recognitions already appears in the so-called Doctrina Addai,38 which

seen from Martimort’s notes, the idea of a Mesopotamian origin had also occurred to F. Nau and R.H. Connelly, but with less detailed arguments. 31 H.J.W. Drijvers, Bardaisan of Edessa (Assen, 1966) 62, 72–74; F.S. Jones, ‘The Pseudo-Clementines I’, 20–24; Drijvers, History and Religion, Ch. XIV, 322 note  24, with more passages, if somewhat garbled, than B. Rehm, ‘Bardesanes in den Pseudoclementinen’, Philologus 93 (1938) 218–47; N. Kelley, ‘Astrology in the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 59 (2008) 607–29 at 611–15. 32 Martimort, Diaconesses, 32 note   2 (comparing A. Harnack, F. Nau, A. Baumstark, R. Connolly and the latest fullest study by P. Galtier, ‘La date de la Didascalie’, Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique 42, 1947, 315–51); B. Steimer, Vertex Traditionis. Die Gattung der alt­ christ­lichen Kirchenordnungen (Berlin and New York, 1992) 49–52. 33 Schmidt, Studien, 305, 313; Strecker, Judenchristentum, 267. G. Bowersock, Fiction as History (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1994), 139 just notes: ‘early third century at the latest’. 34  Schmidt, Studien, 170–78; J. Rius-Camps, ‘Las Clementinas. Bases filológicas para una nueva interpretación’, Rivista Catalana de Teologia 1 (1976) 79–158 at 154. 35  For a new translation of the Book, see T. Krannich and P. Stein, ‘Das “Buch der Gesetze der Länder” des Bardesanes von Edessa’, ZAC 8 (2004) 203–29. 36  See L.P. van den Bosch, ‘India and the Apostolate of St. Thomas’, in J.N. Bremmer (ed.), The Apocryphal Acts of Thomas (Leuven, 2001) 125–48. 37  See this volume, Chapter  11.1. 38  J. Langen, Die Klemensromane. Ihre Entstehung und ihre Tendenzen aufs neue untersucht (Gotha, 1890) 151–2, accepted by Schmidt, Studien, 291 note  2.

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probably has to be dated to the period around AD 360.39 As the Homilies displays Arian sympathies and the Recognitions contains trinitarian speculations,40 both works can hardly have been composed that much earlier. In fact, if we accept with Schmidt (above) that the author of the Recognitiones was not satisfied with the revision by the Homilies, there is no need to claim much time between them. The combination of translations of the Homilies and Recognitiones in an Edessene manuscript of AD 411 points to an ongoing Edessene interest in the Clementines.41 Moreover, it does seem to suggest that both authors may well have come from Edessa itself, just like the author of the Grundschrift. This interest must have lasted a considerable time. Although we now have only epitomes left of the Syriac translations of the Homilies and Recognitions,42 the eighth-century Nestorian Theodore bar Koni could still lay his hands on a complete copy of the Homilies.43 He came from East Syria.

3.  The Author of the Grundschrift Carl Schmidt has called the author of the Grundschrift ‘ein Kompilator im grossen Stile’.44 This characterisation has been challenged by Han Drijvers (1934– 2002), who rather preferred to think of our author as ‘a learned and well-read representative of the milieu of Syrian Christianity’.45 I am afraid that the truth is on both sides. There can certainly be no doubt that our author was well read in theology, philosophy, astrology and literature. He knew the Marcionite literature, as he fiercely polemicizes against it46 , but he also seems to have known Jewish apologetics.47 Heintze has pointed to the indirect dependence of the

39 Drijvers,

History and Religion, Ch. XV, 173 note  6 . Homilies: Waitz, Pseudoklementinen, 369, who compares H 20.7. Recognitiones: Meyboom, Clemens-roman, 2.122, who compares R 1.45, 69; 2.42; 3.2–11; 8.62. 41  British Museum Add. 12150, edited by W. Frankenberg, Die syrischen Clementinen mit dem griechischen Paralleltext (Leipzig, 1937); F.S. Jones, ‘Evaluating the Latin and Syriac Translations of the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions’, Apocrypha 3 (1992) 237–57, repr. in his Pseudoclementina Elchasaitiaque, 322–41. 42  Cf. F.S. Jones, The Syriac Pseudo-Clementines: An Early Version of the First Christian Novel (Turnhout, 2014). 43  T. Nöldeke, ‘Bar Choni über Homer, Hesiod und Orpheus’, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 53 (1899) 501–7, with a Syriac translation of H 3.3–6. 44 Schmidt, Studien, 18. 45 Drijvers, History and Religion, Ch. XIV, 321. 46  This has often been seen, cf. Meyboom, Clemens-roman, 2.185–88; A. Salles, ‘Simon le magicien ou Marcion?’, VigChris 12 (1958) 197–224; H.J. Schoeps, ‘Judenchristentum und Gnosis’, in U. Bianchi (ed.), Le origini dello Gnosticismo (Leiden, 1970) 528–37 at 531–3; Drij­ vers, History and Religion, Ch. XIV. 47 Heintze, Clemensroman, 45–61, 107–9; Schmidt, Studien, 159, 197–8, 296–8. 40 

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Grund­schrift on Posidonius, but also to its interest in Platonic and Aristotelian literature, if sometimes refracted by a Jewish source.48 Successive scholars have also been successful in distinguishing intertextual references to the ancient novel in the Grundschrift,49 including those by Chariton (first half of the first century AD), Antonius Diogenes (end of the first century AD), Xenophon of Ephesus (second half of the second century AD), and Iamblichus (AD 170s or 180s) as well as the Historia Apollonii regis Tyrii from Tarsus (shortly after 215).50 It is perhaps not surprising that from these novels the most recent one, the Historia Apollonii regis Tyrii, has been compared in particular detail.51 Apparently, our author tried to be up-to-date in his own publication. Such a Christian interest in pagan novels should not really surprise us: both Bardaisan and the author of the Acts of Thomas had read Achilles Ta­ tius.52 Evidently, Greek cultural influence in early third-century Edessa was not limited to mythology or Platonic philosophy,53 but had also extended into the sphere of the belles lettres – even in Christian circles. This many-sided interest did not make our author into a polished writer; on the contrary, his work is full of inconsistencies. But we should remember that one of our best experts of the novel, Tomas Hägg, has noted that in both the Historia Apollonii and Heliodorus ‘there prevails an unashamed negligence of motivation and consistency’.54 This insight, difficult to refute, should make us very reticent in reconstructing predecessors of the Grundschrift. In fact, in retrospect it is quite amazing to what extent our learned nineteenth- and early twentieth-century colleagues have monomaniacally insisted on only two or three models from which the Grundschrift would have more or less borrowed 48 Heintze,

Clemensroman, 76–110. the indebtedness to the novel, see also M. Vielberg, ‘Centre and Periphery in the Ancient and the Christian Novel – A Comparison between the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies and Recognitions’, in J.N. Bremmer (ed.), The Pseudo-Clementines (Leuven, 2010) 256–85. For the dates of the Greek novels, see my ‘The Novel and the Apocryphal Acts: Place, Time and Readership’, in H. Hofmann and M. Zimmerman (eds), Groningen Colloquia on the Novel IX (Groningen, 1998) 157–180 at 167–71, not taken into account by E.L. Bowie, ‘The Chronology of the Earlier Greek Novels since B.E. Perry: Revisions and Precisions’, Ancient Narrative 2 (2002) 47–63. 50 Heintze, Der Clemensroman, 114–38; K. Kerényi, Die griechisch-orientalische Romanliteratur in religionsgeschichtlicher Beleuchtung (Darmstadt, 19622) 78; Vielberg, Klemens, 111–4; Boulhol, ‘La conversion’, 156–8. For his use of the pagan novel in general, see also M.J. Edwards, ‘The Clementina: A Christian Response to the Pagan Novel’, CQ 42 (1992) 459–74. 51  Historia Apollonii: B. Perry, The Ancient Romances (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967) 294–324 (who still thinks that the Grundschrift predated the Historia); T. Hägg, The Novel in Antiquity (Oxford, 1983) 163; N. Holzberg, The Ancient Novel (London and New York, 1995) 24; Vielberg, Klemens, 139–44. 52  Bremmer, ‘Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus in Christian East Syria’, 21–25. 53  G. Bowersock, Hellenism in Late Antiquity (Ann Arbor, 1990) 31 f. 54 Hägg, The Novel, 152; note also V. Hefti, Zur Erzählungstechnik in Heliodors Aethio­ pica (Vienna, 1940); Jones, ‘Eros and Astrology in the Periodoi Petrou’, 74 f. 49  For

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its plot and material. Pouderon’s speculations still very much stand in this nineteenth-century tradition of a ‘stemmatological’ reconstruction of the sources. In hindsight, it is not difficult to see that this approach was conditioned by the enormous success of Lachmann’s method. Yet a reconstruction of manuscripts with an archetype is not the same as a reconstruction of sources, where the contemporary concept of intertextuality is much more useful.55 This is easier to see in the case of the Grundschrift’s literary dependency than in that of its theological sources, which are no longer extant. As more than 150 years of modern scholarship have demonstrated, the attempts at recovery only build houses on sand, as no rock is available. In short, the author of the Grundschrift was clearly well read, but he was also a compilator in that he does not satisfy modern standards of consistency and fluent transitions. That does not make him a less interesting author, however, as a discussion of some aspects of magic in his work may show.

4. Magic A proper discussion of magic in the Clementines must not only discuss its treatment of the origin of magic, but also the practitioners, their practices such as exorcism and necromancy,56 the objects of their magic, the reactions of the public and the authorial evaluation of magic. It would transcend the space allotted to me, if I indeed discussed all these aspects. I will therefore limit myself to a few observations and start with the origin of magic according to the Christians. Although they sometimes closely followed pagan tradition by ascribing the invention of magic to humans, such as the Persian Ostanes, the Greek Typhon or the Egyptian Nectabis, in other cases they followed their Jewish predecessors by ascribing the invention to the Fallen Angels.57 In the Recognitions, the reader is slowly prepared for the inventor of magic, as it starts with mentioning that a descendent of Noah in the fourteenth generation was the inventor of magic, the builder of an altar dedicated to demons, and the inventor of animal sacrifice (R 1.30.4). Later we learn that the inventor really was Noah’s son Ham, who taught the art to his son Mestraim (R 4.27; H 8.3: Mestrem), the ancestor of the Egyptians, Babylonians and Persians. In the Old Testament, Mesraim, ‘Egypt’, is the second son of Ham (Gen 10.6). Anyone who looks at the critical apparatus of the Göttingen Septuagint edition of Genesis ad 55 

As is rightly argued by Vielberg, Klemens, 193 f. the origin of the term ‘exorcism’, see Z. Ritoók, ‘Horkos und Exorkismos’, Studia Aegyptiaca 14 (1992) 503–8; A. Zografou, ’Les formules d’adjuration dans les Papyrus Grecs Magiques’, in M. De Haro Sanchez (ed.), Écrire la magie dans l’antiquité (Liège, 2015) 267–80. 57 Humans: Tertullian, De anima 57.1. Fallen Angels: Tertullian, De cultu feminarum 1.2.1, 2.10.2–3, cf. G. Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic (Cambridge, 2007) 81. 56  For

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loc. will be surprised how varied the spelling of the name actually is: we find Mesrem, Misraeim, Mesrai, Mesrain, Mestrem, Metraim, Messaraeim, and many others. It may look strange to us that the Pseudo-Clementines spells the name in two different ways, but we find the same in, for example, Jubilees, where Ham’s son is called both Mestrem (7.13) and Mesrem (9.1). Different scribes had perhaps different recollections of the name, depending on the individual manuscript of their text. In any case, the difference in spelling may imply that the author of the Grundschrift knew some Hebrew. This is perhaps not so surprising in the light of his possible Jewish connections (below). According to Recognitions (4.27), his contemporaries called Mestraim Zoroaster, but the Homilies are slightly more detailed: ‘Of that family there was born in due time somebody who took up with magical practices, called Nebrod, who chose, giant-like, to devise things in opposition to God. Him the Greeks have called Zoroaster … He, after the deluge, being ambitious of sovereignty, and being a great magician, by magical arts compelled the world-guiding star of the wicked one who now rules’ (H 9.4). The devil did not accept this competition and destroyed him. ‘Therefore the magician Nebrod … for this circumstance had his name changed to Zoroaster, because of the living (ζῶσαν) stream of the star (ῥοήν/ἀστέρος) being poured upon him’ (H 9.5). The passage is an interesting combination of later Jewish speculations on Nimrod and the attempts of the Greeks to make sense of the name of Zarathustra, to whom they ascribed the origin of mageia. The author of the Recognitions seems to have slightly abridged here the Grund­schrift, since the Homilies (9.3–5) is less informative about the number of generations but otherwise provides a more coherent, elaborate etymology of Zoroaster and a Euhemerist explanation of his deification.58 The Homilies identifies Zoroaster with Nimrod, which identification we also find in the Recognitiones (4.29.1), which, in addition, identifies Nimrod with Ninus, the fictional founder of Nineveh. The author of the Grundschrift most likely derived his knowledge of Nimrod from Jewish traditions, which indeed connect Nimrod with Nineveh and with Zoroaster as the introducer of the worship of fire. The interesting side of this conclusion is that this information hardly occurred in the best known Jewish books, but in targumim or haggadic midrashim.59 In other words, the notice suggests a more than superficial knowledge of Jewish traditions. The magician par excellence in the Clementines is Simon Magus, whose position, as has often been seen, derives from the Acts of Peter. 60 This was probably the most recent Christian novel to have come to the attention of the author of 58 

For the etymology of Zoroaster, see this volume, Chapter  13, note  6. van der Horst, Essays on the Jewish World of Early Christianity (Fribourg and Göttingen, 1990) 225 (Nineveh) and 230 (Zoroaster, magic). 60  For Simon Magus, see the bibliography in this volume, Chapter  13 note  53. 59  P.W.

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the Grundschrift,61 which once again points to our author being somebody who liked to follow the trends of literary fashion. The connection of Simon with magic is found first in Irenaeus (Adv. haer. 1.23.4), who imputed magic to the followers of Simon, just as he imputed practising magic as a way to reach gnosis to Simon’s successor Menander (1.23.5), but the author of the Acts of Peter was the first to transform Simon himself into a magician. It has gradually become clear that magic was already a flourishing business in the Palestine of Jesus’ days, and it stayed that way in Late Antiquity.62 Our sources about Samaritan magic start to flow only in Late Antiquity when the Samaritans also appear to be steeped deeply into magic, 63 but they probably were already so around AD 200, and this may have been a contributing factor. Considering the long survival of the Homilies in Edessa (§  3), it is perhaps not surprising that precisely in this city the memory to Simon Magus also lasted a long time. From the proceedings of the second session of the Ecumenical Synod of Ephesus of the year AD 449, we learn about the removal of the Nestorian bishop Ibas of Edessa. When the local clergy had come to the council-chamber of Flavius Chaereas, the Count of the Province of Osrhoene,64 to demand the dismissal of Bishop Ibas, they shouted: ‘No one accept Ibas the Bishop! No one accept Nestorius! No one accept Simon Magus’ adherent!’65 It is quite remarkable with how many different magical tricks Simon is credited. Peter enumerates them: ‘making statues walk, and rolling himself on burning coals, and becoming a snake, and being changed into a goat, and flying in the air’ (H 2.34). As if this is not enough, Berenice adds: ‘For he astonishes the whole city every day, by making shades and ghosts appear in the midst of the market-place; and when he walks abroad, statues move, and many shadows go before him, which, he says, are souls of the dead. And many who attempted to prove him an impostor he speedily reconciled to him’ (H 4.4). It is impossible to discuss in detail all these tricks, and I will limit myself here to necromancy. When in the beginning of the Clementines (H, R 1.5) Clement is profoundly disturbed by the problem of the soul’s immortality, he decides to travel to Egypt, and ‘to become friendly with the hierophants of the shrines, and with 61 

For its date, ca. AD 170/180, see this volume, Chapter  9.3. See Bohak, Ancient Jewish magic; G. Faßbeck, ‘Vom Mosaik zur Magie. Die Synagogeninschrift von En Gedi im Kontext des spätantiken Christentums’, in A. von Dobbeler et al. (eds), Religionsgeschichte des Neuen Testaments. Festschrift für Klaus Berger zum 60. Ge­ burts­tag (Tübingen and Basel, 2000) 93–117. 63  G. Lacerenza, ‘Jewish Magicians and Christian Clients in Late Antiquity: The Testimony of Amulets and Inscriptions’, in L.V. Rutgers (ed.), What Athens Has to Do with Jerusalem (Leuven, 2002) 393–419 at 403 f. 64  J.R. Martindale, The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire II (Cambridge, 1989) 282. 65  J. Flemming, Akten der ephesinischen Synode vom Jahre 449 (Göttingen, 1915) 19.1–2. 62 

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the prophets; and I shall look for and find a magician, and persuade him with large bribes to call up a soul, the so-called necromancy, 66 pretending to inquire about some business. And the inquiry shall be for the purpose of learning whether the soul is immortal’. Clement’s choice of place is hardly surprising. Egypt was notorious as a country with a long priestly tradition of magic, and Clement mentions to Appion that he had consulted an Egyptian magician to cure himself of love-sickness (H 4.3). Simon Magus also stayed in Egypt to practise magic (H 2.24), and his miracles were compared to those of the Egyptian magicians with whom Moses had to compete (R 3.56).67 Egypt had this reputation of magic not only in Greek and Roman culture but also in Jewish circles, since according to the Talmud nine-tenths of the world’s witchcraft had descended on Egypt. 68 Both Celsus and the Talmud reproached Jesus for having learned magic in Egypt. 69 Within Egypt, it was the old religious capitals Memphis (the secreta Memphis of Lucan, 6.449) and Thebes that were the centre of magic. Pseudo-Democritus summoned the famous magus Ostanes in a temple of Memphis;70 Bishop Cyprian (Confessiones 12) had spent ten years with the Memphitic priests training to become a magician; Lucian’s lover of lies (Lovers of Lies 34–6) had even lived for twenty-three years in subterranean chambers of Memphis, where Isis had trained him to become a magician. Still in the fourth century, when Jerome (Vita Hilarionis 12) wanted to describe a lovesick youth, he let him travel to Memphis to learn magic tricks to conquer the ‘pious girl of his not so pious heart’.71 Compared with Memphis, Thebes is less often mentioned in literature in this respect, but Thessalos (1.13–4) travelled to Thebes to question the high priests (cf. Clement’s hierophants [an Eleusinian term]), and Annubion, ‘the inseparable companion’ of Simon (H 14.11), supposedly came from Thebes (§  3).72 Clement did not pursue necromancy, but our curiosity about this magical practice is soon satisfied. In fact, we hear it directly from Simon Magus himself. His report is largely identical in the Homilies and Recognitions and therefore finds its origins in the Grundschrift: ‘I have’, said Simon, ‘made the soul of a boy, pure, violently slain and invoked by secret adjurations, to assist me; and it does all that I command.’ ‘But’, said I, ‘is it possible for a soul to do these things?’ He answered: ‘I would have you know this, that the soul of man

66 

For ancient necromancy, see the bibliography in this volume, Chapter  13 note  9. For the contest between Moses and the Egyptian magicians, see the bibliography in this volume, Chapter  13 note  73. 68  See this volume, Chapter  13.1. 69 Origen, CC 1.28, 38, 46; Talmud, bSanh 107b; Arnobius, Adv. nat. 1.43; B. Kollmann, Jesus und die Christen als Wundertäter (Göttingen, 1996) 179–81. 70  J. Bidez and F. Cumont, Les mages hellénisés, 2  vols (Paris, 1938) 2.311–5. 71  Note also G. Maspero, Les contes populaires de l’Égypte ancienne (Paris, 19114) 425 f. 72  For Annubion, see this volume, Chapter  16.2. 67 

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holds the next place after God, when once it is set free from the darkness of his body. And immediately it acquires prescience: that is why it is invoked for necromancy’ (R 2.2).

In the Homilies the matter is painted in even more lurid colours, and Simon himself is turned into the murderer: For he even began to commit murder as he himself disclosed to us, as a friend to friends, that, having separated the soul of a child from its own body by horrid incantations, as his assistant for the exhibition of anything that he pleased, and having drawn the likeness of the boy, he has it set up in the inner room where he sleeps, saying that he once formed the boy of air, by divine arts, and having painted his likeness, he gave him back again to the air (H 2.26; see also H 2.30).

Indeed, from the various forms of magic, Egypt was particularly associated with necromancy. The older Pliny (NH 30.18) mentions that Apion had called up shades to ask Homer about the name of his country and parents.73 Thessalos travelled to Thebes for necromancy, as we have seen; Apuleius (Met. 2.28) introduces the Egyptian necromancer Zatchlas, and Heliodorus (6.14–5) has an old Egyptian woman consult her son about his vanished brother. This connection between Egypt and necromancy was probably not purely fictional, as the mention of the Alexandrian Apion already suggests. We find the practice also mentioned in an Egyptian astrological handbook (Ps.Manetho, Apot. 4.213) and in the Egyptian magical papyri.74 In short, the author of the Grundschrift draws here on existing sources. Yet we seem to see here a combination of three different aspects from magical practices that are normally kept separate. First, Aristotle assisted in a meeting, as his pupil Clearchus (fr. 7 Wehrli 2) reports, where a magician drew out the soul from a boy with a rod.75 Second, the corpses of murdered persons, biaiothanatoi, preferably young ones, ahôroi, were frequently used in magic.76 And third, it was traditionally believed that magicians were accompanied by a demon that helped them perform their magic.77 It seems that the Homilies with its subsequent report about Simon fabricating a statue looking like this boy has elaborated the original from a source that is no longer clear to us. In any case, we cannot fail to notice that Simon’s feats as enumerated above also appear only in the Homilies. It seems that the later versions have made the magical side of Simon more prominent, as magic and necromancy became more suspect. Where did Simon perform his magic? It is interesting to note that he is active on the market, as we have seen above. And indeed, in the first centuries of our 73 

For Apion, see this volume, Chapter  16.3. PGM IV.222, 227, 249; F. Cumont, L’Egypte des astrologues (Brussels, 1937) 166 f. 75  The use of boys as mediums by magicians is well attested in the Roman period, cf. J.N. Bremmer, The Early Greek Concept of the Soul (Princeton, 1983) 50; S.I. Johnston, ‘Charming Children: The Use of the Child in Ancient Divination’, Arethusa 34 (2001) 97–118. 76  F. Graf, Magic in the Ancient World (Cambridge MA, 1997) 150. 77  See this volume, Chapter  13.1. 74 

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era magic was still openly performed in theatres, crossroads, temples and public squares. We find this tendency of course very clearly in the Acts of Peter where the ‘shoot-out’ takes place on the Forum Iulium.78 It is only towards the end of antiquity, when under Christian influence magic becomes marginalised, that theurgists and magicians start to opt for secrecy.79 It is also part of this public character of magic that crowds can be incited against the magician. In the Acts of Peter (28) the crowd demands that Simon Magus be burned, and such a demand and reaction was not unusual in antiquity.80 In the Homilies people are, so to speak, somewhat more humane. The magicians are expelled from Berytus with clubs but no one is killed (7.10). This reaction is different from that at the end of the Recognitions (10.55.3), where the centurion Cornelius, known from the Acts of the Apostles (10.1), relates that the emperor has given an order to find all magicians in Rome and the provinces and put them to death. Cornelius therefore suggests that people tell Simon Magus that he has been sent to arrest him and have him punished. In the parallel passage in the Homilies (20.13), Cornelius tells that ‘the emperor, having put to death many magicians, and having received information in regard to him, has sent me to search him (Simon Magus) out, that he may punish him as he punished the magicians before him; while those of your party who are with him must report to him, as if they had heard it from a secret source, that I have been sent to apprehend him’. The passage is absent from the Arabic epitome of the Recognitions, which is based on the original, currently lost Greek version of the Recognitions.81 As we know that the end of the Latin Recognitions was taken from the later Homilies,82 the imperial persecution described in the closing stages of the Clementines may well have been inspired by the increasing repression of magic in Late Antiquity.83 Finally, the striking attention to magic and Simon Magus in the Clementines cannot be separated from the problem of the Christians to differentiate themselves from their pagan competition. The line between miracles and magic was of course a thin one. We can see that well in some early Jewish writings that speak of Jesus as a magician but do not deny his power to perform miracles.84 In 78 

See this volume, Chapter  13.3. Frenschkowski, ‘Religion auf dem Markt’, in M. Hutter et al. (eds), Haeresis. Festschrift für Karl Hoheisel (Münster, 2002) 140–58; this volume, Chapter  13.3. 80  S. Panayotakis, ‘Three Death Scenes in Apollonius of Tyre’, in idem et al. (eds), The Ancient Novel and Beyond (Leiden, 2003) 143–57; this volume, Chapter  13.1. 81  For the text, see M.D. Gibson, ‘Apocrypha Sinaitica’, Studia Sinaitica 5 (1896) 15–54; G. Gobillot, ‘Two Arabic Epitomes of the Pseudo-Clementines’, in J.-M. Roessli and T. Nicklas (eds), Christian Apocrypha. Receptions of the New Testament in Ancient Christian Apocrypha (Göttingen, 2014) 213–32. 82 Schmidt, Studien, 89. 83  For these measures, see this volume, Chapter  13.1. 84  M. Smith, Jesus the Magician (London, 1978); interesting observations, E. Bammel, Judaica et Paulina (Tübingen, 1997) 12–13. 79  M.

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the AAA the difference is marked only on the narrative level: Peter and Andrew perform their miracles without much ado, whereas the pagan miracle workers have to use elaborate gestures or incantations.85 It is therefore interesting to see that in the Homilies Peter distinguishes between useless and philanthropic miracles: Those, then, are useless signs, which you say that Simon did. But I say that making statues walk, and rolling himself on burning coals, and becoming a snake, and being changed into a goat, and flying in the air, and all such things, not being for the healing of man, are of a nature to deceive many. But the miracles of compassionate truth are philanthropic, such as you have heard that the Lord did, and that I after Him accomplish by my prayers; at which most of you have been present, some being freed from all kinds of diseases, and some from demons, some having their hands restored, and some their feet, some recovering their eyesight, and some their hearing, and whatever else a man can do, being of a philanthropic spirit (2.34). 86

It is highly interesting that the same distinction is quoted in the Late Antique Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum (ad Mt 7.16) from about AD 400. As this commentary knew the Clementines, directly or indirectly,87 the distinction may well have been an invention of that so elusive author of that so elusive Grundschrift. However this may be, the problem of magic in the Pseudo-Clementines has clearly not yet been exhausted. Like the problem of its source and the precise nature of its two branches, the Homilies and Recognitions, the Pseudo-Clementines still poses many riddles.

85 

See this volume, Chapter  13.3. In Christian fiction, it is always stressed that the Christians, apostles or otherwise, performed their miracles ‘for free’: see this volume, Chapter  13.3. 87 Schmidt, Studien, 177–8; B. Rehm, ‘Zur Entstehung der pseudoclementinischen Schriften’, ZNW 37 (1938) 77–184 at 109 f. 86 

Chapter 16

Apion and Anoubion in the Homilies When the protagonist of the Pseudo-Clementine novel, Clement, arrived in Tyre together with his companions Aquila and Nicetas to investigate what Simon Magus was saying in order to prepare Peter for a confrontation with him,1 their arrival proved to be in vain, since ‘in the morning, a friend of Bernice came and said that Simon had set sail for Sidon. From his pupils he had left behind him Appion Pleistonikes, a man of Alexandria, a grammarian by profession (whom I knew as being a friend of my father), Annoubion the Diospolitan, an astrologer, and Athenodorus the Athenian, who was a dedicated follower of the doctrine of Epicurus’ (Homilies 4.6).2 Both Appion and Annoubion are also known from other sources, and recent papyri have enriched our knowledge of them. In this chapter, I will look at their pre-Clementine careers and briefly compare these with their representations in the Pseudo-Clementines. I will start with their ‘partner in crime’ Athenodorus, who is the most obscure member of this infamous triad.

1. Athenodorus In the Homilies, Athenodorus is regularly mentioned in company with Simon Magus, Appion or Annoubion,3 but he does not have a life of his own. Nowhere do we receive any information about his ideas, and he remains a mere puppet on the Pseudo-Clementine stage. Dirk Obbink persuasively notes that ‘Athenodorus of Athens is otherwise unknown; perhaps his name was chosen for its geographical associations, adding Athens to Alexandria and Diospolis, and implying that Simon drew followers from a broad spectrum of centres of learning’.4 However, as Appion and Annoubion were chosen for their backgrounds in historical Egyptian intellectuals, Athenodorus was probably modeled on the

1 

For Simon Magus, see the bibliography in this volume, Chapter  13, note  52. The translations of the Recognitions (= R) and Homilies (= H) are adapted from those of the Ante-Nicene Christian library, vols 3 and 17 (Edinburgh, 1868 and 1870, respectively). 3  H 6.1, 7.9, 16.1, 20.13, 17, 21–22 = R 10.55, 59, 63–64. 4 D. Obbink, ‘Anoubion, Elegiacs’, in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, ed. N. Gonis et al., vol. LXVI (Oxford, 1999) 57–109 at 61. 2 

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philosopher Athenodorus from Cilician Tarsus, the teacher of Augustus.5 Although we do not have sufficient information about him to explain that choice, we should not forget that the Pseudo-Clementines are fiction and do not necessarily aim at providing precise historical knowledge. In any case, labeling him as an Epicurean, whereas he actually was a Stoic, was surely meant to make Athenodorus immediately suspect in the eyes of the Christian (and Jewish!) reading public. 6

2. Annoubion Annoubion is introduced as ‘an astrologer’ (τινὰ ἀστρολόγον) and an inhabitant of Diospolis, but later he is characterised as ‘the best of the astrologers’ and ‘inseparable’ from Simon Magus (H 14.11). That is the sum total of what we are told about Annoubion. He is no longer an important figure in the Pseudo-Clementines, and his presence in the Recognitions (10.52, 56, 58–9, 62–3) is clearly due to the influence of the Homilies.7 Yet his role must have been much more prominent in the elusive Grundschrift of the Pseudo-Clementines. Inspired by Heintze,8 Schmidt has pointed out that the Grundschrift contained a disputation on the genesis, the moment of birth that determined man’s life according to astrology.9 This debate must have taken place at Laodicea and was abbreviated by the Recognitions (8.2.2). In the last book of the Homilies, Peter says: ‘God arranges our affairs in a most satisfactory manner; for we have with us Annoubion the astrologer. When we arrive at Antioch, he will discuss the genesis, giving us his genuine opinions as a friend’ (H 20.21). Yet, as in earlier passages 5  For Athenodorus, see C. Cichorius, Römische Studien (Leipzig and Berlin, 1922) 279–82; B.L. Hijmans, ‘Athenodorus on the Categories and a Pun on Athenodorus’, in J. Mansfeld and L.M. de Rijk (eds), Kephalaion. Studies in Greek philosophy and its continuation offered to C. J. de Vogel (Assen, 1975) 104–14; M.J. Griffin, ‘Which “Athenodorus” Commented on Aristoteles’ Categories?’, CQ 63 (2013) 199–208. 6  For the Christian and Jewish rejection of Epicurus, see W. Schmid, ‘Epikur’, in RAC 5 (1962) 682–819 at 774–803 and F. Niewöhner, ‘Epikureer sind Atheisten. Zur Geschichte des Wortes apikuros in der jüdischen Philosophie’, in idem and O. Pluta (eds), Atheismus in Mittelalter und in der Renaissance (Wiesbaden, 1999) 11–22. 7  C. Schmidt, Studien zu den Pseudo-Clementinen (Leipzig, 1929) 70 f. 8  W. Heintze, Der Klemensroman und seine griechischen Quellen (Leipzig, 1914) 49. 9 Schmidt, Studien, 210–13. For genesis: H 4.12 and passim; astrological authors, like Vettius Valens, and O. Neugebauer and H.B. van Hoesen, Greek Horoscopes (Philadelphia, 1959) passim; in inscriptions, L. Robert, Opera Minora Selecta II (Amsterdam, 1968) 988–9; J. and L. Robert, Revue des Études Grecques 89 (1976) 502; M. Popovic´, Reading the Human Body (Leiden, 2007) 50. The term was so normal in astrological literature that it was also used in Latin: Petronius, Sat. 39.8, cf. M.G. Cavalca, I grecismi nel Satyricon di Petronio (Bologna, 2001) 91 (with thanks to Stelios Panayotakis); Pliny, NH 36.19; Juvenal 6.579, 14.248; Augustine, C. Faust. 2.5.212; Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri 38 RA; AE 1903.377, 1905.25, 1916.7–8, 1968.455; CIL II 2 5.50; CIL III.13529.

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(H 14.12, 20.11), the debate never materialises and the reader of the Homilies is left unsatisfied in this respect. Apparently, in the Grundschrift Annoubion was the opponent of Clemens in a debate about astrology, just as Athenodorus must have been the opponent in a debate about providence. Sufficient material has survived to see that Annoubion was modelled on a well-known Egyptian astrologer, Anoubion, who used to be located in the time of Nero.10 The Pseudo-Clementine spelling of his name with its doubling of the n, Anoubion/Annoubion, will have been invented by the author of the Grundschrift, as he also wrote Appion in stead of Apion (§  3) and Mattidia (H 13 etc.) instead of Matidia, the name of the daughter of Trajan’s sister, whose own daughter Matidia was the sister-in-law of Hadrian.11 Unfortunately, we do not have much information about the historical Anoubion. He has a common Egyptian-Greek name,12 which is formed from the root of Anubis,13 the jackal-headed Egyptian divinity,14 who has also given us the names Anoubarion, Anoubas, Anoubiaina and Anoubias.15 The name of the god was already used for theophoric names in the Middle Kingdom and remained productive well into Coptic times.16 I see therefore no reason to consider Annoubion a pseudonym, as has been suggested by Dirk Obbink.17 Annoubion’s origin from Diospolis fits the Egyptian background of his name, but Schmidt states that we do not know which of the three cities with the name Diospolis is meant.18 However, we may firmly locate Annoubion in the old cap-

10  E. Riess, ‘Anubion’, in RE 1 (1894) 2321–2; W. Gundel and H.G. Gundel, Astrologumena: die astrologische Literatur in der Antike und ihre Geschichte (Wiesbaden, 1966) 155 (who even consider an earlier date possible), 380; D. Pingree, Dorotheus Sidonius: Carmen Astrologicum (Stuttgart, 1976) 344: ‘saeculo secundo vel tertio p.C.n. floruisse videtur’. 11  PIR 2 M 367; H. Temporini-Gräfin Vitzthum, ‘Matidia [1], [2]’, in Der Neue Pauly 7 (1999) 1025, updated by F. Chauson, ‘Une dedicace monumentale provenant du théâtre de Suessa Aurunca, due à Matidia la Jeune, belle-soeur de l’empereur Hadrien’, Journal des Savants 2008, 234–59. 12  P.M. Fraser and E. Matthews, A Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, vol. I (Oxford, 1987) 42; SEG 40.1568; I.Kios 22; passim in the papyri. 13  In later times, Anubis is also associated with astrology, cf. W. Gundel, Neue astrologi­ sche Texte des Hermes Trismegistos (Munich, 1936) 307. 14  For Anubis see B. Altenmüller, ‘Anubis’, in W. Helck and E. Otto (eds), Lexikon der Ägyptologie I (Wiesbaden 1975) 327–33. 15  For Anoubiaina see SEG 40.1568, 36, 56; the other names can be found passim in the papyri. 16  H. Ranke, Die ägyptischen Personennamen I (Glückstadt, 1935) 36–7 and II (Glückstadt and New York, 1952) 112. 17  Contra: Obbink, ‘Anoubion, Elegiacs’, 58, 61, who ascribes the suggestion to Weinstock. However, S. Weinstock, ‘A New Anubio Fragment’, Chronique d’Egypte 27 (1952) 210–17 at 216–7 considered the possibility but rejected it on the basis of Anoubion being a normal Egyptian name. 18 Schmidt, Studien, 297 note  1.

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ital of Egypt, which the Greeks called Thebes,19 since the city was well known for its temples and esoteric wisdom, and the autobiography of Thessalos, the magician, mentions Thebes as a place for necromancy.20 Obbink notes that it is unlikely that Anoubion is to be dated after the second century. This argument can be strengthened by an observation of Hermann Usener (1834–1905) in 1900 that traces of Anoubion can be found in Pseudo-Manetho’s Apotelesmatika,21 which has a firm terminus post quem of AD 80, as the author provides his own horoscope.22 The time of Nero, therefore, still seems the most likely one.23 Gradually the content of the work of the historical Anoubion has become clearer.24 In 1887 it was noted that Anoubion was known to Firmicus Maternus in his Mathesis (III.11), and in 1900 Wilhelm Kroll (1869–1939) argued that in his Book VI Firmicus had used material of Anoubion, on the basis of correspondences between Firmicus and a prose paraphrase of material ‘from Anoubion’.25 In 1914 Werner Heintze (1889–1914), one of the many scholarly victims of the First World War, compared four astrological schemata in the Recognitions with the meagre fragments of Anoubion published by A. Olivieri (1872–1950) in 19  Thebes as Diospolis: A. Geissen and M. Weber, ‘Untersuchungen zu den ägyptischen Namenprägungen’, ZPE 144 (2003) 277–300 at 292 f. 20  Thessalos 12, ed. H.-V. Friedrich, Thessalos von Tralles (Meisenheim, 1968). For the autobiography, see A.J. Festugière, L’Hermétisme et mystique païenne (Paris, 1967) 141–80 (with French translation and commentary); J.Z. Smith, Map is not Territory (Leiden, 1978) 172–89; G. Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes (Princeton, 19932) 162–5; M.W. Dickie, Magic and Magicians in the Greco-Roman World (London and New York, 2001) 216–7; I. Moyer, ‘Thessalos of Tralles and Cultural Exchange’, in S. Noegel et al. (eds), Prayer, Magic, and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World (University Park, PA, 2003) 39–56 and Egypt and the Limits of Hellenism (Cambridge, 2011) 208–73, P. Harland, ‘Journeys in Pursuit of Divine Wisdom: Stories of Thessalos and Other Seekers’, in id. (ed.), Travel and Religion in Antiquity (Waterloo, 2011) 123–40. 21  H. Usener, Kleine Schriften IV (Leipzig and Berlin, 1913) 329–31; note also the discussion of Anoubion in the correspondence of Usener with Franz Cumont: C. Bonnet, Le “grand atelier de la science”, 2  vols (Brussels and Rome, 2005) 2.196–197 (letters of 26–5 and 2–81899), 201 (letter of 2–8-1900); A. Ludwich, ‘Das elegische Lehrgedicht des Astrologen Anubion und die Manethoniana’, Philologus 63 (1904) 116–34 at 129 f. For Pseudo-Manetho’s borrowing of various sources, see Weinstock, ‘A New Anubio Fragment’, 216 note  1. 22  For Pseudo-Manetho, see the editions published by Didot (Paris, 1851, 1858); P.Oxy. 31.2546; P.J. Sijpesteijn, ‘Manetho, Apotelesmatika IV 231–235’, ZPE 21 (1976) 182; The Apotelesmatika of Manetho, ed. and transl. by R. Lopilato (Diss. Brown University, Providence, 1998). For Pseudo-Manetho’s date of birth, see R. Garnett, ‘On the Date of the ’Αποτελεσματικὰ of Manetho’, Journal of Philology 23 (1875) 238–40; Neugebauer and Van Hoesen, Greek Horoscopes, 92. 23  S. Heilen, ‘Anubio Reconsidered’, Aestimatio 7 (2010) 127–92 at 137 f. 24  For the historiography of this paragraph, I am indebted to Obbink, ‘Anoubion, Elegiacs’, 62. 25  A. Engelbrecht, Hephästion von Theben und sein astrologisches Compendium (Vienna, 1887) 36; W. Kroll, in Catalogus codicum astrologorum Graecorum, vol.  2 (Brussels, 1900) 159–60. However, the material derives from Dorotheus, see now Dorotheus, fr. II 14–33 (pp.  345–67 Pingree); Heilen, ‘Anubio Reconsidered’, 154–56.

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the Catalogus codicum astrologorum Graecorum (= CCAG: II, 202–3, 208 = F 8 Obbink = F 10 Schubert).26 1921 saw the publication of an elegiac distich of Anoubion in the work of the early Byzantine astrologer Rhetorios (CCAG VIII 4, 208 = F 7 Obbink = F 9 Schubert), 27 and in 1952, on the basis of these publications, Stefan Weinstock (1901–1971) could connect the astrological elegiacs of P. Schubart 15 and Firmicus VI.31.78–85, pointing to Anoubion as their author (F 6 Obbink = F 8 Schubert).28 In 1991, Simonetta Feraboli identified several other passages in which Anoubion and Firmicus VI coincided, 29 and in 1999 Dirk Obbink’s publication of P.Oxy. 66.4503–4505 (= F 1, 3–5 Obbink = F 1, 3–5 Schubert) from Anoubion’s book III definitively demonstrated that Firmicus II.4.1–6 and VI.29–31 are an almost word-for-word translation of Anoubion.30 Obbink also noted that the predictions in Recognitions 10.9 are authentically Anoubionic, both in the content of the horoscopes and their form: he even included them as fragments and has attempted a Greek version in elegiacs in his Teubner edition of Anoubion (= F 14 Obbink).31 Finally, Heilen has made a persuasive case that Anoubion and Dorotheus went back to a common source, which still needs to be convincingly identified.32 All this work has now resulted in a new edition by Paul Schubert, which will be the basis for future investigations in this elusive astrologer, although it is clearly not yet the last word on the text.33 It should be clear by now that the author of the Grundschrift, when looking for an astrologer as opponent of Clement, had chosen an Egyptian astrologer whose work, a didactic poem in elegiacs of at least four books,34 was widely circulating in his time, witness the number of papyri.35 It is not immediately clear, though, why the author of the Grundschrift dedicated so much attention to astrology. Two possibilities come to mind. First, astrology was so pervasive in Greco-Roman society that it played a big role in many ancient novels. This was especially the case in the original Greek version of the Historia Apollonii 26 Heintze,

Der Klemensroman, 109 f. Rhetorios (ca. AD 620) see D. Pingree, ‘Antiochus and Rhetorius’, CPh 72 (1977) 203–23 at 220–22 and ‘From Alexandria to Baghda¯d to Byzantium. The Transmission of Astrology’, International Journal of the Classical Tradition 8 (2001–02) 3–37. 28  Weinstock, ‘A New Anubio Fragment’. 29  S. Feraboli, ‘Un utile confronto tra Anubio e Firmico’, Paideia 46 (1991) 201–5. 30  See also E. Calderón and J.A. Clúa Serena, ‘Un nuevo fragmento del poema astrológico de Anubión de Dióspolis: texto, traduccion y notas’, ΜΗΝΗ 3 (2003) 251–66. 31 Anubio, Carmen astrologicum elegiacum, ed. D. Obbink (Munich, 2006), to be read with the reviews of R. Beck, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2007.09.28 and W. Hübner, Gnomon 80 (2008) 682–5 as well as with the very detailed corrections and additions by Heilen, ‘Anubio Reconsidered’, 140–72. 32  Heilen, ‘Anubio Reconsidered’, 129–38. 33  Anoubion, ed P. Schubert (Paris, 2015), to be read with the review by C. De Stefani in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2016.10.23. 34  For the content of the work, see Obbink, ‘Anoubion, Elegiacs’, 58 f. 35  Heilen, ‘Anubio Reconsidered’, 139. 27  For

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Regis Tyri36 , which recent research has now established as an important model for the Grundschrift.37 Consequently, the author of the latter may well have thought it necessary to still pay attention to astrology but to approach it now from a Christian point of view. Second, the Grundschrift was probably written in Edessa.38 Here the heterodox Christian philosopher Bardaisan had been much influenced by current astrological thinking, even though he partially rejected these thoughts as constraining human liberty too much.39 The Grundschrift, which will have been written shortly after Bardaisan’s death in AD 222,40 was perhaps engaged in a polemic against the views of Bardaisan’s followers, who continued for many centuries to propagate the master’s ideas,41 Unfortunately, the loss of the Grundschrift does not allow any certainty in this respect.42

3. Appion The second important Egyptian in the Pseudo-Clementines is Appion, whose name is clearly based on the Egyptian sacred bull at Memphis.43 Its cult has given us such Greek names as Apia/os,44 Ap(p)ianos, Apias and, of course, ­Apion, but theophoric names with the element ‘Apis’ can be found throughout Egyptian history, from the Old Kingdom onwards.45 The spelling Appion is attested in both inscriptions (SB I 4549 [AD 226]; I. Creta IV.460 [AD 539]) and 36  For a persuasive argument in favour of a Greek background, see G. Kortekaas, The Story of Apollonius, King of Tyre (Leiden, 2004). Prominence of astrology: G. Kortekaas, ‘The Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri and Ancient Astrology’, ZPE 85 (1991) 71–85. 37  M. Vielberg, Klemens in den Pseudoklementinischen Rekognitionen (Berlin, 2000) 139– 44. 38 J.N. Bremmer, ‘Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus in Christian East Syria’, in H. Vanstiphout (ed.), All Those Nations… Cultural Encounters within and with the Near East (Groningen, 1999) 21–29 at 25–26; this volume, Chapter  15.2. 39  H.J.W. Drijvers, Bardaisan of Edessa (Assen, 1966) 157–63; K. von Stuckrad, Das Ringen um die Astrologie (Berlin and New York, 2000) 655–63. 40  Bremmer, ‘Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus’, 26–27; this volume, Chapter  15.2. 41 Drijvers, Bardaisan, 227 f. 42  The possible connections between the Grundschrift and Bardaisan have been often discussed, although no consensus has been reached, see the survey by F.S. Jones, ‘The Pseudo-Clementines: A History of Research I and II’, The Second Century 2 (1982) 1–33, 63–96, reprinted in E. Ferguson (ed.), Studies in Early Christianity, vol.  2 (New York and London, 1993) 195–262 and in F.S. Jones, Pseudoclementina Elchasaitiaque inter Judaeochristiana (Leuven, 2012) 50–113. 43  E. Otto, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Stierkulte in Ägypten (Leipzig 1938) 11–34; J. Vercoutter, ‘Apis’, in Helck and Otto, Lexikon der Ägyptologie I, 338–50. 44 W. Swinnen, ‘Problèmes d’anthroponymie ptolémaïque’, Chron. d’Egypte 42 (1967) 156–71 at 157–8 (Apios); Fraser and Matthews, A Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, I.50, IIIA.48–9. 45 Ranke, Die ägyptischen Personennamen I, 236–8.

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in about 10 mainly second-century papyri. In literature, we find the spelling in some manuscripts of Pliny, NH. 30.18 (r) and 35.88 (VRF); in variant readings of Tatian 27 and 38 (P);46 in a variant reading of the critic Achilles Tatius, Intr. Arat., p.  30 Maass (B); in the treatise traditionally known as Pseudo-Justinus, Cohortatio ad Graecos (9.2);47 in the preface of Hesychius; in Etymologicum Genuinum s.v. ἄχος, κλιτύς, ὅπλα48 and in one of its manuscripts s.v. κολαφίζω καὶ κόλαφος (Laurentianus S. Marco 304); in Etymologicum Gudianum s.v. νήδυμος and in two of the manuscripts s.v. ὕνις (= p.  540, 30–33 Sturz: Borterius gr. I 70 and Paris. suppl. gr. 172); in Etymologicum Magnum and Symeonis s.v. ᾿Αθριβίς; in the Greek translation of Eutropius (6.11); in Photius (112–3, 90b), who clearly refers to the Homilies; in the scholia on Homer (Il. 5.403); in the Suda (s.v. ᾿Ιώσηπος) and in Syncellus (120 Mosshammer, where it is wrongly corrected to Apion). To explain the spelling Appion, Riedweg suggests an influence from the Latin Appius.49 Yet that name was much more popular in the Greek world than in Palestine, where it occurs only once on an ostrakon (O. Masada 788), and in Egypt. Here the name is virtually limited to Appius Prostates, chairman of the town council of Panopolis (ca. AD 298) and Appius Sabinus, a Roman prefect of Egypt (ca. AD 250). Moreover, the spelling Appion for Apion is clearly a later development that is not yet visible in the contemporaries of Apion himself and of which the explanation is unclear. Consequently, the spelling Appion need not be connected with developments in Greek onomastics or in Greek spelling. Given the other names in the Pseudo-Clementines with a doubling of a consonant (Anoubion/Annoubion and Matidia/Mattidia: §  2),50 the doubling of the p seems to have been part of the stylistic repertory of the author of the Grundschrift. According to Josephus, Apion was born in Upper Egypt in the later second half of the first century BC. Traditionally, his place of birth is located in the oasis of El Khargeh (ancient Hibis), but more recently there seems to have developed a preference for the Dakhleh oasis.51 Apion studied in Alexandria under 46  The variants are not mentioned in the most recent edition by M. Whittaker, Tatian, Oratio ad Graecos and Fragments (Oxford, 1982). 47 In fact, C. Riedweg, Ps.-Justin (Markell von Ankyra?) Ad Graecos de vera religione (bisher “Cohortatio ad Graecos”), 2  vols (Basel, 1994) 1.167–82 makes a convincing case for the authorship of Marcellus of Ancyra; note also the supporting arguments of P.W. van der Horst, Mnemosyne IV 50 (1997) 366 f. 48  S. Neitzel, in Dionysius Thrax; Tyrannion Amisenus; Diocles Alexandrinus; Apion, ed. K. Linke et al. (Berlin and New York, 1977) corrects Appion into Apion in these cases (= Apion, frr. 27, 50 and 86) but does not mention the spelling Appion in Apion, frr. 79 and 132. 49 Riedweg, Ps.-Justin, 2.287. 50  F.T. Gignac, Grammar of the Greek Papyri of the Roman and Byzantine Periods, 2  vols (Milano, 1976–81) 1.161–2 gives only a few examples of the doubling of consonants. 51 Jos. C. Ap.  2.29 and 41, with Barclay ad loc., cf. G. Wagner, Les Oasis d’Égypte (Cairo, 1987) 138.

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Didymus Chalkenteros and later succeeded Theon as head of the Alexandrian school.52 His enormous industry gained him his nickname Μόχθος.53 During the reigns of Claudius and Caligula he worked in Rome, and in AD 39 he acted as the leader of the Alexandrian delegation to Rome after the Greek pogrom that had cost the lives of many Jews.54 He died about the middle of the first century AD.55 It is of course impossible to discuss here the historical Apion in any depth, but it may be interesting to compare his occurrence and role in the Pseudo-Clementines in order to see in what ways Apion was remembered in the times after his death. In this respect, we are extremely fortunate that recently a papyrus has been published, which is a copy of an inscription that lists the honours and privileges conferred on Apion.56 The papyrus enables us to enlarge our knowledge of Apion and it throws some light on various aspects of his career. As we have seen in our introduction, Appion was introduced together with Annoubion and Athenodorus as ᾿Αππίωνα τὸν Πλειστονίκην, ἄνδρα ᾿Αλεξανδρέα, γραμματικὸν τὴν ἐπιστήμην (H 4.6). He is also called Pleistonikes in two other passages (H 20.11; R 10.52).57 The qualification must have immediately identified Appion’s model for the educated readership of the Pseudo-Clementines, as Pliny the Elder, who followed his lectures, already mentions it, and Pleistonikes was clearly a standing epithet of Apion.58 Jacobson has argued that in this case Pleistonikes does not have its usual meaning ‘victor in many contests’ but means ‘quarrelsome’.59 Yet the inscription ᾿Απίων Πλειστον[ίκης] ἤκουσα τρίς on one of the two colossi of Memnon hardly favours this opinion60 . The oldest datable 52  The prestige of Alexandria as a centre of Greek civilisation is also illustrated by the fact that Simon Magus received his education there (H 2.22). 53  Apollonius Dyskolos, Synt. p.  124 Uhlig; Suda s.v. Ἀντέρως, Ἀπίων; Scholion on Aristophanes, Pax 778. 54  P.W. van der Horst, Philo’s Flaccus: the first pogrom (Leiden, 2003). 55  For good surveys of Apion’s life and work, see P.W. van der Horst, Japhet in the Tents of Shem (Leuven, 2002) 207–21 (‘Who was Apion?’); K.R. Jones, ‘The Figure of Apion in Josephus’ Contra Apionem’, JSJ 36 (2005) 278–315; W. Ameling, ‘Some Remarks on Apion’, SCI 33 (2014) 1–16; D. Côté, ‘Rhetoric and Jewish-Christianity: The Case of the Grammarian Apion in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies’, in P. Piovanelli and T. Burke (eds), Rediscovering the Apocryphal Continent: New Perspectives on Early Christian and Late Antique Apocryphal Texts and Traditions (Tübingen, 2015) 369–89. L. Cohn, ‘Apion’, in RE I (1894) 2803–06 and Apion FGrH 616 remain useful. 56  A. Benaissa, ‘Copy of an Inscription for Apion’, in W.B. Henry et al., The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Volume LXXIX (Oxford, 2014) 125–38 (= P.Oxy. 79.5202). 57  Note that Rehm, Paschke and Strecker, in their edition of the Homilies, capitalise Pleistonikes in the first case, but not in the second one. 58 Pliny, NH 37.75; Gellius, NA 5.14.1, 7.8.1; Clem. Alex. Str. 1.21.3; Achilles Tatius, Intr. Arat. p.  30 Maass; Eus. PE. 10.12.2; Suda s.v. Ἀπίων (who mistakenly makes Apion the son of Pleistonikes). 59  H. Jacobson, ‘Apion’s Nickname’, American Journal of Philology 98 (1977) 413–5. 60  A. and E. Bernand, Les inscriptions grecques et latines du Colosse de Memnon (Cairo, 1960) 165; Ameling, ‘Some Remarks’, 6 n.  35.

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inscription on the colossi is from AD 20 and the next from AD 65,61 and the death of Apion (above) falls between these dates. As Van der Horst observes, ‘it would be most remarkable if there were to have been two Apions with a nickname that began with Pleiston-’. 62 Surely, a vain person like Apion would not have propagated a negative nickname,63 and it is hardly in favour of Jacobson’s argument that his pupil Pliny also mentions the nickname. In fact, the new papyrus now shows that he was indeed a victor in many poetry contests, such as at Actium, Olympia, Delphi and Nemea, which are duly recorded in the original inscription. In addition to the Homilies, other sources also mention Apion’s Alexandrian origin. In his Contra Apionem, Josephus informs us that Apion congratulated Alexandria for having such a great man like himself as citizen.64 And in a discussion of the games played by Penelope’s suitors, Athenaeus mentions the opinion of ‘Apion the Alexandrian’,65 just as Jerome (De viris illust. 12) calls him ‘grammaticum, Alexandrinum’. Although Josephus strongly suggests an Egyptian origin for Apion, this can hardly be true,66 as it was extremely rare that a native Egyptian acquired Alexandrian citizenship: only one certain case is known. 67 In fact, his father’s name Posidonius is irreproachably Greek. 68 Yet the evidence we have is not as clearcut as we would like, and at the present moment the question seems to be undecided. 69 The third qualification, ‘grammarian’, is also well attested in both Greek and Latin literature and was already part of his reputation during his lifetime, as is also manifest from the new papyrus.70 It is not exactly clear how Apion himself interpreted the qualification or how we should do so. The term γραμματικός means ‘grammarian/scholar’ but also ‘cultured person’.71 Apion was both, but 61  For the colossus and its inscriptions, see G.W. Bowersock, Studies on the Eastern Roman Empire (Goldbach, 1994) 253–64. 62  Van der Horst, Japhet, 209; similarly, L. Holford-Strevens, Aulus Gellius. An Antonine Scholar and His Achievement (Oxford, 2003) 69: the objections against the identification are ‘hypersceptical’. 63  For Apion’s vanity, see Pliny, NH Praef. 25, which relates that Tiberius called him cymbalum mundi; Gellius 5.14.1; note also that Syncellus 120 (= 282) Mosshammer calls Apion ‘the most pedantic of the grammarians’. 64 Jos. C. Ap.  2.29, 41 and 135, cf. H. Jacobson, ‘Apion Ciceronianus’, Mnemosyne IV 53 (2000) 592. 65  Athenaeus 1.16F (= FGrH 616 T 4b), quoted by Eustathius on Od. 17.401. 66  As was already argued by H. Willrich, Juden und Griechen vor der makkabäischen Erhebung (Göttingen, 1895) 172–6. 67  D. Delia, Alexandrian Citizenship during the Roman Principate (Atlanta, 1991) 56. 68 Apion FGrH 616 T 3a = T 5e = Africanus F 34, 80, ed. M. Wallraff, Iulius Africanus Chronographiae: the extant fragments (Berlin, 2007); P.Oxy. 79.5202.1. 69  Cf. Ameling, ‘Some Remarks’, 3–5; Benaissa, ‘Copy’, 130–32. 70 Seneca, Ep.  88.40; Pliny, NH Praef. 25, 30.18; Jos. C. Ap.  2.2, 12, 15; Tatian, Or. 38; Athenaeus 7. 294F; Clem. Alex. Str. 1.22; Eus. HE. 3.9.4, PE. 10.10.16, 10.11.14, 10.12.2; Jerome, De viris illustribus 13; Cosmas Indicopleustes 12.4; Suda, s.v. Ἀπίων, Πάσης; P.Oxy. 79.5202.1. 71  For the term, see most recently R.A. Kaster, Guardians of Language (Oxford, 1988)

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his main fame derived from his historical and philological work, in which he was clearly not unsuccessful: Gellius (5.14.1) mentions his libri non incelebres. Apion’s Homeric scholarship was his main claim to fame,72 and his creativity and fertility with Homeric etymologies fitted the taste of his time.73 Yet this side of his activities is not explicitly mentioned in the Pseudo-Clementines, although we may perhaps see a reference to it in a passage in which he praises and explains Homer: There was once a time when nothing existed but chaos and a confused mixture of orderless elements, which were as yet simply heaped together. This nature also testifies, and great men have been of opinion that it was so. Of these great men I shall bring forward to you as witness him who excelled them all in wisdom, Homer, where he says, with a reference to the original confused mass: “But may you all become water and earth” (Il. VII.99), implying that from these all things had their origin, and that all things return to their first state, which is chaos, when the watery and earthy substances are separated (H 6.3).

It would be interesting to know to what extent this passage illustrates the Homeric teaching of the historical Apion, but there is too little left of his works for a proper evaluation. The entry on Apion in Der neue Pauly states that it is ‘sehr wahrscheinlich’ that he also worked on other authors.74 Unfortunately, it provides only one example and has missed the most recent one. In itself it is not so surprising that Apion’s other work has escaped attention. As can be easily seen from recent studies of Apion, interest in this author is highly compartmentalised. Students of Judaism have focused on his anti-Semitic side, whereas Hellenists concentrated on his Homeric scholarship. As marginalia are regularly omitted in standard editions of ancient authors, one often has to go back to the original publications of the papyri in order to gain a better view of Apion’s scholarship. The following 445–54 and C. Suetonius Tranquillus, De Grammaticis et Rhetoribus (Oxford, 1993) 86–93; U. Schindel, ‘Der Beruf des Grammaticus in der Spätantike’, in J. Dummer and M. Vielberg (eds), Leitbild Wissenschaft? (Stuttgart, 2003) 173–90. For prosopographies of grammatici see Kaster, Guardians of Language, 233–440; S. Agusta-Boularot, ‘Les références épigraphiques aux grammatici et grammatikoi de l’Empire romain: (I s. av. J.-C.-IV s. ap. J.-C.)’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome (Antiquité.) 106 (1994) 653–764; R. Cribiore, Writing, Teachers, and Students in Graeco-Roman Egypt (Atlanta, 1996) 167–9; add I. Smyrna II.1, 652; I. Ha­ drianoi 173; SEG 44. 1178–9, 1182A. 72  S. Neitzel, in Linke et al., Dionysius Thrax; Tyrannion Amisenus, 185–300; C. Theodoridis, ‘Drei neue Fragmente des Grammatikers Apion’, RhM 132 (1989) 345–350; M. Haslam, ‘The Homer lexicon of Apollonius Sophista: I, Composition and constituents’, CPh 89 (1994) 1–45; Van der Horst, Japhet, 215–20. J. Dillery, ‘Putting Him Back Together Again: Apion Historian, Apion Grammatikos’, CPh 98 (2003) 383–90 connects Josephus’ attack on Apion in particular with the latter’s Homeric scholarship; E. Dickey, Ancient Greek Scholarship (Oxford, 2007) 25 f. 73  R. Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind. Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Princeton and Oxford, 2001) 209 f. 74  F. Montanari, ‘Apion’, in Der neue Pauly 1 (1996) 845–7.

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is only a sampling, but it represents more than can be found anywhere else. So far, it is clear that, in addition to Homer, Apion has also worked on the following lyric poets: 1. Alcaeus: a) P.Oxy. XXI.2295, fr. 4 col. ii (= Alcaeus F 141 Voigt: as Barner suggests,75 the papyrus possibly mentions Apion, although this is not mentioned by Voigt). b) P.Oxy. XXI.2295, fr. 28.3, 17 (= Alcaeus F 167 Voigt)76 . c) P.Oxy. XXI.2295, fr. 40 col. ii.10 (?) (= Alcaeus F 179 Voigt)77. d) Apollonius Dyskolos, Synt. p.  124 Uhlig (cf. Alcaeus F 308 Voigt). 2. Simonides a) P.Oxy. XXII.2327, fr. 2a col. i (= Simonides F 21 West2). b) P.Oxy. XXII.2327, fr. 19 col. ii (= Simonides F 46 West2). c) P.Oxy. XXII.2327, fr. 21 col. i (= Simonides F 21 West2). d) P.Oxy. XXII.2327, fr. 27 col. i (= Simonides F 11, 22 West2).78 e) P.Oxy. XXII.2327, fr. 31 col. i (= Simonides F 31 West2). f) P.Oxy. LIX.3965, fr. 2 (= Simonides F 11, 32 West2). g) P.Oxy. LIX.3965, fr. 18 (= Simonides F 64 West2). 3. Other poets? 79 Apion is probably also mentioned in P.Oxy. XXI.2295, fr. 54 and 55 (= Alcaeus 190–1 Lobel-Page), which are ‘very doubtfully assigned’ to Alcaeus by Edgar Lobel (ad loc.). This means that we cannot be certain which author Apion commented upon: it might have been even Homer. The same abbreviation αμ that means ἀμ(φότεροι) in the scholia on Alcaeus and Simonides, i.e. Apion and Nicanor, we also read in the scholia on P.Oxy. XXXII.2617, fr. 12 (= Stesichorus S30 Davies) and fr. 22 (Stesichorus S34 Davies). However, lack of context prevents us from knowing which critics are meant here. Whereas Apion’s philological activity was typical of the ancient grammarian, 80 the Pseudo-Clementines mention at least two more aspects of Appion, in addition to those that we already have discussed, that can be paralleled from other sources: his anti-Semitism and his interest in magic. Let us start with the first aspect. Before Clement visits Appion in Tyre, he first relates his previous experiences with him: 75  See now the re-edition of the papyrus in G. Bastianini et al., Commentaria et lexica graeca in papyris reperta I (Leipzig, 2004) 127. 76 Bastianini, Commentaria, 130, 134 (A. Porro ad loc.). 77 Bastianini, Commentaria, 132, 135 (A. Porro ad loc.). 78  For the identification, see D. Obbink, ‘The Genre of Plataea’, in D. Boedeker and D. Sider (eds), The New Simonides (New York, 2001) 65–85 at 75 note  37. 79  I am most grateful to Peter Parsons for advice on these cases. 80 Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind, 185–219.

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And while I was confined to bed Appion came to Rome, and being my father’s friend, he stayed with me. Hearing that I was in bed, he came to me, as being not unacquainted with medicine, and inquired the cause of my being in bed. But I, being well aware that the man exceedingly hated the Jews, as also that he had written many books against them, and that he had formed a friendship with this Simon, not through desire of learning, but because he knew that he was a Samaritan and a hater of the Jews, and that he had come forth against the Jews, therefore he had formed an alliance with him, that he might learn something from him against the Jews (H 5.2).

It is interesting to see that this episode is located in Rome, as Apion’s Roman stay is also known from other sources.81 Moreover, Clement directs the attention of his audience to Appion’s anti-Semitic writings.82 Unfortunately, there is little left from Apion’s best known anti-Semitic work, the Aigyptiaka in 5 books, which is known mainly from Pliny, Gellius and Josephus’ polemics in his Contra Apionem.83 However, the passage in the Homilies suggests more than one title. In the English revision of Emil Schürer’s history of the Jewish people, Martin Goodman flatly rejects the notice: ‘this is of course not to be taken seriously’. Admittedly, it is certainly possible that the author exaggerated the amount of Apion’s anti-Semitic writings, but recent skepticism in this regard may have gone too far. In his Stromata (1.21.3), Clement of Alexandria mentions both Apion’s Aigyptiaka and a ‘book Against the Jews (Kata Ioudaiôn)’. He is quoted by his somewhat younger contemporary Julianus Africanus (T 47, 9 Walraff), who in turn is quoted by pseudo-Justin (Ad Graecos 9). Felix Jacoby (ad FGrH 616 F 2) tried to harmonize the titles by suggesting that Kata Ioudaiôn was the fourth book of the Aigyptiaka. However, Goodman argues that ‘the very fact that he (Josephus) is silent about it suggests that such a work never existed, and it is clear that these Church writers had no direct knowledge of it’.84 The latter seems perfectly true, as Clement of Alexandria regularly presents second-hand knowledge in his Stromata. Yet, Clement’s erudition and Alexandrian origin, the complete loss of Apion’s writings and the notice of the evidently well informed Pseudo-Clementines should make us wary of rejecting the notice out of hand.85 The episode of our Clement’s illness has another interesting aspect as well. When Appion asked Clement the reason of his illness, the latter answered that he was lovesick. Appion then told Clement that he had been in the same situation, but ‘happened to meet an Egyptian who was exceedingly well versed in NH 30.18; Suda s.v. Ἀπίων. Note also H 5.27. 83  For the fragments, see Apion FGrH 616 F 1–21, cf. P. Schäfer, Judeophobia (Cambridge MA, 1997) passim; Ameling, ‘Some Remarks’, 9–15. 84  E. Schürer, The history of the Jewish people in the age of Jesus Christ III.1 (Edinburgh, 1985) 607, followed by Van der Horst, Japhet, 211. 85  See also Ameling, ‘Some Remarks’, 8–10; for a different view, see Jones, ‘The Figure of Apion’, Appendix. 81 Pliny, 82 

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magic, and having become his friend, I disclosed to him my love. He not only assisted me in all that I wished, but, honoring me more bountifully, he even did not hesitate to teach me an incantation by means of which I obtained her. And as soon as I had obtained her, by means of that secret instruction, being persuaded by the liberality of my teacher, I was cured of love’ (H 5.3). The passage is a nice illustration of that strange human habit of losing interest in something or someone at the moment that one has finally got possession of it. It was probably inspired by the well known episode of the Seleucid queen Stratonice and her stepson, the prince Antiochus, whose lovesickness was diagnosed by the famous physician Eresistratus.86 The passage also illustrates the ubiquity of love magic in antiquity and the use of erotic charms, several of which have been found in Egypt. 87 Even Jewish magicians sometimes practised love magic, as is illustrated by the activities of the Jewish magician Atomus at the court of Felix, the procurator of Judaea.88 Erotic charms could range from simple ones, such as: ‘Horion, son of Sarapous, make and force Nike, daughter of Apollonous, to fall in love with Paitous, whom Tmesios bore’, to quite elaborate ones.89 The historical Apion may well have dabbled in love magic too90 , since Pliny (NH 24. 167) says that according to someone celeber arte grammatica paulo ante, clearly Apion, the touch of the plant called anacampseros, ‘love’s return’, caused either the return of love or its rejection with hatred. Pliny (NH 30.18) also relates that as a young man he had Apion heard saying that the cynocephalia, ‘dog’s head’, was called in Egyptian osiritis. The plant was divine and afforded protection against all magic potions. Whoever uprooted it in one piece would die immediately! Apion even practised necromancy, as he had called up the soul 86  As noted by W. Adler, ‘Apion’s “encomium of adultery”: a Jewish satire of Greek paideia in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies’, HUCA 64 (1993) 15–49. For the fullest enumeration of the sources and the secondary literature, see J. Lightfoot, Lucian, On the Syrian Goddess (Oxford, 2003) 373–9; add R. Falconi, ‘Il motivo del malato d’amore in un argumentum di Seneca Padre’, Giornale Italiano di Filologia 13 (1960) 327–35; I. Garofalo, ‘Il principe e il medico’, Annali della Facoltà di Lettere dell’Università di Siena 11 (1990) 291–299; B. Coers, ‘Zitat, Paraphrase und Invention: Zur Funktion pompejanischer Wandmalerei im Historienbild am Beispiel von J.A.D. Ingres’ “Antiochus und Stratonice” und Anselm Feuerbachs “Gastmahl des Plato”’, in M. Baumbach (ed.), Tradita et Inventa. Beiträge zur Rezeption der Antike (Heidelberg, 2000) 37–88. 87  E. Voutiras, Διονυσοφῶντος γάμοι. Marital Life and Magic in Fourth Century Pella (Amsterdam, 1998); C. Faraone, Ancient Greek Love Magic (Cambridge Mass. and London, 1999); M.W. Dickie, ‘Who Practised Love-Magic in Classical Antiquity and in the Late Roman World?’, CQ 50 (2000) 563–83; D. Frankfurter, ‘The Social Context of Women’s Erotic Magic in Antiquity’, in K.B. Stratton and D.S. Kalleres (eds), Daughters of Hecate (Oxford, 2014) 319–39 (with further bibliography). 88 Josephus, Ant. 20.42, cf. G. Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic (Cambridge, 2007) 80. For other, fairly rare, Jewish examples see Bohak, 132, 154, 220, 223, 396. 89 R. Daniel and F. Maltomini, Supplementum Magicum I (Opladen, 1990) 115–213 at 115–7. 90 Dickie, Magic and Magicians, 214–6.

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of Homer to ask about his homeland and his parents.91 Unfortunately, he did not dare to reveal the answer to these pressing questions. It is no wonder, then, that he was reputed to have written a book On the Magus, in which he explained the expression ‘The half-obol of Pases’.92 Pases was an effeminate magician,93 a kind of modern illusionist, who could make expensive dinners and their serving staff appear and disappear, just as Simon Magus could let household equipment appear without seemingly anyone bringing it in (H 2.32). Evidently, Pases paid with a half-obol, which he subsequently could bring back into his possession. Apion, then, was apparently interested in a wide range of magic beliefs and practices.

4. Conclusion It is clear that the author of the Grundschrift was well informed about both Anoubion and Apion. Where and how did he obtain his knowledge about these two Egyptians? The case of Anoubion is perhaps the easiest one to answer. Egyptian astrology was known in Edessa, as Bardaisan was familiar with ‘books of the Egyptians in which all the different things that may befall people are described’.94 The poem of Anoubion, then, may well have circulated in Edessa. The case of Apion is more difficult. Older source-critical studies suggested that the section concerning Apion derives from a Jewish ‘Disputationsbuch’.95 In addition, Schmidt has reasonably argued that the figure of Appion could hardly have been imagined before Josephus’ Contra Apionem (ca. AD 93), whereas the existence of comparable apologetic treatises is improbable after the Jewish uprising under Trajan and the revolt of Bar Kokhba.96 The lost source, then, should date from the intervening years. The use of Jewish material is certainly possible, as Stanley Jones has also identified a Jewish-Christian source in

91 

92 

For necromancy, see also this volume, Chapter  13.1. Suda s.v. Πάσης, quoted by Pseudo-Plutarch, Prov. 50, cf. Dickie, Magic and Magicians,

214 f. 93  The fact that the Suda calls Pases μαλακός, ‘effeminate’, suggests a hostile source, cf. M. Gleason, Making Men (Princeton, 1995). 94 Philippus (Bardaisan), Book of the Laws of Countries, 38–40, cf. Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 203–4; Von Stuckrad, Das Ringen, 661–2 and Geschichte der Astrologie (Munich, 2003) 150–54. 95  H. Waitz, Die Pseudoklementinen, Homilien und Rekognitionen (Leipzig, 1904) 251–6; Heintze, Der Klemensroman, 160–239 at 196. For the ‘Disputationsbuch’ and the Jewish background of the Pseudo-Clementines, both much debated, see the survey by Jones, ‘The Pseudo-Clementines: A History of Research I and II’. 96 Schmidt, Studien, 296–8.

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the Grundschrift that has survived in the Recognitions.97 Yet the existence of (Alexandrian) Jewish apologetic at the time of Josephus’ Contra Apionem has become less certain,98 and current ideas about Jewish apologetics are clearly in need of a thorough revision.99 Moreover, the derivation of all material about Apion from just one book presupposes that the author of the Grundschrift had no other knowledge about Apion available to him. Such a presupposition cannot be substantiated, and we should perhaps be reticent in our attempts at reconstructing the Grundschrift’s sources. There has been more than enough speculation in that respect!100

97  F.S. Jones, An Ancient Jewish Christian Source on the History of Christianity: Pseudo-Clementine ‘Recognitions’ 1.27–71 (Atlanta, 1995). 98  M. Goodman, ‘Josephus’ Treatise Against Apion’, in M. Edwards et al. (eds), Apologetics in the Roman Empire: pagans, Jews, and Christians (Oxford, 1999) 45–58 at 47–50. 99  Note the sensible observations of J. Barclay, ‘Apologetics in the Jewish Diaspora’, in J.R. Bartlett (ed.), Jews in the Hellenistic and Roman Cities (New York and London, 2002) 129–48. 100  I would like to thank Jaap van Dijk, Kathleen McNamee, Jacques van Ruiten, Eibert Tigchelaar and Klaas Worp for information. Ton Hilhorst, Geurt Henk van Kooten and Peter van Minnen saved me from several mistakes, and Ken Dowden kindly corrected my English.

Section III

Apocalypses and Tours of Hell

Chapter 17

The Apocalypse of Peter: Greek or Jewish? When in the winter of 1886–87 a French archaeological team opened a grave of, probably, a monk in Akhmim, ancient Panopolis, in Upper Egypt, it struck gold. In the grave,1 they found a parchment codex with fragments of the Book of Enoch, the Gospel of Peter and the Apocalypse of Peter (ApPt).2 The texts immediately drew the attention of the foremost patristic and classical scholars of the time. In 1892, the meritorious J.A. Robinson (1858–1933) and M.R. James (1862– 1936) published a ‘pirate’ edition based upon an unpublished version by the excavators.3 In the next year, the French team came with an official facsimile, but they had retouched the photographs, thus making their editio princeps somewhat unreliable.4 On the basis of the English edition, the greatest patristic scholar of the turn of the twentieth century, Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), published his own edition, which he followed one year later with a revised and expanded version.5 The text also drew the interest of the brightest classicists of 1  For a discussion of such discoveries in graves, see B. Nongbri, ‘Finding Early Christian Books at Nag Hammadi and Beyond’, Bulletin for the Study of Religion 45 (2016) 11–19. 2  For the codex, its date and the circumstances of its findings, see P. van Minnen, ‘The Greek Apocalypse of Peter’, in J.N. Bremmer and I. Czachesz (eds), The Apocalypse of Peter (Leuven, 2003) 15–39 and ‘The Akhmîm Gospel of Peter’, in T. Kraus and T. Nicklas (eds), Das Evangelium nach Petrus (Berlin and New York, 2007) 53–60. 3  J.A. Robinson and M.R.James, The Gospel according to Peter and the Revelation of Peter (London, 1892). For these scholars, see T.F. Taylor, J. Armitage Robinson: Eccentric, Scholar and Churchman (Cambridge, 1991); R.W. Pfaff, Montague Rhodes James (London, 1980). 4  U. Bouriant, ‘Fragments du texte grec du livre d’Énoch et de quelques écrits attribués á saint Pierre’, Mémoires publiés par les Membres de la Mission Archéologique Française au Caire IX.1 (Paris, 1892: editio princeps); for photogravures of the manuscript, see A. Lods, ibidem, IX.3 (1893). For more reliable photographs, see O. von Gebhardt, Das Evangelium und die Apokalypse des Petrus (Leipzig, 1893). For the reactions in France, see J.-M. Roessli, ‘Loisy et les apocryphes pétriniens découverts à Akhmîm-Panopolis’, in A. Van den Kerchove and L.G. Soares Santoprete (eds), Gnose et manichéisme. Entre les oasis d’Égypte et la Route de la Soie. Hommage à Jean-Daniel Dubois (Turnhout, 2017) 771–90. 5  A. von Harnack, ‘Bruchstücke des Evangeliums und der Apokalypse des Petrus’, SB Berlin 44 (1892) 895–903, 949–65, reprinted in his Kleine Schriften zur alten Kirche: Berliner Akademieschriften 1890–1907 (Leipzig, 1980) 83–108; idem, Bruchstücke des Evangeliums und der Apokalypse des Petrus (Leipzig, 1893). For Harnack, see K. Sietsma, Adolf von Harnack, voornamelijk als dogmahistoricus (Diss. Amsterdam, 1933) 7–147; A. von Zahn-Harnack, Adolf von Harnack (Berlin, 1936), but the second edition of 1951 is to be read with B. Biester, ‘Kritische Notizen zu Agnes von Zahn-Harnacks “Adolf von Harnack”’, Quaderni di storia 27 (2001) 223–35.

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the day, as the names of Hermann Diels (1848–1921), 6 Hermann Usener (1834– 1905),7 and Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1848–1931) 8 in the apparatus criticus of the now in quick succession following editions demonstrate. The earlier two seem to have made only informal suggestions, but the latter even wrote some pages on the ApPt, one of his few contributions to the Christian literature of antiquity.9 This first phase came to an end with the editions of Erwin ­Preuschen (1867–1920) and Erich Klostermann (1870–1963) in the early 1900s.10 Now the publication of the ApPt took place at a time that the growing criticism of the historical pretensions of the biblical texts became combined with the first attempts at an interpretation of early Christianity from the point of view of the history of religion. These attempts, later known as the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule, had a profound interest in the Jewish sources of early Christianity as well as in its apocalyptic and eschatological ideas. Against the traditional views, which saw the New Testament basically as the successor of the Old Testament, the scholars of the new movement looked for the contemporary world of early Christianity in order to explain its beginnings. This interest helps to explain the attention paid to the question of the sources in the early interpretations of the Greek version of ApPt. Harnack had already noted the influence of Greek traditions in passing,11 but it was Eduard Norden (1868–1941), who first analysed its Greek sources in some depth in a popular article.12 Norden was not a member of the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule stricto sensu, but his ambitions were closely related and he maintained contacts with some of its most prominent representatives, especially Richard Reitzenstein (1861– 1931).13 As Norden observed, unlike in Rome, the absence of a central authority 6  For Diels, see W. Burkert et al. (eds), Hermann Diels (1848–1921) et la science de l’anti­ quité (Geneva, 1999). 7  On Usener, see my ‘Hermann Usener’ in W. Briggs and W.M. Calder III (eds), Classical Scholarship. A Biographical Encyclopedia (New York, 1990) 462–78; see also D. Ehlers (ed.), Hermann Diels, Hermann Usener, Eduard Zeller: Briefwechsel, 2  vols (Berlin, 1992); M. Espagne and P. Rabault-Feuerhahn (eds), Hermann Usener und die Metamorphosen der Philo­ logie (Wiesbaden, 2011). 8  For Wilamowitz, see the many studies (edited) by W.M. Calder III. 9  U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Kleine Schriften I (Berlin, 1935) 206–08. 10  E. Preuschen, Antilegomena (Giessen, 19052) 84–8 (with patristic citations); E. Klostermann, Apocrypha I. Reste des Petrusevangeliums, der Petrusapokalypse und des Kerygma Petri (Berlin, 19082). For these scholars, see Wikipedia s.v. 11  Harnack, ‘Bruchstücke’, 954. 12  E. Norden, Kleine Schriften zum klassischen Altertum (Berlin, 1966) 218–33 (first published in 1893). 13  See K. Rudolph, ‘Norden und die Religionsgeschichtliche Schule’, in B. Kytzler et al. (eds), Eduard Norden (1868–1941) (Stuttgart, 1994) 83–105 at 95–105. For Reitzenstein, see E. Fraenkel et al. (eds), Festschrift Richard Reitzenstein zum 2. April 1931 dargebracht (Leipzig and Berlin, 1931) 160–68 (bibliography); M. Pohlenz, ‘Richard Reitzenstein’, Nachrichten von der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Geschäftliche Mitteilungen 1930/31 (Berlin, 1931) 66–76 (very interesting, usually overlooked); W. Fauth, ‘Richard Reitzenstein, Professor der Klassischen Philologie 1914–1928’, in C.J. Classen (ed.), Die Klassische Alter-

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made it possible for the Greek world to have competing eschatologies. One of these, Orphism, had become very popular with the masses, according to Norden, due to the clever organisation of the movement by schlaue Priester.14 Orphism had originated in competition with the Eleusinian mysteries, but already at an early stage both mysteries started to influence one another, just like Orphism and Pythagoreanism often became indistinguishable. Important innovations as regards the traditional picture were the ideas of a judgement on moral basis, wonderful banquets for the righteous, and a paradise-like afterlife. These new ideas, as Norden claimed, constituted the basis of Virgil’s description of the underworld in Aeneid VI.15 Unfortunately, so still Norden, the first two centuries of the Christian era were strongly characterised by a superstition (‘Aberglaube’), in particular influenced by oriental religions, which was greatly interested in a blessed life after death. That is why we find descriptions of the afterlife by such differing authors as Apuleius and Plutarch. It is in this context that we have to read the ApPt. Norden did not present the whole of the treatise to his readers, however. He refused to insult them with the ‘wirklich grauenhafter, nach meiner Meinung nur bei einem Orientalen möglicher Phantasie erdachten Höllenstrafen’ (p.  229). In a similar manner, Harnack had already left the cruelest passage untranslated in a preliminary translation in the Preussische Jahrbücher in order not to offend the sensibility of his readers.16 Instead, Norden enumerated typically Greek elements in the ApPt. Successively, he noted the stream of fire (27), the wallowtumswissenschaft an der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (Göttingen, 1989) 178–96; K. Prümm, ‘Reitzenstein’, in Dictionnaire de la Bible, Suppl. 10 (Paris, 1985) 200–10; C. Koch, ‘Richard Reitzensteins Beiträge zur Mandäerforschung’, Zs. f. Religionswissenschaft 3 (1995) 49–80; G. Audring, Gelehrtenalltag. Der Briefwechsel zwischen Eduard Meyer und Georg Wissowa (1890–1927) (Hildesheim, 2000) 10–13 (on young Reitzenstein); S. Marchand, ‘From Liberalism to Neoromanticism: Albrecht Dieterich, Richard Reitzenstein, and the Religious Turn in fin-de-siècle German Classical Studies’, in I. Gildenhard and M. Ruehl (eds), Out of Arcadia. Classics and Politics in Germany in the Age of Burckhardt, Nietzsche and Wilamo­ witz (London, 2003) 129–60 at 151–58. 14  This idea of the deceiving priests, the Priesterbetrug, originated in Enlightenment circles in the eighteenth century and had a long and influential life, cf. G. Spini: Ricerca dei libertini. La teoria dell’impostura delle religioni nel Seicento italiano (Florence, 1983); J.A.I. Champion, The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken: The Church of England and its Enemies, 1660–1730 (Cambridge, 1992); G. Paganini, ‘Wie aus Gesetzgebern Betrüger werden. Eine philosophische Archäologie des “radikalen” Libertinismus’, in J.I. Israel and M. Mulsow (eds), Radikal­ auf­klärung (Berlin, 2014) 49–91; P. Crone, ‘Oral Transmission of Subversive Ideas from the Islamic World to Europe: The Case of the Three Impostors’, in her Islam, the Ancient Near East and Varieties of Godlessness, 3  vols (Leiden, 2016) 3.200–23 (with thanks to Martin Mulsow). 15  Norden already betrays here his interest in apocalyptic literature which would later culminate in his authoritative commentary on the Aeneid VI, cf. E. Norden, P. Vergilius Maro Aeneis VI (Leipzig, 19031, 19273). 16  A. Harnack, ‘Die neuentdeckten Bruchstücke des Petrusevangeliums und der Petrus­ apo­kalypse’, Preussische Jahrb. 71 (1893) 36–58.

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ing in burning mire (23), the watching of the murderers by the souls of the murdered (25) and the suicides who cast themselves from a high slope but, having landed at the bottom, were driven up again by their torturers (32). In this continuing punishment, Norden recognised an imitation of the mythological punishments of Ixion and Sisyphus, and he concluded by observing that there was a great difference between the Greek spirit of this Christian Apocalypse and that of Jewish ones, as anybody reading the Book of Enoch immediately would notice.17 One can only speculate to what extent Norden was moved to stress the perverse imagination of Orientals or the opposition between Christian and Jewish Apocalypses by his own Jewish origin. At the age of seventeen, Norden had converted to Christianity and he never came back on his decision. Can it be that he thought it necessary to demonstrate his definitive farewell to his own origin?18 However this may be, his interest in the Greek elements of the ApPt had been independently shared by another German scholar, who even dedicated a complete book to it, published only shortly after Norden’s article. Later in 1893, too late to take fully notice of Norden’s article, Albrecht Die­ terich (1866–1908) published his views on the newly discovered ApPt,19 Diete­ 17 

For the punishments, see this volume, Chapter  18.2. Norden, see especially E. Mensching, Nugae zur Philologie-Geschichte, 14  vols (Berlin, 1987–2004) 2.5–16, 5, 6.8–112, 11.83–91; J. Rüpke, Römische Religion bei Eduard Norden (Marburg, 1993); B. Kytzler et al. (eds), Eduard Norden (1868–1941) (Stuttgart, 1994); W.M. Calder III and B. Huss, “Sed serviendum officio…” The Correspondence between Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff and Eduard Norden (1892–1931) (Berlin, 1997); W.A. Schröder, Der Altertums-wissenschaftler Eduard Norden. Das Schicksal eines deutschen Gelehrten jüdischer Abkunft (Hildesheim, 1999); A. Baumgarten, ‘Eduard Norden and His Students: a Contribution to a Portrait. Based on Three Archival Finds’, SCI 25 (2006) 121–40; N. Horsfall, Virgil, “Aeneid” 6. A Commentary, 2  vols (Berlin and Boston, 2013) 2.645–54, with additional bibliography at 645 n.  3, but add K.A. Neuhausen, ‘Aus dem wissenschaftlichen Nachlass Franz Bücheler’s (I): Eduard Nordens Briefe an Bücheler (1888–1908)’, in J.P. Clausen (ed.), Iubilet cum Bonna Rhenus. Festschrift zum 150jährigen Bestehen des Bonner Kreises (Berlin 2004) 1–39 (important for the early history of the commentary); J. Rüpke, ‘Dal Seminario all’esilio: Eduard Norden a Werner Jaeger (1934–1939)’, Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia (Siena) 30 (2009) 225–50 and O. Schlunke, ‘Der Geist der lateinischen Literatursprache. Eduard Nordens verloren geglaubter Genfer Vortrag von 1926’, Antike & Abendland 59 (2013) 1–16. 19 A. Dieterich, Nekyia. Beiträge zur Erklärung der neuentdeckten Petrusapokalypse (Leipzig, 1893, 19132), who mentions Norden’s article on p.  152. The second edition of 1913, edited by R. Wünsch, contains corrections, suggestions and additions from Dieterich’s own copy and the various reviews. For Dieterich, see the biography by Wünsch in A. Dieterich, Kleine Schriften (Leipzig and Berlin, 1911) ix-xlii; F. Pfister, ‘Albrecht Dieterichs Wirken in der Religionswissenschaft’, ARW 35 (1938) 180–5; H.D. Betz, The “Mithras” Liturgy (Tübingen, 2003) 14–26; A. Wessels, Ursprungszauber. Zur Rezeption von Hermann Useners Lehre von der religiösen Begriffsbildung (New York and London, 2003) 96–128; H. Treiber, ‘Der “Eranos” – Das Glanzstück im Heidelberger Mythenkranz?’, in W. Schluchter and F.W. Graf (eds), Asketischer Protestantismus und der ‘Geist’ des modernen Kapitalismus (Tübingen, 2005) 75–153 (many interesting glimpses of Dieterich’s influence in Heidelberg); C.O. Tommasi, ‘Albrecht Dieterichs Pulcinella: Some Considerations a Century Later’, Studi Classici e 18 For

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rich, too, was highly sympathetic to the aims of the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule. He had started his studies with theology, but in 1886 he changed into classical philology at Bonn, where he gained his doctorate in 1888 under the aegis of Hermann Usener. It was the time that Usener prepared his famous analysis of Christmas, Das Weihnachtsfest (1888), and increasingly paid attention to what he considered the pagan elements of Christianity in order to ‘carry out the purification and elucidation of our religious consciousness’.20 Dieterich was greatly inspired by Usener, his later father-in-law, and until the end of his all too short life he always had a keen eye for pagan roots of early Christianity.21 It is therefore not surprising that, like Norden, Dieterich also looked for the Greek roots of the ApPt. In order to prove his point he painted with a wide brush. He started with a survey of Greek popular belief in the afterlife, then analysed the Eleusinian and Orphic mysteries and completed his first part with a sketch of Orphic descents into the underworld. In the second part, he discussed the sinners in Hades and their punishments, but in the penultimate part Dieterich finally came to speak of Jewish apocalypticism. Although he was aware of the Greek elements in Jewish life at the beginning of the Christian era, he stressed that the author of the ApPt did not use Jewish writings to compose his picture of the hell. In his last chapter, Dieterich concluded that the Egyptian Christian community derived its picture of heaven and hell from Orphic-Pythagorean traditions, since most Christians would have been Orphics. In Die­ terich’s view, then, Orphism stood in many ways at the cradle of Christianity. Dieterich’s book was well received, but the lack of new data meant that interest soon shifted to other areas of early Christianity. A second phase in the study of the ApPt was inaugurated with the publication of the Ethiopic text in 1910, a pseudo-Clementine composition in which the ApPt was embedded.22 The nature of the text immediately raised the problem as to how the Ethiopic version was related to the Greek fragment from Akhmim, but the situation became even more complicated in the years 1911 and 1924 Orientali 53 (2007) 295–321; F. Graf, ‘Mithras Liturgy and “Religionsgeschichtliche Schule”’, MHNH 8 (2008) 59–71. 20  H. Usener, Vorträge und Aufsätze (Leipzig and Berlin, 1907) 65. 21  For a good summary of his views, see Dieterich, Kleine Schriften, vi. 22  S. Grébaut, ‘Littérature éthiopienne pseudo-clémentine. La seconde venue du Christ et la résurrection des morts’, Revue de l’Orient Chrétien 15 (1910) 198–214, 307–23 (text), 425– 39 (translation). For the Ethiopic version, I follow the translations of D. Buchholz, Your Eyes Will Be Opened (Atlanta, 1987) 162–244 and P. Marassini, in F. Bovon and P. Geoltrain (eds), Écrits apocryphes chrétiens I (Paris, 1997) 755–74; see also P. Marrassini, ‘Scoperto e riscoperte dell’Apocalisse di Pietro’, in G. Bastianini and A. Casanova (eds), I papiri letterari Cristiani (Florence, 2011) 147–60; A. Bausi, ‘Towards a Re-edition of the Ethiopic Dossier of the Apocalypse of Peter. A Few Remarks on the Ethiopic Manuscript Witnesses’, Apocrypha 27 (2016) 179–96. For the Greek version, I follow the edition and translation by T.J. Kraus and T. Nicklas, Das Petrusevangelium und die Petrusapokalypse (Berlin and New York, 2004) 81–138.

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through the separate publication of two fragments of the same, later fifth-century, miniature codex with small portions of a Greek text that was closer to the Ethiopian version than the Akhmim codex and was possibly written in Alexandria.23 Evidently, the text of the ApPt was not painstakingly preserved but continuously adapted to changing theological insights and needs, like most apocalyptic texts, with the exception of the Book of Revelation. As the Ethiopic version was probably translated from an Arabic translation of a Greek original, one must conclude that older and newer versions of the Apocalypse of Peter continued to co-exist peacefully. The older form may well have been preserved by congregations that considered the text to be of the same value as the other canonical books of the New Testament. In fact, the mid-fifth-century church historian Sozomen (7.19.9) relates that in the fifth century some Palestinian churches still read the ApPt once a year, although it had gone out of fashion around that time and the Church had started to consider it a heretical treatise. The modern consensus is that the Ethiopic tradition is ‘authentic and offers the original text of the ApPt, albeit in parts somewhat distorted’.24 The Greek version is therefore always to be used with caution for the establishment of the original text. For our problem it is important to note that the Ethiopic tradition added a few more references to the Greek tradition. In c. 14, of which the Greek version was found only later (the so-called Rainer fragment), we find ‘the field Akrosja (= Acherusia) which is called Aneslesleja (= Elysium)’ and in c. 13 we hear of an angel Tatirokos (= Tartarouchos), but in this second phase the old question – Jewish or Greek? – no longer played a role, and we have to wait until the 1980s before the question was raised again. Naturally, the scholarly and spiritual climate had now radically changed from that of at the turn of the century. New questions were being asked and new approaches came to the forefront. In 1983, the American Jewish scholar Martha Himmelfarb published a detailed analysis of what she calls ‘tours of hell’ in Jewish and Christian literature,25 in which the ApPt receives plenty of attention as the oldest surviving specimen of the genre. However, instead of considering it to be ‘the successor to archaic and classical descents into Hades, far removed from Jewish literature’, she put forward the thesis that these tours of hell ‘find their proper context in Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature’ (3). Understandably, Dieterich is now the ‘bad guy’, whose work is regularly lambasted for his neglect of Jewish traditions and who is even suspected (accused?) of ‘a certain kind of history-of-religions anti-Christian (and Jewish), pro-Greek feeling’ (44).26 23 

See now Kraus and Nicklas, Petrusevangelium und Petrusapokalypse, 121–30. C.D.G. Müller, ‘Apocalypse of Peter’, in NTA 2.620–38 at 625. 25  M. Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell. An Apocalyptic Form in Jewish and Christian Literature (Philadelphia, 1983). 26 Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, 3, 5–6, 41–5, 48, 67–8, 71, 116, 119–21. 24 

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Himmelfarb shrewdly observed that in these apocalypses a question of a seer (prophet) is followed by a demonstrative explanation from a supernatural guide. This distinctive formal feature of the tours must have developed from the cosmic tour apocalypses, of which the oldest specimen is Enoch’s cosmic tour in the Book of Watchers. The latter Book also displays the same interest in rewards and punishments after death as many later apocalypses. These features, then, with certainty locate the ApPt in the Jewish apocalyptic tradition. Bauckham has added the observation to Himmelfarb’s argumentation that in these apocalypses the active punishment of the wicked begins not at the last judgement, but already at death, probably a minority view among the Jews until well into the second century AD.27 However, Bauckham also returned to the questions posed by Dieterich. While admitting that Himmelfarb rightly observes that the tours of hell developed within the Jewish apocalyptic tradition, he also stresses that some of the punishments have clear precedents in Greek and Roman descriptions of Hades. Moreover, as in the apocalypses, in the Greek Hades the punishments take place now and not at a later stage in history.28 The conclusions of Bauckham seem in general unassailable. Yet while happily conceding his main points, we are still faced with the problem raised by Diete­ rich as to whether the ApPt stands in the Orphic-Pythagorean tradition. Admittedly, Bauckham himself has presented us with a large survey of Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Syrian, Israelite, Iranian, Greek and Roman descents into the underworld.29 However, this survey is not targeted at the problem of the ApPt and neglects recent insights into the origin and development of the Orphic-Pythagorean ideas about the underworld. A balanced view about Dieterich’s ideas still remains a desideratum. It is therefore the aim of my contribution in the following pages to reconsider the Greek elements in the ApPt with special attention to their possible Orphic origins. Let us start with the evidently Greek names of the angels Tartarouchos (13E) and Temelouchos (8E).30 The first name means ‘Keeper of the Tartarus’ and is a strange name for an angel. It is rare and, not surprisingly, occurs only in Christian literature clearly depending on the ApPt, such as the Apocalypse of Paul (16),31 but also in the Book of Thomas the Contender. This treatise derives from East Syria, but its basic document probably originated in Egyptian Alexan27 

R. Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead (Leiden, 1998) 49–80 at 70 f. The Fate of the Dead, 35–6, 71–2, 208–9. 29 Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead, 9–48. 30  For a full discussion, see J.-M. Rosenstiehl, ‘Tartarouchos-Temelouchos: Contribution à l’étude de l’Apocalypse apocryphe de Paul’, in Deuxième Journée d’Études Coptes (Louvain and Paris, 1986) 29–56. 31  Ms. Paris has angelo Tartarucho, St Gall angelo tartari and Arnhem angelo maliciae. I quote from the authoritative edition by Th. Silverstein and A. Hilhorst, Apocalypse of Paul. A New Critical Edition of Three Long Latin Versions (Geneva, 1997). 28 Bauckham,

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dria;32 in fact, the connection between Edessa and the Egyptian Hermetica is well established.33 In any case, it is interesting to note that the name has turned up as female in a third-century Cypriote curse tablet and in a second- or third-century erotic charm from Oxyrhynchus.34 The latter text mentions the ‘bronze sandal of Tartarouchos’, and the same sandal recurs in the famous magical papyrus from Paris (PGM IV.2335) and in a Greek spell in Marcellus Empiricus’ De medicamentis.35 Apparently, the early Church borrowed this angelic name from its pagan environment by letting the ‘mistress of the Tartarus’ undergo a sex-change. Its early appearance in an Egyptian milieu may point to Egypt as the place of origin of the ApPt.36 The case of Temelouchos is more problematic.37 Bauckham writes that in ‘chapter 34 of the Apocalypse of Paul he wields a three-pronged fork, surely modelled on the trident of the Greek god Poseidon’, but in this chapter we only find the angel Tartarouchos, not Temelouchos, who extracts intestines with a three-pronged fork.38 Temelouchos does occur in the Greek version of the Apocalypse of Paul as the name of the angel to whom the evil soul is entrusted after leaving the body (16) and who participates in the torture of a gluttonous elder (34). In the later Ethiopic Apocalypse of Mary and Apocalypse of Baruch the angel occurs at the end of the infanticide as in the ApPt. It is unclear how this coincidence has to be explained, and Himmelfarb thinks of an influence by the Coptic Apocalypse of Paul, which in turn would have been influenced by our Apocalypse. However, the Coptic Apocalypse of Paul calls the angel Aftemelouchos and the question still remains to be solved.39 In a learned article, Rosen­ stiehl has argued that Temelouchos derives from an epithet of Poseidon, Themeliouchos, ‘in charge of the foundation’. However, the other earliest sources for this angelic name, Clement (Eclog. 48) and Methodius (Symp.  2.6), give the name as Tημελοῦχος, ‘in charge of care’. As Poseidon’s epithet is rather rare and occurs

32  B. Layton, Nag Hammadi codex II, 2–7: together with XIII, 2*, Brit. Lib. Or.4926(1), and P.OXY. 1, 654, 655 (Leiden, 1988). 33  G. Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes (Princeton, 19932) 203 f. 34 Cyprus: SEG 44.1279. Oxyrhynchus: R.W. Daniel and F. Maltomini, Supplementum Magicum I (Opladen, 1990) no.  49.58 = SEG 38.1837. 35  See Dieterich, Kleine Schriften, 101 f. 36  For the date and place of origin of ApPt, see Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead, 185–94; T. Nicklas, ‘“Insider” und “Outsider”: Überlegungen zum historischen Kontext der Darstellung “jenseitiger Orte” in der Offenbarung des Petrus’, in W. Ameling (ed.), Topographie des Jenseits (Stuttgart, 2011) 35–48; this volume, Chapter  18.1. 37  In addition to Rosenstiehl (note  30), see also C.D.G. Müller, Die Engellehre der Koptischen Kirche (Wiesbaden, 1959) 314; J. Michl, ‘Engel V’, in RAC 5 (1962) 200–39, no.  239 on col. 237. 38  Contra: Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead, 224. 39 Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, 101–3.

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only in Attica and on Delos,40 it seems unlikely to have given birth to the name of our angel. Other striking Greek imports are the mention of the Acherusian Lake and the Elysian fields as quoted above. The Ethiopic translation is here less trustworthy than the Rainer fragment which gives ‘Lake Acherusia, which they say is situated in the Elysian Field’. The same combination of Acheron and Elysium, although unidentified as such, occurs in 3 Baruch. Here the angel takes Baruch to the third heaven where he sees ‘an unbroken plain and in the middle of it was a lake of water’ (10.2). The location is followed by those treatises that used the ApPt, such as the Oracula Sybillina II (335–8) and the Apocalypse of Paul (22–3). From a traditional Greek point of view, the geographical location is rather curious, since in Homer the Acheron was located in northern Thesprotia, but the Elysian Fields at the ends of the earth. Apparently, the close combination derives from the belief that after baptism in the Acheron a straight transition into Paradise was possible, such as we find in the first-century Apocalypse of Moses (37.3), imitated perhaps by the late Coptic Book of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, by Bartholomew the Apostle (46.3 Westerhoff). However, the reason why Hellenistic Jews used this Greek terminology remains obscure.41 So far then, we have found some Greek terminology but no Orphics. It is time therefore to pay attention to this elusive movement. Himmelfarb rather disparagingly talks about Dieterich’s use of the term ‘Orphic-Pythagorean’ and stresses that we know so little about Orphism.42 Given the relative dearth of data about Orphism at the time of her book’s publication, Himmelfarb’s scepsis about Orphism is understandable to some extent. However, since the publication of her book we have had a steady stream of new discoveries, such as the new fragments and readings of the Derveni Papyrus,43 new Orphic Gold Leaves,44 new bone tablets,45 and Apulian vases with new representations of Orpheus and 40 

SEG 30.93 (Eleusis); I. Delos 290. For a discussion of the passage, see E. Peterson, Frühkirche, Judentum und Gnosis (Freiburg, 1959) 310–32; K. Copeland, ‘Sinners and Post-Mortem “Baptism” in the Acherusian Lake’, in Bremmer and Czachesz, Apocalypse of Peter, 91–107; T.J. Kraus, ‘Acherousia und Elysion: Anmerkungen im Hinblick auf deren Verwendung auch im christlichen Kontext’, Mnemosyne IV 56 (2003) 145–63. 42 Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, 43 f. 43  See now V. Piano, Il Papiro di Derveni tra religione e filosofia (Florence, 2016); M.E. Kotwick, Der Papyrus von Derveni (Berlin and Boston, 2017). 44  OF 474–96, updated in A. Bernabé and A.I. Jiménez San Cristóbal, Instructions for the Netherworld (Leiden, 2008) 241–71; Y. Tzifopoulos, Paradise Earned: The Bacchic-Orphic Gold Lamellae of Crete (Washington DC and Cambridge MA, 2010) 255–84; R.G. Edmonds III (ed.), The “Orphic” Gold Tablets and Greek Religion (Cambridge, 2011) 15–50; F. Graf and S.I. Johnston, Ritual Texts for the Afterlife (London and New York, 20132) 1–49, with a useful concordance (48–49); R. Janko, ‘Going Beyond Multitexts: The Archetype of the Orphic Gold Leaves’, CQ 66 (2016) 100–27. 45  L. Dubois, Inscriptions grecques dialectales d’Olbia du Pont (Geneva, 1996) 154–5; OF 41 

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the afterlife.46 These new discoveries enable us to speak about Orphism with much more certainty than previous generations of scholars.47 It is now clear that in the early fifth century BC, Orphism originated from Dionysiac mysteries but very soon also became indebted to Pythagoreanism; indeed, in some respects it remains difficult to separate the two.48 One of the major interests of Orphism is salvation. To that end, Orphism adopted the just invented Pythagorean doctrine of reincarnation, but it also designed a new view of the afterlife. According to the Orphics, after death there is a strict separation between the good and the bad. The bad are penalised, but the good enjoy a life of eternal sunlight, play on green meadows and feast on sumptuous banquets. This new picture of the afterlife completely modified the traditional Homeric picture of a sombre afterlife with a stay on the Elysian Fields for a few elect. The Orphic worldview never became very popular and certainly in its initial stages was limited to the rich who could pay for their religious instruction and the gold for their passports into the underworld. In this respect, one can only conclude that Dieterich’s picture of a popular cult with great followings, especially in Egypt, as a praeparatio evangelica is highly imaginative, but also highly fantastic. Everything we know about the early centuries of our era points into the direction of little interest in the afterlife among the Greco-Roman population and even less belief in punishments after death.49 Does this mean that Dieterich was completely wrong? That conclusion would perhaps go too far. In fact, there is at least one detail in the imaginative world of the ApPt, which can hardly be separated from the Orphic tradition. In cc. 23, 24 463–65; A.S. Rusjaeva, Graffiti Ol’vii Pontijskoj (Simferopol, 2010) 33–35: nos 29–31; Graf and Johnston, Ritual Texts for the Afterlife, 214–16. 46  J.-M. Moret, ‘Les départs des enfers dans l’imagerie Apulienne’, Revue Archéologique 1993, 293–351; S.I. Johnston and T. McNiven, ‘Dionysos and the Underworld in Toledo’, Museum Helveticum 53 (1996) 25–36; M. Schmidt, ‘Aufbruch oder Verharren in der Unterwelt? Nochmals zu den apulischen Vasenbildern mit Darstellungen des Hades’, Antike Kunst 43 (2000) 86–101; C. Pouzadoux, ‘Hades’, in LIMC, Suppl. 1 (2009) 234–36, add. 10*; M.-X. Garezou, ‘Orpheus’, ibid., 399–405, no.  77. 47  See now R. Parker, ‘Early Orphism’, in A. Powell (ed.), The Greek World (London and New York, 1995) 483–510; W. Burkert, Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis (Cambridge MA, 2004) 74–98 and Kleine Schriften III (Göttingen, 2006); A. Bernabé and F. Casadesús (eds), Orfeo y la tradición órfica: un reencuentro, 2  vols (Madrid, 2008); M. Herrero de Jáuregui, Orphism and Christianity in Late Antiquity (Berlin and New York, 2010); F. Graf, ‘Text and Ritual: The Corpus Eschatologicum of the Orphics’, in Edmonds, The “Orphic” Gold Tablets, 53– 67; R.G. Edmonds III, Redefining Ancient Orphism (Cambridge, 2013); J.N. Bremmer, Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World (Berlin and Boston, 2014) 55–80 and ‘The Construction of an Individual Eschatology: the Case of the Orphic Gold Leaves’, in K. Waldner et al. (eds), Burial Rituals, Ideas of Afterlife, and the Individual in the Hellenistic World and the Roman Empire (Stuttgart, 2016) 31–52. 48  For an attempt at separating the two, see J.N. Bremmer, ‘Rationalisation and Disenchantment in Ancient Greece: Max Weber among the Pythagoreans and Orphics’, in R. Buxton (ed.), From Myth to Reason? (Oxford, 1999) 71–83 at 79. 49  R. MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire (New Haven and London, 1981) 53–57.

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and 31 of the Akhmim fragment we hear of burning or boiling mire, βόρβορος. It is interesting to note that this term does not occur in the corresponding chapters of the Ethiopic translation. This raises the question as to whether it was dropped by the Ethiopic translation or at a later stage introduced into the Greek version. Now the idea of ‘boiling mire’ is strange enough to be dropped by a translator. This seems particularly clear in c. 31 where the Greek ‘another great lake, full of discharge and blood and boiling mire’ is replaced by the bland Ethiopic ‘another place nearby, saturated with filth’. I take it therefore that the mire was part of the original ApPt. Now mire is not a totally unknown part of the underworld in Greek tradition. In Aristophanes’ Frogs, Heracles sees a number of sinners lying in the mire, such as those who have wronged a guest, struck their parents or committed perjury (145–51, 273). The mire returns in Plato’s Phaedo where Socrates says ‘…and so those who have established initiations really do seem not so far from the mark, but have long been saying in their riddling fashion that he who enters the Hades uninitiated and unenlightened shall lie in the mire. However, he who arrives there purified shall live with the gods, for there really are, as those of the rites say, “many carriers of the fennel-stalk, but few bakchoi (true initiates)”’ (69C). In his discussion of early Orphism, Fritz Graf seems to be a bit wavering about the interpretation of this passage. On the one hand, he argues that the lines point to Eleusis, but on the other, he suggests that they also include Orpheus and friends.50 The whole context, though, with its reference to ‘riddling’, the repetition of ‘rites’ and bakchoi can hardly be interpreted otherwise than as Bacchic mysteries. And in the Republic Plato ascribes to ‘Musaeus and his son’ (Orpheus) the view that in Hades the just celebrate a symposium but ‘they bury the impious and unjust in mud in Hades and compel them to fetch water in a sieve’ (363D).51 Unfortunately, the text is not fully clear to whom this latter view can be ascribed, but it seems reasonable to accept that Plato here again means Musaeus and Orpheus. As in Aristophanes, the sinners are characterised by ethical faults, a characterisation that is typical of Orphism but not Eleusis,52 it seems reasonable to conclude that mire played a big role in the Orphic picture of the underworld.53 We can also say that Orphic(-Pythagorean?) literature is the first in which we find ethical categories in the underworld, like the sinners in Aristophanes’ Frogs 50  F. Graf, Eleusis und die orphische Dichtung Athens in vorhellenistischer Zeit (Berlin and New York, 1974) 101 f. 51  Note that this water carrying also occurs in what may be a remnant of a very early Jewish apocalypse, the so-called Isaiah fragment, cf. Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, 94–6, 136–7. 52 Graf, Eleusis, 120. 53  For the theme of the mud and its long lasting influence, see M. Aubineau, ‘Le thème du “Bourbier” dans la littérature grecque profane et chrétienne’, Recherches de Science Religieuse 47 (1959) 185–214; P. Courcelle, Connais-toi toi-même de Socrate à Saint Bernard, 3  vols ­(Paris, 1974–75) 2.502–19.

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(above). Moreover, it fits the presence of morally devious categories in the underworld that it is Orphic-Pythagorean literature in which we first find the mention of judges in the underworld.54 Finally, it certainly seems to fit this picture that in Orphic circles several poems about a descent into the underworld, the so-called katabaseis, circulated. Apparently, they had to enlighten people about the bad fate of the morally unjust and the happy life of the righteous in the new afterlife. From the various katabaseis written in the fifth century, we can get some idea of those by Orpheus and Heracles.55 In the case of the latter, we can also see that at an early stage Eleusis appropriated parts of the Orphic picture.56 This is as far as we can go. With Bauckham, I would conclude that Himmelfarb has demonstrated the Jewish origin of the genre of the tours of hell. At the same time, I also agree with Bauckham that behind these Jewish apocalypses there looms in the shadowy background the genre of Orphic and Eleusinian descents and pictures of the underworld, as the presence of mire strongly suggests.57 The place where Jews were most likely to read Orphic literature must have been Alexandria. And indeed, we now know with certainty that the socalled Testament of Orpheus is an Egyptian-Jewish revision of an Orphic poem.58 It may be one more pointer to an Egyptian origin for the Apocalypse of Peter.

54  J.N. Bremmer, The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife (London and New York, 2002) 91–2; A. Lardinois, ‘Het oordeel van Minos: boetes en beloningen na de dood’, Hermeneus 75 (2003) 149–60. 55  See this volume, Chapter  20.1. 56 Graf, Eleusis, 142–49. 57  See now also P. Piovanelli, ‘Katabáseis orphico-pythagoriciennes ou Tours of Hell apo­ calyptiques juifs? La fausse alternative posée par la typologie des péchés et des châtiments dans l’Apocalypse de Pierre’, LEC 83 (2015) 397–414, repr. in his Apocryphités (Turnhout, 2016) 229–46. 58  C. Riedweg, Jüdisch-hellenistische Imitation eines orphischen Hieros Logos (Munich, 1993) and ‘Literatura órfica en ámbito judio’, in Bernabé and Casadesus, Orfeo y la tradición órfica, 1.379–92; F. Jourdan, Poème judéo-hellénistique attribué à Orphée (Paris, 2010).

Chapter 18

The Apocalypse of Peter: Place, Date and Punishments Early Christianity not only knew the Apocalypse of John and the Apocalypse of Peter, but also an Apocalypse of Paul (Visio Pauli), which, unlike the Apocalypse of Peter, survived the ravages of the Middle Ages in several manuscripts.1 In the end, the Greek version of the Apocalypse of Peter was no longer read because the Church considered it a heretical treatise and because of the much greater popularity of the, equally apocryphal, Apocalypse of Paul. Yet for the history of hell the Apocalypse of Peter (henceforth: ApPt) is of prime importance, as it was the first Christian treatise to describe, in great and often repulsive detail, the crimes and punishments of those suffering in hell, and thus became a great inspiration for imagined hellscapes in later antiquity. It would transcend the space available to comment here on the whole of the ApPt in detail, and I will therefore limit my contribution to some observations on its date and place of origin (§1), its sins and punishments (§2) and, finally, on the origin and chronology of the tours of hell (§3).

1.  The Date and Place of the Apocalypse of Peter Unfortunately, we cannot be certain about the date and place of origin of the Apocalypse of Peter. The most prolific student of the ApPt in recent times, Richard Bauckham, has strongly favoured a date under Bar Kokhba in Palestine, whose followers made a messianic claim on his behalf and who persecuted the Christians, both elements fitting the description in Chapter  2 of the ApPt of a persecuting false Messiah.2 Peter van Minnen, on the other hand, considered the case not conclusively demonstrated and proposed Rome because of the Roman martyrdom of Peter and the mention of the ApPt at first place in the Canon Muratori.3 Bauckham had objected that the absence of any mention of the ruler cult argued against a Roman origin, but, as Van Minnen observes, the imperial cult was not very obtrusive in Rome itself. Yet Van Minnen’s arguments are not 1  For the Apocalypse of Paul, see this volume, chapter 19. For the Apocalypse of Peter, see this volume, Chapter  17. 2  R. Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead (Leiden, 1998) 187–94. 3  P. van Minnen, ‘The Greek Apocalypse of Peter’, in J.N. Bremmer and I. Czachesz (eds), The Apocalypse of Peter (Leuven, 2003) 15–39 at 30.

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conclusive either. Moreover, although the connection of ApPt with Bar Kokhba is less persuasive,4 there is another argument for Palestine as well. Several indications suggest that ApPt stands in a tradition that starts in 1 Enoch and considered Mount Hermon in Upper Galilee as the place of revelation. As chapters 15–17 also contain references to Enochic literature, a connection with Palestine seems not unlikely.5 However, this is not the whole truth. Eibert Tigchelaar has observed that the sins in verses 9.2 and 3 are rather similar to those in verses 7.2 and 3. Moreover, in these cases the crimes do not fit the punishment, and the Ethiopic text uses here two first person singular pronouns, namely ‘my righteous ones’ and ‘my righteousness’. He persuasively concludes that these verses must have been inserted into an already existing catalogue of sins. 6 In other words, it is most likely that the author of the ApPt, when writing his text, made freely use of another text. It seems reasonable to assume that this other text was composed in Egypt. There are three arguments in support of this contention. First, there is a reference to the worship of cats, which we also find in other Jewish Egyptian texts.7 Although the worship of cats was known outside Egypt, a reference to it in this context would make sense most in Egypt itself. Second, there is a repeated reference to borboros, ‘mire’, in the Greek version (23, 24, 31), which is lacking in the Ethiopic translation. Mire in Hades is well known from the Greek tradition and appears first in Aristophanes’ Frogs, where Heracles sees those who wronged their guests, struck their parents or committed perjury lying in the mire (145–81, 273). From its other occurrences in Plato’s Phaedo (69C) and Republic (363D), it is clear that the mention of borboros is typical of the Orphic picture of the underworld. 8 Now this tradition is well attested in Jewish circles in Alexandria, where the so-called Testament of Orpheus is a Jewish-Egyptian revision of an Orphic poem,9 whereas Orphic literature is not readily demonstrable for Palestine.

4 

J. Lightfoot, The Sibylline Oracles (Oxford, 2007) 132 f. Tigchelaar, ‘Is the Liar Bar Kokhba? Considering the Date and Provenance of the Greek (Ethiopic) Apocalypse of Peter’, in Bremmer and Czachesz, Apocalypse of Peter, 63–77 at 76 f. 6  Tigchelaar, ‘Is the Liar Bar Kokhba?’, 72. 7  Sapientia Salomonis 12.24, 15.18; Letter to Aristeas 138; Or. Sib. 3.30–1, Frag. 3.22, 27–30, 5.278–80; Philo, Decal. 76–80, De vita contemp.  8 , Leg. 139, 163. It is true that we find references to such worship also in Jewish Palestinian texts, such as Test. Mos. 2.7; Liber Ant. Bibl. 44.5, but these are less specific. 8  For more references, see Bremmer, The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife (London and New York, 2002) 144 note  89; this volume, Chapter  17. 9 C. Riedweg, Jüdisch-hellenistische Imitation eines orphischen Hieros Logos (Munich, 1993) and ‘Literatura órfica en ámbito judío’, in A. Bernabé and F. Casadesus (eds), Orfeo y la tradición órfica. Un reencuentro, 2   vols (Madrid, 2008) 1.379–92; F. Jourdan, Poème judéo-hellénistique attribué à Orphée (Paris, 2010). 5  E.

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Third, when we abstract the crimes in the ApPt from the punishments and turn them into commandments, we get a whole series of commandments, such ‘do not kill’, ‘do not commit abortion’, ‘do not lend money’ or ‘stick to heterosexual relationships’. These commandments strongly resemble other gnomic sententiae in Egyptian- and Jewish-Hellenistic literature. And indeed, it is precisely in Egypt that we find the instructional Demotic monostich and writings such as Papyrus Insinger or the Instruction of Ankhsheshonqy, which closely resemble the sayings of pseudo-Phocylides. It is highly instructive to see that most of the ethical ‘commandments’ can be paralleled in the latter.10 In particular we note that the first two positive instructions to derive from the punishments in the ApPt are ‘do not blaspheme the road of righteousness’ and ‘do not deviate from righteousness’. Similarly, pseudo-Phocylides starts and closes with the mention of righteousness, even if the text of verse 1 is not really clear. Unfortunately, the results of this discussion permit two conclusions. First, the ApPt was written in Palestine but revised by a Jewish-Christian author who used an Egyptian source or version, and was well educated and at home in Greek culture. Alternatively, and probably more likely, the ApPt was written by a similarly educated author in Egypt using a Palestinian text. The fact that he used the Septuagint for his quotations of the Old Testament supports such an Egyptian, perhaps Alexandrian origin.11 On the other hand, the time of composition of the ApPt is less debated. At present, there is a general consensus that it must date from the last decades of the first half of the second century AD, given its mention by Clement of Alexandria.12 From Egypt it was not far to Syria, and it is here that we find the earliest references to our Apocalypse, namely the Epistula Apostolorum and Theophilus of Antioch.13 To these regularly mentioned treatises we may now also add Lucian. After Glen Bowersock has persuasively argued that several passages from the Greek novels react to Christian rites or themes,14 it is perhaps less difficult to accept that in his True Histories Lucian of Syrian Samosata uses the Apocalypse of John in his picture of the City of the Blessed and the ApPt in his passage on the Isle of the Damned. After all, he mentioned Christians in both Alexander of 10  See the review of earlier literature by P.W. van der Horst, ‘Pseudo-Phocylides Revisited’, Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 3 (1988) 3–30 at 4–14; M. Goff, ‘Hellenistic Instruction in Palestine and Egypt: Ben Sira and Papyrus Insinger’, JSJ 36 (2005) 147–72. 11  J. van Ruiten, ‘The Old Testament Quotations in the Apocalypse of Peter’, in Bremmer and Czachesz, Apocalypse of Peter, 158–73; T. Nicklas, ‘“Insider” und “Outsider”: Überlegungen zum historischen Kontext der Darstellung “jenseitiger Orte” in der Offenbarung des Petrus’, in W. Ameling (ed.), Topographie des Jenseits (Stuttgart, 2011) 35–48; J. Joosten, ‘The Origin of the Septuagint Canon’, in S. Kreuzer et al. (eds), Die Septuaginta – Orte und Intentionen (Tübingen, 2016) 688–99 (the Septuagint is more read in Egypt than in Palestine). 12  Clem. Alex. apud Eus. HE 6.14.1, cf. Lightfoot, Sibylline Oracles, 132; W. Grünstäudl, Petrus Alexandrinus (Tübingen, 2013) 268–81. 13  D. Buchholz, Your Eyes Will Be Opened (Atlanta, 1987) 45–50. 14  G. Bowersock, Fiction as History: Nero to Julian (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1994).

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Abounoteichos (25, 38) and Peregrinus (11–13).15 At the same time, Lucian’s knowledge says something about the status of the ApPt: evidently, it soon became known also outside its immediate milieu of origin. Unfortunately, the date and place of the Second Sibylline Oracle, which quotes the ApPt extensively, is disputed, and the most recent discussion has remained inconclusive.16

2.  Crimes and punishments Having looked at its date and origin, let us now move on to the content. The Ethiopic version of the ApPt starts with a number of questions, from the end of the world to Christ on the Mount of Olives. From the answers it is clear that the book was written in a time of persecution (2E). When the last days have come, it says, we shall see a number of specific punishments of specific crimes that are listed in great detail. Subsequently, the apostles see Moses and Elijah appear, and they are shown paradise. Finally, heaven opens and Jesus is taken up with Moses and Elijah. However, in the Greek version the punishments have already taken place and the description of paradise precedes the description of hell instead of following it. In other words, the author of the Akhmin version had already edited the ApPt to a considerable extent. After this quick overview of the extant parts of the book let us take a closer look at the list of sins and punishments found in hell in the ApPt, which I list here in summary manner.17 Sin

Punishment

Blaspheming the way of righteousness (7.1–2E; 22G).

Hung from the tongue, fire.

Denied righteousness (7.3–4E; 23G).

Pit of burning mud.

Women who beautified themselves for adultery (7.5–6E; 24aG).

Hung by the hair over bubbling mud.

15 P. von Möllendorff, Auf der Suche nach der verlogenen Wahrheit. Lukians Wahre Geschichten (Tübingen, 2000) 318–21 (Apocalypse of John), 427–30 (ApPt) and ‘Christliche Apokalypsen und ihr mimetisches Potential in der paganen Bildungskultur. Ein Beitrag zu Lukians Wahren Geschichten’, in S. Alkier and R.B. Hays (eds), Die Bibel im Dialog der Schriften (Tübingen and Basel, 2005) 179–94. M. Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell (Philadelphia, 1983) 111 already suggested the possibility of indirect Christian influence, but Lucian’s knowledge of Christianity was better than often is suspected, see this volume, Chapter  5. 16 Lightfoot, Sibylline Oracles, 94–106. 17 Buchholz, Your Eyes, 308–11; Bauckham, The Fate, 166–7. I have adapted the scheme of I. Czachesz, ‘The Grotesque Body in the Apocalypse of Peter’, in Bremmer and Czachesz, Apocalypse of Peter, 108–26 at 111–13.

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Sin

Punishment

Men who committed adultery with those women (7.7–8E; 24bG).

Hung by the thighs (E; ‘feet’ G), head in the mud, crying, ‘We did not believe that we would come to this place’.

Murderers and their associates (7.9–11E; 25G).

Tormented by snakes and worms, their victims watching them and saying, ‘O God, righteous is thy judgement’.

Women who conceived children but procured abortion (8.1–4E; 26G).

Sit in a pool of discharge and excrement, with eyes burned by flames coming from their children opposite them.

Infanticide (8.5–10E).

Flesh-eating animals come forth from the mothers’ rotten milk and torment the parents.

Persecuting and giving over the righteous ones (9.1–2E; 27G).

Sit in a dark place, burned waist-high, tortured by evil spirits, bowels eaten by worms.

Blaspheming and betraying righteousness (9.3E; 28G).

Chewing their tongues, eyes burnt out by fiery rods.

False witnesses (9.4E; 29G).

Lips cut off, fire in the mouth and bowels.

Faith in wealth, but neglect of widows and orphans (9.5–7E; 30G).

Wearing rags, never ending pain, set on sharp and fiery stones.

Lending money and taking interest on the interest (10.1E; 31G).

Stand in a pool of excrement.

Those ‘who cut their flesh’ (not in G), homosexuals and lesbians (10.2–4E; 32G).18

Endlessly throwing themselves into an abyss.

Those who made idols resembling animals, such as cats and lions (10.5–6E; 33G, which does not specify the nature of the idols).

Makers beat themselves with chains of fire (misunderstood by G).

Men and women that abandoned the commandment (G: way) of God and followed demons (10.7E; 34G).

Eternally burning.

Those who did not obey their parents (11.1–3E).

Slip down rolling into a fiery place repeatedly.

Those who did not obey their parents, who did not follow the teaching of their fathers and did not honour those who were older (11.4–5E).

Carnivorous birds torture them.

Maidens who did not retain their virginity until marriage (11.6–7E).

Their flesh is torn apart.

18 

One of the Ethiopic manuscripts adds ‘idolatry’, but this is most likely a gloss.

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Sin

Punishment

Slaves who did not obey their masters (11.8–9E).

Chewing their tongues, eternal fire.

Those who do charity and regard themselves righteous (12.1–3E).

Blind and deaf pushing each other onto eternally burning coal.

Sorcerers and sorceresses (12.4–7E).

Wheel of fire.

Albrecht Dieterich (1866–1908) has discussed the punishments at length in his learned, original, but rather speculative Nekyia.19 Several penalties have been imposed on the talio principle.20 This is already clear at the beginning, where the blasphemers are hanging by their tongues, just as somewhat later the blasphemers have to chew their tongues, and false witnesses have their lips cut off.21 We may compare Aristophanes’ Knights (1362–3) where the prosecutor is thrown into a ravine with the demagogue Hyperbolus around his neck or Lucian’s Fugitives (33) where the impostor philosopher is hung by his beard. Similarly, ­Lucian lets Kinyras, the kidnapper of Helen, but also the incestuous king of ­Cyprus, hang by his balls in his True Histories.22 Not surprisingly, he is in this respect inspired by the ApPt, even though in the latter adulterers are hung by their feet in the Greek version (24bG) and by their thighs in the Ethiopic translation (7.7–8E).23 In other cases, the connection is much less clear, such as when those trusting their wealth are rolling on sharp pebbles or when usurers are standing in the boiling mire. In fact, in the ApPt the talio principle is used modestly and cannot be considered the organising principle of these penalties.24 The lurid and gruesome picture of hell is partially inspired by Aristophanes and Plato (or Pseudo-Plato), as Dieterich and Norden already saw.25 From them the author took the Orphic mire (borboros) and the bad smells (8E), but the idea of burning mud (23–24G) seems to be the author’s own invention, just as the stress on blood (31G), which Lucian happily took over in his True Histories (2.30). The great transgressors of Greek mythology seem to have been another source of inspira19  A. Dieterich, Nekyia (Leipzig and Berlin, 19132) 205–09. For Dieterich, see this volume, Chapter  17 note  19. 20 Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, 75ff; J.P. Brown, Israel and Hellas III (Berlin and New York, 2001) 27–30. 21  For the Near Eastern background of this punishment, see R. Rollinger, ‘Herodotus, Human Violence and the Ancient Near East’, in V. Karageorghis and I. Taifacos (eds), The World of Herodotus (Nicosia, 2004) 121–50 at 141. 22  D.B. Levine, ‘Lucian, True History 2, 26 Reconsidered: Lust and Punishment’, Helios 18 (1991) 31–33. 23  Cf. Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, 89. 24 Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, 80 shows that at the most 40% of the punishments in ApPt are based on the measure-for-measure principle; Lightfoot, Sibylline Oracles, 503 overstresses its presence in the ApPt in contrast with that of the Sibyl. 25  See this volume, Chapter  19, Introduction.

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tion. The continuous throwing down of gays and lesbians from a great precipice, who then have to climb up in order to be thrown down again (10E, 32G), reminds one of Sisyphus, and the carnivorous birds that torture those that did not honour their parents and the elderly (11.4–5E) recall Prometheus’ vulture. The great stress on blasphemy (9.3E; 28G) and persecution (9.1–2E; 27G) as major sins is somewhat surprising, but among Jews and Greeks we usually find the exhortation to honour both God and the parents;26 one is also reminded of the exhortation of Phlegyas in Virgil’s underworld: discite iustitiam moniti et non temnere divos (Aen. 6.620), on the content of which the major commentaries are remarkably silent. In the Apocalypse of Peter, however, the focus on God and the threat of His denial during the persecutions seem to have inspired our author to exalt God’s position. That is perhaps why this category is so well represented. Naturally, the traditional pagan sinners had no place any more in the ApPt, but we already find the same ‘emancipation’ of the traditional punishments from the original sinners in Virgil’s Aeneid 6,27 and we may at least wonder if this separation was not already part of the common source. The crimes can be grouped into certain categories, 28 even though there is always something arbitrary about such categorisations. The largest one concerns the interrelated righteousness, blasphemy, idolatry and persecution (7), then comes sexuality and the relationships between the sexes (4), then concern for parents and slaves (5), 29 to which category we probably also have to count the concern for unborn or new-born children, which in pseudo-Phocylides (184–5) is included among the other sexual prescriptions, and this may be valid also for the concern for widows and orphans (2); finally, we find magic (1), usury (1) and murder (1). It is extremely interesting to note these groupings, as our author certainly did not invent this procedure by himself. In fact, such groupings also occur in two other, only slightly earlier, hellscapes, viz in the katabasis of Virgil’s Aeneid VI, of which the Orphic character was established by Eduard Norden in his great commentary,30 and in a third- or fourth-century papyrus from Bologna, of which the text seems to date of early imperial times and is generally accepted to be Orphic in character (OF 717 Bernabé).31 In Virgil (Aen. 6.608–13), we find a 26  P.W. van der Horst, The Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides (Leiden, 1978) 116–7 with many references; W. Wilson, The Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides (Berlin and New York, 2004) 82 f. 27  J. Zetzel, ‘Romane Memento: Justice and Judgment in Aeneid 6’, TAPA 119 (1989) 263– 84 at 269–70. 28  Tigchelaar, ‘Is the Liar Bar Kokhba?’, 71 surely goes too far: ‘a haphazardly assembled collection of diverse sins, without a clear systematisation or an area of special attention’, even though followed by Lightfoot, Sibylline Oracles, 505. 29  These belong together, see P. Derron, Les Sentences du Pseudo-Phocylide (Paris, 1986) 31. 30  E. Norden, P. Vergilius Maro Aeneis VI (Leipzig, 19273). For Norden, see this volume, Chapter  17, note  18. 31  For the text, with extensive bibliography and commentary, see A. Bernabé, Orphicorum

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list of sinners against the family and familia, then a brief list of their punishments (614–17), and then more sinners, mythological and historical (618–24). In the Orphic papyrus, we find a list of sinners (1–24), then the Erinyes and Harpies as agents of their punishments (25–46), and subsequently again sinners (47 ff.). Both Virgil and the papyrus must go back to an older Orphic source (sources?),32 which we no longer have, but which seems to have contained separate catalogues of sinners and their punishments. Let us now first note what we do not read. We do not hear anything about specific ritual or dogmatic transgressions. Most decent Jews, Christians and, probably, even some pagans would hardly have quarrelled with the great majority of these implicit commandments. This may well be another indication that the prescriptions ultimately derived from Jewish Hellenistic ethical monostichs, as these also avoided all too explicit references to Jewish practices and doctrines.33 Second, in Hellenistic Jewish precepts we often find sexuality first, closely followed by parents, the elderly and slaves.34 This focus is still recognisable in our text where sexuality and the relationships between the sexes are also highly important, immediately followed by the parents and widows and orphans. In pseudo-Phocylides (4) we find wiles and murder immediately after the injunction about sexuality, and this combination must have been traditional.35 That is probably why in the ApPt murder immediately follows upon adultery and before the mention of abortion, which might be seen as the fruit of adulterous behaviour. Third, the stress on blasphemy and persecution is somewhat surprising. Among Jews and Greeks we usually find the exhortation to honour both God and the parents.36 Here it seems that the focus on God and the threat of His denial during the persecutions has inspired our author to exalt God’s position. That is why this category is represented most. This does not necessarily mean that the persecutions mentioned were invented by our Christian author. In 1 Enoch 108 we find not only blasphemers in the eternal fire (6), where the Ethiopic version of 1 Enoch uses the same term as the

et Orphicis similium testimonia et fragmenta. Poetae Epici Graeci. Pars II. Fasc. 2 (Munich and Leipzig, 2006) 271–87, who notes on p.  271: ‘omnia quae in papyro leguntur cum Orphica doctrina recentioris aetatis congruunt’. 32  This has been established by N. Horsfall, ‘P. Bonon.4 and Virgil, Aen.6, yet again’, ZPE 96 (1993) 17 f. 33  Van der Horst, ‘Pseudo-Phocylides Revisited’, 1–12. 34  Van der Horst, Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides, 110–1. 35  Van der Horst, ad loc., compares Sapientia Salomonis 14.25f and Barnabas 20.1. 36  Van der Horst, Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides, 116–7 with many references; Wilson, Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides, 82 f.

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ApPt, but also a mention of those who ‘were being trodden upon by evil people’ (10) and who will be seated ‘each one by one upon the throne of honour’ (12). This combination of blasphemy, persecution and recompense suggest an origin in the times from before or during the Maccabean revolt. In fact, it seems that the notion of blasphemy became more prominent in the second century BC as a qualification of non-Jews or as a means of slighting ideological or religious Jewish opponents. It now became incorporated in lists of sins, such as ‘sin, oppression, blasphemy and injustice’ in 1 Enoch (91.7; note also 96.7), but also in the Dead Sea Scrolls (1QS 4.10–11, 4Q372 1 13). Philo repeatedly expresses his horror at blasphemy, such as when the emperor requests worship (Leg. 368) or when the name of God is pronounced at unsuitable occasions (Vita Moy. 2.206), which in his view deserves capital punishment.37 Unfortunately, though, it is not always clear what the exact meaning of blaspheming is. It seems that Hebrew giddef covers the whole spectre of negatively speaking to or about God as well as denying God’s care and law. In each case, it is the context that determines the precise meaning of blasphemy. Greeks and Romans were much less concerned with blasphemy, and the Emperor Tiberius, who sometimes had a healthy view of life, tersely commented: deorum iniuriae dis curae (Tac. Ann. 1.73). Early Christianity, however, followed its Jewish roots in this respect. Blasphemers perverted God’s law, and that is why pseudo-Pauline letters can say that a slave should serve his master so that God’s word would not be blasphemed (1 Timothy 6.1) or that women should be chaste so that the word of God should not be blasphemed (Titus 2.5). Blasphemy, then, had a strong ethical content, which seems to have been lost in its modern usage.38 This ethical meaning probably also explains the words ‘blaspheming the way of righteousness’ (9.3E; 28G). The expression ‘the way of righteousness’ is a relative newcomer in the Old Testament and not found before the book of Job. It often occurs in Proverbs, but also in Matthew (21.32) in the New Testament, where John came in the ‘road of righteousness’ and demanded righteousness of life in accordance with the will of God. Elsewhere in the New Testament we find the expression in 2 Peter (2.21) where the libertines leave this road. Pseudo-Phocylides (229–30) even ends with: ‘These are the mysteries of righteousness; living by them may you live out a good life until the threshold of old age’. In other words, dikaiosynê does not so much imply here a connection with faith and salvation, such as we find in Paul, but rather its contemporary Jewish meaning, which in itself was much influenced by a development of dikaios in Hellenistic times, when the word became synonymous for an honnête 37 

H. Merkel, ‘Gotteslästerung’, in RAC 11 (1981) 1185–1201. Cabantous, Blasphemy: Impious Speech in the West From the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century (New York and London, 2002); D. Nash, Blasphemy in the Christian World: A History (Oxford, 2007). 38 A.

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homme. In Jewish circles this meant to be a decent person in accordance with the Law and, probably also according to our author, in obedience to God as well.39 This obedience to God, precisely in times of persecution, must have made blasphemy an even more serious crime than it would have been anyway.40 My last example concerns certain sexual behaviour. The Ethiopic version states that those that hurl themselves continually from a height are those ‘that cut their flesh, those that had sexual relations with men. The women who are with them are those that have defiled one another, as a woman with a man’ (10.4E). In the Greek version, this has become: ‘these were the ones who defiled their bodies acting as women. And the women who were with them were those who lay with one another as a man with a woman’ (32bG). It is interesting to see that the recent French translation in the authoritative collection of apocryphal writings edited by Bovon and Geoltrain replaces the Ethiopic ‘cut the flesh’ with the less specific Greek ‘those who have defiled themselves’.41 Evidently, he finds the expression out of place here. My former colleague István Czachesz has suggested interpreting the expression as a reference to cultic tattooing.42 What both of them did not notice is that pseudo-Phocylides (187) condemns castration in the same section as homosexuality and lesbian love. This proves once again the dependence of the ApPt on Jewish texts, but also suggests that we should look to the Jewish background of Christianity for the background of the prohibition. It is noticeable that castration is not explicitly forbidden in the Old Testament: apparently, it was not practised sufficiently to be a threat to society. This changes in the Roman period, when both Philo (Hyp. in Eus. PE 8.7.7) and Josephus (Contra Apionem 2.270–1) speak out against it – presumably because they were confronted with the practice in everyday life. Understandably, Greeks and Romans were not in favour of the practice, and Greeks usually referred to it euphemistically.43 As the emperor Domitian had forbidden castration, its mention here is more a survival from the Jewish background than an up-to-date crime, and it is not surprising that later versions of the ApPt dropped it.

39 

39.

C. Spicq, Notes de lexicographie néo-testamentaire. Supplément (Göttingen, 1982) 128–

40 Lightfoot,

ing’.

Sibylline Oracles, 510 unpersuasively interprets the blaspheming as ‘slander-

41  P. Marassini, in F. Bovon and P. Geoltrain (eds), Écrits apocryphes chrétiens I (Paris, 1997) 755–74 at 767. 42  For cultic tattooing and cutting in antiquity, Czachesz, ‘Grotesque Body’, 112 note  19, compares W. Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults (Cambridge MA, 1987) 81; D.E. Aune, Revelation 6–16 (Dallas, 1998) 465–9; note also J.N. Bremmer, ‘Stigmata: From Tattoos to Saints’ Marks’, in D. Boschung et al. (eds), Bodies in Transition (Munich, 2015) 137–51. 43  Herodotus 8.106; Pseudo-Lucian, Amores 21; Heraclitus, Letters 9.4; E. Maass, ‘Eunuchos und Verwandtes’, RhM 74 (1925) 432–76 at 476; in general, R. Muth, ‘Kastration’, in RAC 20 (2004) 285–342.

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Homosexuality must have remained more common, even though in some pagan philosophical circles it came to be viewed negatively.44 It was already prohibited in the Old Testament (Leviticus 18.22) and became heavily criticised by Jewish intellectuals like Philo and Josephus.45 Consequently, its condemnation was incorporated into the New Testament and early Christian authors, and the continued condemnation in the ApPt is therefore hardly a novelty. Lesbianism is perhaps a bit more surprising, as it is not mentioned in the Old Testament. It probably did not become visible in the man-dominated world of ancient Israel. This changed only slowly, as lesbian love is not mentioned by Philo or Josephus and is alluded to rather circumspectly by Paul in Romans (1.26). Its occurrence here therefore seems once again inspired by the Jewish tradition of pseudo-Phocylides (192), who may well have read or heard about it in Egypt where lesbian love is attested in both literary texts and magical spells.46 It is clear that we have to look at the penalties in the ApPt not in isolation but as an appropriation of a Jewish tradition by Jewish Christians living in the 130s or 140s. We can get an even better idea of the development of such penalties and their implicit ideas when we look at the Apocalypse of Paul. This Apocalypse was published about AD 400 and of course much better adapted to the radically changed situation through the victory of Christianity than the so much older ApPt. There is clearly a tendency to be original and thus some penalties are kept, whereas the place of punishment is changed. Whereas the ApPt, like pseudo-Phocylides (184–5), still distinguished between abortion and exposure, we now only hear of abortion, and the preservation of female modesty has become more important. It is hardly surprising that the categories of the false witnesses, apostates, idolaters and persecutors no longer find a place. It is perhaps more surprising that the category of the slave has disappeared. On the other hand, we now find penalties introduced for those who break the fast too soon, for (metaphorically) blind pagans and for those who pretend to be ascetics.47

3.  The nature and chronology of the tours of hell Where does this all leave us regarding the origin and chronology of the tours of hell? In her book on the tours of hell, Martha Himmelfarb argued vigorously against Albrecht Dieterich that the ApPt was not part of the Orphic-Pythagorean tradition but that ‘the various motifs in the ApPt, whatever their origin, 44 

See F. Buffière, Éros adolescent: la pédérastie dans la Grèce antique (Paris, 1980) 485–90. Van der Horst, Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides, 237–9 46  Texts: Herondas 6 and 7; Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos 3.14.171, 4.5.187. Spells: B. Brooten, Love Between Women. Early Christian Responses to female Homoeroticism (Chicago and London, 1996) 77–113. 47  For the Apocalypse of Paul, see this volume, Chapter  19. 45 

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have been shaped in consciousness of a Jewish and Christian literary tradition’.48 However, even though Dieterich stressed the Greek background of the ApPt too exclusively, he also noticed, although merely in passing, that we cannot separate Greek and Jewish traditions too much and must allow for mutual influences.49 This clearly is also the case with the ApPt where Orphic influence is undeniable, given, for example, the occurrence of Orphic borboros, ‘mire’ (23, 24, 31G: §  1).50 Now when we look at the early tours of hell that we have been discussing, viz. Virgil’s Aeneid VI, the Bologna papyrus and the ApPt, we can identify at least three important characteristics of the genre. First, as Himmelfarb observed, there is an important formal marker in that the visionary often asks: ‘who are these?’, and is answered by the guide of the vision with ‘these are those who...’, a phenomenon that Himmelfarb traces back to Enoch’s cosmic tour in the Book of the Watchers, which can be dated to before 200 BC but is probably not older than the third century.51 We may well find the demonstrative pronouns also in the Aeneid, as Lightfoot, following Himmelfarb, noted: ‘Demonstratives are formally absent from his (i.e. Aeneas’) questions, but Aeneas’ questions at 318– 20 and 560–1 can be seen as rhetorical variations on the question “who are these?” Of the Sibyl’s replies, 322–30 contains haec, ille, hi; 562–627 contains three instances each of hic as adverb (580, 582, 608) and demonstrative pronoun (587, 621, 623), a rhetorical question answered by the Sibyl herself (574–7), and several relative clauses (583, 608, 610, 612) identifying individual sinners or groups’.52 Although in the ApPt the description of hell is not given in a question and answer form, it does contain the demonstrative pronouns and it is not difficult to think of the questions as implicit ones. Second, in the tours of hell the visionary often needs a guide to understand what he sees or he is told what the guide sees. This is the case in the ApPt, where Christ tells Peter about the sinners and their punishments, and in Virgil, where the Sibyl tells Aeneas about the sinners and their punishments. Yet there are no certain early Greek examples of such guides, and the Bologna papyrus seems to miss one, just as it also lacks the demonstrative pronouns and the question/ answer form. Third, the description of hell contains a list of sinners and their punishments. It may seem evident to state this, but Himmelfarb failed to note that the Book of Watchers 17–22 lacks such a catalogue.53 However, such catalogues were 48 Himmelfarb,

Tours of Hell, 67. Nekyia, 222. 50  See this volume, Chapter  17, accepted by Lightfoot, Sibylline Oracles, 141, with additional arguments. 51 Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, 41–67. 52 Lightfoot, Sibylline Oracles, 502–3, cf. Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, 49 f. 53  As is observed by R. Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead (Leiden, 1998) 79. 49 Dieterich,

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most popular in Orphic literature, as Dieterich and Norden extensively demonstrated.54 What conclusion can we draw from this survey? It seems that we have to do with two strands of tradition. First, there is the Enochic tour with its guide as well as questions and answers with the demonstrative pronouns. Second, there is the catalogue of sinners and punishments. Evidently, the tours of hell of the first centuries of our era could choose from those traditions and combine them in varying ways: with or without guides and with or without demonstrative pronouns. But they all contain the catalogue of sinners and punishments. Now Virgil has the guide, the catalogue of sinners and, probably, the demonstrative pronouns. We can thus reasonably conclude that Virgil, directly or indirectly, made use not only of Orphic traditions but also of material from 1 Enoch,55 just as the Apocalypse of Peter clearly contains Enochic traditions.56 It is time to conclude. Inspired by the Orphic tradition, some Jews started to adapt the Greek crimes and penalties in the afterlife to their own tradition. This adaptation most likely took place in Egypt, probably in Alexandria. The early Christians appropriated this tradition and adapted the crimes to their own difficult situation in a time of persecution.57 Later Christians were no longer plagued by persecutions and had developed different ideals and practices, which they also adapted once again. In the end, every Apocalypse has to be looked at as the product of a tradition that has been appropriated in a particular time and place.58

54 Dieterich, Nekyia, 163–213; E. Norden, Kleine Schriften zum klassischen Altertum (Berlin, 1966) 229–31 (first published in 1893) and P. Vergilius Maro Aeneis VI, 287 f. 55  See also J.N.Bremmer, ‘Vergil and Jewish Literature’, Vergilius 59 (2013) 143–50. 56 Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch I, 87, 101; Tigchelaar, ‘Is the Liar Bar Kokhba?’, 76–7; Ligthtfoot, Sibylline Oracles, 142; this volume, Chapter  20.3. 57 For the educational purpose of the punishments, see M. Henning, Educating Early Christians through the Rhetoric of Hell (Tübingen, 2014) 183–89. 58  For corrections and comments I am most grateful to Ton Hilhorst, Eibert Tigchelaar and, especially, Nicholas Horsfall.

Chapter 19

Christian Hell: From the Apocalypse of Peter to the Apocalypse of Paul In the summer of 1931, the aged Wilamowitz (1848–1931), the greatest classical scholar of his time, feverishly worked on his last book, Der Glaube der Hellenen, knowing that he would have little time left for completing this work that was clearly close to his heart.1 On Orpheus and Orphism, he was rather sceptical. He admitted that there had been an Orphic Theogony, but, as he argued, this did not prove a ‘besondere Religion und erst recht keine Gemeinde’, an ‘orphische Seelenlehre soll erst einer nachweisen’ and the Orphic Gold Leaves certainly were not Orphic. Moreover and rather strikingly, he also rejected the idea that ‘Platons Hadesbilder und zugleich die Petrusapokalypse von Orpheus stammen’.2 Why would Wilamowitz mention this Apocalypse of Peter, which few of his contemporary classicists would have read? To answer this question, we will have to go back some fourty years in time, when, in the winter of 1886–7, a late sixth- or early seventh-century codex with substantial fragments of the Apocalypse in Greek was found in the grave of, probably, a monk in Akhmim, ancient Panopolis. The Apocalypse of Peter immediately roused great interest among the leading classical and patristic scholars of its day, even in the case of Wilamowitz himself.3 Moreover, it inspired Albrecht Dieterich’s (1866–1908) still useful and learned study of the underworld, Nekyia, which appeared only one year later, a testimony to his great erudition.4 Dieterich showed that the Christian ideas of hell certainly had been nourished by Orphic ideas, even though he overstressed his point. A decade later Eduard Norden (1868–1941), who, like Dieterich, had also immediately reacted to the new discovery,5 published the first edition of his 1  A. Henrichs, ‘“Der Glaube der Hellenen”: Religionsgeschichte als Glaubensbekenntnis und Kulturkritik’, in W.M. Calder III et al. (eds), Wilamowitz nach 50 Jahren (Darmstadt, 1985) 262–305. 2  For the quotes, see U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Der Glaube der Hellenen, 2  vols (Darmstadt, 19593) 2.191–202. 3  See this volume, Chapter  17, Introduction. 4  A. Dieterich, Nekyia (Leipzig and Berlin, 1893, 19132). For Dieterich, see this volume, Chapter  17, note  19. 5  See E. Norden, Kleine Schriften zum klassischen Altertum (Berlin, 1966) 218–33 (‘Die Petrusapokalypse und ihre antiken Vorbilder’). For Norden, see this volume, Chapter  17, note  18.

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commentary on Aeneid VI, in which he also argued Vergil’s dependency on Orphic sources. 6 The great contemporary interest in the Apocalypse of Peter is still somewhat surprising, but it may have been partially helped by the fact that the study of the afterlife had become fashionable at the end of the nineteenth century.7 Wilamowitz did not mention any names in his passage on Orphism, but it is clear that he aimed at Dieterich’s Nekyia, although his rejection must also have struck Eduard Norden, whose commentary on Aeneid VI had recently appeared in a third edition. Although Wilamowitz had enthusiastically welcomed its appearance on publication, in 1903, he had grown more sceptical about the project later in his career.8 In fact, around 1930 the increasing and regretful specialisation of the study of the ancient world into patristics and classics as well as the anti-Christian sentiment of several German classicists had led to a neglect of the Apocalypse of Peter in classical circles. This neglect lasted until 2007 when the productive Jane Lightfoot published a big commentary on the first two books of the Sibylline Oracles, in which she develops in detail earlier findings that much of the second Sibylline book leans heavily on the Apocalypse of Peter.9 In fact, her book is a model as to how patristics and classics should be combined. In the end, though, the reliance on Jewish models and stress on persecution must have made the Apocalypse of Peter look old fashioned, and in due time it was replaced by the most popular medieval apocryphal Apocalypse, that of Paul, the subject of the rest of this chapter. We still have several long Latin versions left that go back, albeit sometimes heavily abbreviated and corrupted, to the lost original Greek version, but the great majority of the medieval versions contain only the description of Paul’s visit to hell. It was this version that could be found both in Latin and in several vernacular languages in Western Europe, and that remained popular until the Reformation.10 In the East,11 the original 6  E. Norden, P. Vergilius Maro Aeneis VI (Leipzig, 19031, 19273) 5 (sources); see also J.N. Bremmer, Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World (Berlin and Boston, 2014) 180– 204. 7  See the well-researched study by V. Krech, ‘Vom “paradise terrestre” über die “Himmelsreise der Seele” zum “fundus animae”. Jenseitsvorstellungen als Thema der Religionswissenschaft im späten 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert’, in L. Hölscher (ed.), Das Jenseits (Göttingen, 2007) 152–77. 8  For his changing appreciation, compare Wilamowitz’s letters of 11 June 1903 and 25 August 1926 in W.M. Calder III and B. Huss, “Sed serviendum officio…” The Correspondence between Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff and Eduard Norden (1892–1931) (Berlin, 1997) 18–21 and 235–6, respectively. 9  J. Lightfoot, The Sibylline Oracles (Oxford, 2007). 10  See, most recently, L. Jiroušková, Die Visio Pauli. Wege und Wandlungen einer orienta­ lischen Apokryphe im lateinischen Mittelalter unter Einschluß der alttsechischen und deutschsprachigen Textzeugen (Leiden, 2006); P. Dinzelbacher, Von der Welt durch die Hölle zum Paradies – das mittelalterliche Jenseits (Paderborn, 2007) 165–80 (the Visio Pauli in the Middle Ages); J. Zimmermann, ‘Die Tiroler Predigtsammlung und ihre Visio Pauli (mit Edition des. Predigttextes)’, in M. Costard et al. (eds), Mertens lesen. Exemplarische Lektüren für

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Greek version survived only in an abbreviated version,12 although its lost prototype became the source of the Syriac version,13 which in turn is the source of the Armenian and Arabic versions.14 The Coptic version,15 which lacks chapters 1–14, also goes back to the lost longer Greek version and is very close to the best Latin version (L1), which has survived most completely in a Parisian manuscript of the ninth century.16 The author of the Apocalypse of Paul most likely knew the Apocalypse of Peter and borrowed some elements from it.17 Given the difference in time between the two Apocalypses we may expect certain changes to have arisen and, after we have looked at the date and place of origin of the Apocalypse of Paul (§  1), we will analyse the old and new sins and sinners (§  2), discuss some punishments (§  3), and end with a few conclusions (§  4).

Volker Mertens zum 75. Geburtstag (Göttingen, 2012) 9–30; N.H. Trunte, Reiseführer durch das Jenseits: die Apokalypse des Paulus in der Slavia Orthodoxa (Munich, 2013); R.E. Guglielmetti, ‘Deux témoins inédits de la Visio Pauli’, Apocrypha 26 (2015) 57–78. For a full bibliography, see J.N. Bremmer and I. Czachesz (eds), The Visio Pauli and the Gnostic Apocalypse of Paul (Leuven, 2007) 211–36. For the Forschungsgeschichte, P. Piovanelli, Apocryphités (Turnhout, 2016) 380–88. 11  For the East, see also Piovanelli, Apocryphités, 371–79. 12  C. Tischendorf, Apocalypses Apocryphae Mosis, Esdrae, Pauli, Iohannis, item Mariae Dormitio, additis evangeliorum et actuum apocryphorum supplementis (Leipzig, 1866 = Hildesheim 1966) XIV-XVIII, 34–69; add B. Bouvier and F. Bovon, ‘Prière et Apocalypse de Paul. Un fragment grec inédit conservé au Sinaï. Introduction, texte, traduction et notes’, Apocrypha 15 (2004) 9–30; Piovanelli, Apocryphités, 427–34. 13  For text and translation, see G. Ricciotti, ‘Apocalypsis Pauli syriace’, Orientalia NS 2 (1933) 1–25, 120–49. 14  Armenian: L. Leloir, Écrits apocryphes sur les apôtres: Traduction de l’édition de Venise I: Pierre, Paul, André, Jacques, Jean (Turnhout, 1986) 113–72. Arabic: A. Bausi, Apocalisse di Paolo: versione araba (BN 5072) (Florence, 1992), cf. Bausi, ‘A First Evaluation of “the Arabic Version of the Apocalypse of Paul”’, Parole de l’Orient 24 (1999) 131–64. 15  E.A.W. Budge, Miscellaneous Coptic Texts in the Dialect of Upper Egypt (London, 1915 = New York, 1977) 534–74 (text), 1043–84 (translation), cf. L. Roig Lanzillotta, ‘The Coptic Apocalypse of Paul in Ms Or 7023’, in Bremmer and Czachesz, Visio Pauli, 158–97. 16  Unless otherwise indicated, I quote this version, which has now been authoritatively edited, together with the other long versions, by T. Silverstein and A. Hilhorst, Apocalypse of Paul. A New Critical Edition of Three Long Latin Versions (Geneva, 1997); add M.-F. Damongeot-Bourdat, ‘Un nouveau manuscrit de l’Apocalypse de Paul, (Paris, BnF, nouv. acq. lat. 2676)’, Bulletin du Cange 67 (2009) 29–64; The translations are adapted from H. Duensing and A. de Santos Otero, ‘Apocalypse of Paul’, in NTA 2.712–48. 17  This is contested by M. Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell (Philadelphia, 1983) 140–47, who notes clear significant parallels but still postulates ‘a well-known tradition or traditions, not necessarily written’ as its explanation. This is unnecessary, as the author of the Apocalypse of Paul could easily have known the Apocalypse of Peter, which was still available in Egypt in his time.

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1. Date and place of origin Where and when was the Apocalypse of Paul written? According to Silverstein and Hilhorst, ‘the Apocalypse of Paul was written originally in Greek and in Egypt’. It was ‘evidently’ known ‘to the Egyptian Christians about the middle of the third century’ and may be even older than that. This Greek text, thus still Silverstein and Hilhorst, was carried to Asia Minor and there ‘reissued in a “second edition” with a preface supporting its authenticity’. This new preface put the discovery ‘by a standard Roman dating formula in the consulship of Theodosius the Younger and Flavius Constantinus, that is to say, in the year 420’.18 This reconstruction is only partially tenable, although the answer seems simple at first sight, as the Apocalypse itself supplies us with an answer. Its prologue tells us: (1) In the consulate of Theodosius Augustus the Younger and Cynegius (AD 388), in that time there lived a honoratus in Tarsus in the house that once had belonged to Saint Paul.19 An angel appeared in the night and told him in a revelation that he should destroy the foundations of the house and make public what he found. He thought however that these were delusions. (2) When the angel came for the third time, he whipped him and compelled him to destroy the foundations. And, when digging, the man found a marble box inscribed on the sides. In it was the revelation of Saint Paul and his sandals, in which he used to walk when teaching the word of God. But he feared to open that box and gave it to a judge. Having accepted it, the judge sent it as it was, sealed with lead, to the Emperor Theodosius, fearing that it was something else (other than the Apocalypse). When he had accepted it, the Emperor opened it and found the revelation of Saint Paul. He sent a copy to Jerusalem and kept the original.

There can be little doubt as to what the function is of this prologue. It clearly has to authenticate the Apocalypse as a treatise by the apostle himself, apparently hidden, of all places, in his own house in Tarsus! Such a strategy of authentification by the discovery of an old manuscript was well known in antiquity since Acusilaus and Euhemerus,20 and was still used in America by Joseph Smith to 18 

Silverstein and Hilhorst, Apocalypse of Paul, 11. to Thesaurus Linguae Latinae VI 2949.25 sqq., a honoratus is a ‘titulus sol­ lem­nis magistratuum, magistratibus functorum codicillis exornatorum aevi imperatorii’, or ‘de iis qui magistratibus, gradibus, administrationibus publicis sim. funguntur vel functi sunt’. The title seems to be mentioned for the first time in Codex Theodosianus (CTh) 12.6.4 (AD 365). G. Boffito, Dell’andata di San Paolo al cielo e all’inferno. La Visio S.ti Pauli secondo un codice parigino (Florence, 1907) writes Honoratus, but the introduction of a name of an unknown person seems less likely here. 20  A.-J. Festugière, La Révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste I (Paris, 19503) 319–24 and Études de religion grecque et hellénistique (Paris, 1972) 272–4; W. Speyer, Bücherfunde in der Glaubenswerbung der Antike (Göttingen, 1970) 60–5, 130–1 (Prologue); W. Burkert, Kleine Schriften III (Göttingen, 2006) 272; R.L. Fowler, Early Greek Mythography, 2  vols (Oxford, 19  According

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promote the Mormon cause.21 As regards the dual preservation, we have an interesting parallel in the Latin Recension B of the originally Greek Historia Apollonii regis Tyri. According to this version, Apollonius ‘wrote an account of all his own and his family’s vicissitudes, and made two copies: one he deposited in the temple of Diana of the Ephesians, the other in his own library’ (51.26–28 Kortekaas). As this detail is absent from the slightly older Recension A, and B was probably translated in Rome at about the same time as the Apocalypse of Paul,22 mutual influence can hardly be excluded, the more so as Tarsus plays an important role in the Historia Apollonii; it may have even been originally written there.23 Given that Theodosius II ruled from 408 to 450, the dating formula is obviously a mistake of L1 (ms from Paris, ninth century, or his source), due to a misreading of Theodosio Aug. II, that is, ‘Theodosius (I, 379–395) being consul for the second time’.24 The death of Cynegius in the very year 388 suggests that the choice of his name was not arbitrary. He was a staunch Christian, who was responsible for the destruction of pagan sanctuaries in Syria and Egypt, even in the last year of his life, and a great friend of monks and ascetics.25 Considering the number of references to the latter in the text, it seems plausible that the author chose the date in honour of a spiritual friend. This conclusion also implies that Cynegius was still in living memory at the moment of writing.

2000–2013) 2.624–25; Piovanelli, Apocryphités, 405–25. For later periods: J. Herman and F. Hallyn (eds), Le topos du manuscrit trouvé (Leuven, 1999). 21  A. Henrichs, ‘Alte und neue Propheten als Stifter von Offenbarungsreligionen: Der Ursprung der Mormonen nach Eduard Meyer’, in W.M. Calder III and A. Demandt (eds), Eduard Meyer: Leben und Leistung eines Universalhistorikers (Leiden, 1990) 182–207. 22  G.A. Kortekaas, The Story of Apollonius, King of Tyre (Leiden, 2004) 17. 23  J.N. Bremmer, ‘The Novel and the Apocryphal Acts: Place, Time and Readership’, in H. Hofmann and M. Zimmerman (eds), Groningen Colloquia on the Novel IX (Groningen, 1998) 157–180 at 169–70. 24  As is persuasively observed by Silverstein and Hilhorst, Apocalypse of Paul, 19 note  3, who refer to the dating formula for 388 in the Consularia Constantinopolitana: Theodosio Aug. II et Cynegio cons.; add the same dating formula in CTh 5.14–16 and 16.4.2. Yet in the main text, they stick to the date of 420, as Piovanelli, Apocryphités, 413 n.  25 well observes. 25  On Maternus Cynegius, see J.R. Martindale, The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire I (Cambridge, 1971) 235–6, s.v. Maternus Cynegius 3; W. Frend, ‘Monks and the End of Greco-Roman Paganism in Syria and Egypt’, Cristianesimo nella Storia 11 (1990) 469–84; H.-U. Wiemer, ‘Die Rangstellung des Sophisten Libanios unter den Kaisern Julian, Valens und Theodosius: mit einem Anhang über Abfassung und Verbreitung von Libanios’ Rede Für die Tempel (Or. 30)’, Chiron 25 (1995) 89–130; L. García Moreno, ‘Materno Cinegio: un noble hispano o un burocrata oriental?’, in J.-M. Carrié and R. Lizzi Testa (eds), “Humana sapit”: études d’antiquité tardive offertes à Lellia Cracco Ruggini (Turnhout, 2002) 179–86; J. Hahn, Gewalt und religiöser Konflikt (Berlin, 2004) 79–83; S. Olszaniec, Prosopographical studies on the Court Elite in the Roman Empire (4th Century A. D.) (Torun´, 2013) 97–119. Destructions in Syria: Libanius, Or. 30; Theodoret, HE 5.21.7. Egypt: Consularia Constantinopolitana ad AD. 388 = Chronica Minora I p.  244 (MGH); Zosimus 4.37.3.

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Now this late dating has been contested by Charlotte Touati with a series of arguments that are not convincing.26 She starts with the thirteenth-century Syrian scholar Barhebraeus in his Nomocanon, who quotes Origen as saying that ‘the Apocalypse of Paul with other apocalypses and the Teaching of the Apostles and the Epistles (sic) of Barnabas and Tobit and the Shepherd and son of Sirach are accepted in the Church. But many do not accept the Book of the Shepherd and the Apocalypse of John’ (7.9, tr. R. Casey). However, Barhebraeus does not give a specific source for his quotation,27 and could not read Greek.28 As Origen seems to have accepted only the Apocalypse of John into the New Testament canon out of the contemporary Apocalypses, 29 the quotation cannot be firsthand and will have been influenced by the later popularity of the Apocalypse of Paul.30 A description by Origen of the fate of the damned in very general terms, which survives only in a translation by Rufinus,31 does not mention Paul at all and can thus hardly be derived from an early version of the Apocalypse of Paul, as the reverse, the Apocalypse borrowing from Origen, could be just as true as well. Consequently, there is no reason to speak of an Urtext or a ‘second edition’ of our Apocalypse,32 the less so as nothing of such a text has survived to justify speaking of a ‘first version’. Neither is Touati’s identification of a treatise called Ascent of Paul of a little known sect, the Canaites, with our Apocalypse very persuasive. A recent date, on the other hand, is supported by the fact that around 416 Augustine in his Treatise on John (98.8 = CCSL 36.581) mentions that some people had concocted an Apocalypsim Pauli, quam sana non recipit Ecclesia and in his only slightly later Enchiridion (29.112–3 = CCSL 46.109–10) he speaks of the mitigation of the lot of the damned in terms that suggest a reference to our Apocalypse (44). It is not so strange that it was Augustine who mentions our 26  C. Touati, ‘Origène, Athanase, Augustin: vrais et faux témoins de l’Apocalypse de Paul’, Apocrypha 18 (2007) 167–204. 27  R.P. Casey, ‘The Apocalypse of Paul’, JThS 34 (1933) 1–32 at 27 suggests that the whole passage is a quotation from Origen and derives from his commentary on Hebrews, but the last part hardly fits the style of Origen and points to a secondary source. 28  Th. Noeldeke, Orientalische Skizzen (Berlin, 1892) 254–55; H. Teule, ‘Gregory Barhebraeus and His Time: the Syrian Renaissance’, Journal of the Canadian Society for Syriac Studies 3 (2003) 21–43 at 22–24. 29  R. Roukema, ‘La tradition apostolique et le canon du Nouveau Testament’, in A. Hilhorst (ed.), The Apostolic Age in Patristic Thought (Leiden, 2004) 86–103 at 101–2. Regarding Origen’s opinion of the apocryphal writings, A. van den Hoek, ‘Clement and Origen as sources on “noncanonical” scriptural traditions during the late second and earlier third centuries’, in G. Dorival and A. Le Boulluec (eds), Origeniana Sexta (Leuven, 1995) 93–113 at 110 notes that ‘Origen had a more limited selection and generally showed more caution’ than Clement. 30  R. Roukema, ‘Paul’s Rapture to Paradise in Early Christian Literature’, in A. Hilhorst and G.H. van Kooten (eds), The Wisdom of Egypt (Leiden, 2005) 267–83 at 279–80; Piovanelli, Apocryphités, 389–91. 31 Origen, Homélie sur Luc XXIII, 5–7, ed. H. Crouzel et al. (Paris, 1962). 32  Thus, persuasively, Piovanelli, Apocryphités, 423–25.

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Apocalypse around those years. The Pelagian controversy had made him think over once again the problem of posthumous salvation, and during these years he repeatedly came back to the fate of the dead.33 Thus he discussed the fate of Perpetua’s brother Dinocrates, although he did not discuss, at least not in the surviving works, Thecla’s prayer for Falconilla in the Acts of Paul and Thecla, even though he knew her story.34 It will have been this preoccupation that must have brought the Apocalypse of Paul to his attention, albeit perhaps orally rather than that he actually had read the treatise. Finally, around 443, Sozomen (HE 7.19.9), who explicitly mentions that none of the ancients knew the book, actually went to Tarsus where the aged presbyter Kilix informed him that the book was a fraud by heretics. A later date for the Apocalypse of Paul also better fits the special position of the apostle Paul, who suddenly rose to prominence both in the Eastern and Western Church in the last decades of the fourth century, perhaps in reaction to the Arian controversy,35 as is illustrated by Augustine’s interest in him in the West, and John Chrysostom’s Panegyrics of Saint Paul in the East.36 In fact, even today we can still see a monument from this important phase in the reception of Paul, the building of which was started in the 380s: the Papal Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls.37 Finally, Sozomen (HE 7.9.10) notes that ‘most monks praise’ the Apocalypse of Paul, and the oldest Latin references also come from a monastic milieu.38 As the text actually refers to ascetics and monks (§  2), the monastic milieu of late antique Egypt seems to be its most likely place of origin.39 An Egyptian origin 33  See the survey by J.A. Trumbower, Rescue for the Dead. The Posthumous Salvation of Non-Christians in Early Christianity (Oxford, 2001) 126–40. 34  Dinocrates: Trumbower, Rescue for the Dead, 76–90; this volume, Chapter  2 2.4.1. Thecla and Falconilla: Trumbower, Rescue for the Dead, 56–75; add H. Solin, Arctos 38 (2004) 172. 35  P. Piovanelli, ‘“L’ennemi est parmi nous”. Présences rhétoriques et narratives de Paul dans les Pseudo-clémentines et autres écrits apparentés’, in F. Amsler et al. (eds), Nouvelles intrigues pseudo-clémentines – Plots in the Pseudo-Clementine Romances (Lausanne, 2008) 241–48. 36 Piovanelli, Apocryphités, 422 note  48; add G. Kretschmar, in TRE 1 (Berlin and New York, 1977) 78; P. Brown, Augustine of Hippo (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 20002) 144, 508–9; D.L. Eastman, Paul the Martyr: the Cult of the Apostle in the Latin West (Atlanta, 2010). 37 R. Krautheimer, Ausgewählte Aufsätze zur europäischen Kunstgeschichte (Cologne, 1988) 91–108 (‘Zur Gründung von St. Paul vor den Mauern’); J. Barclay Lloyd, ‘Krautheimer and S. Paolo fuori le Mura: Architectural, Urban and Liturgical Planning in Late Fourth-century Rome ’, in F. and A.G. Guidobaldi (eds), Ecclesiae urbis: atti del congresso internazionale di studi sulle chiese di Roma (IV – X secolo) / Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 3  vols (Vatican City, 2002) 1.11–24; H. Brandenburg, ‘Die Architektur der Basilika San Paolo fuori le mura: das Apostelgrab als Zentrum der Liturgie und des Märtyrerkultes’, Römische Mitteilungen 112 (2005/06) 237–75. 38  C. Paupert, ‘Présence des apocryphes dans la littérature monastique occidentale ancienne’, Apocrypha 4 (1993) 113–23 at 115–7, 119. 39  As was already concluded by Casey, ‘Apocalypse of Paul’, 26. The objections of Silver-

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is also supported by a passage in the Coptic version that has not yet been adduced in this connection. Immediately after its surviving beginning (= L1 16), it describes the ‘Powers of Darkness’. This section appears only in the Coptic translation, but may well have been part of the original Greek version, as it is very difficult to ascertain that it is an interpolation.40 One group of the Powers is there described as having ‘crocodile faces’, probably another reference to Egypt. Thus the original Greek version will have been produced in Egypt around 400, and the Latin translation will have been made at the end of the sixth century, as is also suggested by the converging references to its text in the Re­ gula Magistri,41 Caesarius of Arles,42 and the Decretum Gelasianum (5.5.1).43

2. Old and new sins and sinners Having discussed the date and place of origin, let us now take a brief look at the content of the Apocalypse of Paul, which can be divided into seven parts. After the discovery of the manuscript (1–2), the creation complains to God about man (3–6), whose deeds the angels report to God (7–10). An angel leads Paul to the firmament where he sees the death and judgement of a righteous person and two sinners (11–18). He then visits Paradise (19–30) and Hell, where an angelus interpres presents him with a survey of sins and sinners (31–44), usually in response to a question (‘These are those who are...’). Hereafter he returns to Paradise (45–51).44 As even this brief summary suggests, the text is clearly a composite one of pieces of variable length that has incorporated different sources, which are often no longer recoverable. Hell occupies the longest part of the book but is hardly its centre. Which sins and sinners does the author note in his tour of hell? I list them in a concise manner as follows:

stein and Hilhorst, Apocalypse of Paul, 14 are hardly persuasive and presuppose ‘pre-fourth and pre-fifth century forms of the text’, whose existence still has to be proven. Hilhorst, ‘The Apocalypse of Paul: previous history and afterlife’, in Bremmer and Czachesz, Visio Pauli, 1–22 at 18 is much more persuasive. 40  See the text and discussion by Roig Lanzillotta, ‘Coptic Apocalypse of Paul’, 171–4. 41  A. de Vogüé, La Règle du Maître, 2  vols (Paris, 1964) 2.188–90, 350–1, 506. 42  B. Fischer, ‘Impedimenta mundi fecerunt eos miseros’, VigChris 5 (1951) 84–87. 43  See also Silverstein and Hilhorst, Apocalypse of Paul, 12 and our note  28. 44  For a more detailed analysis, see J.-M. Rosenstiehl, ‘L’itinéraire de Paul dans l’au-delà: Contribution à l’étude de l’Apocalypse apocryphe de Paul’, in P. Nagel (ed.), Carl-Schmidt-Kolloquium an der Martin-Luther-Universität 1988 (Halle, 1990) 197–212, to be read with the comments by A. Hilhorst, ‘A Visit to Paradise: Apocalypse of Paul 45 and Its Background’, in G. Luttikhuizen (ed.), Paradise Interpreted (Leiden, 1999) 128–39.

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Sin and sinners

Punishment

Neither hot nor cold (31)

Men and women immersed in a river of fire.

Inappropriate discussions after church (31)

Immersed up to the knees.

Fornication after the Eucharist (31)

Immersed up to the navel

Slandering one another in church (31)

Immersed up to the lips

Plotting against the neighbours (31)

Immersed up to the eyebrows

Not hoping in the Lord as a helper (32)

In a bottomless pit with a river of fire poured over them

Priest not executing his office properly (34)

Strangled and having his intestines pierced

Bishop not giving righteous judgments nor having compassion with widows and orphans (35)

Standing up to his knees in river of fire and being beaten by angels

Deacon eating up the bread of the Eucharist and fornicating (36)

Standing up to his knees in river of fire and worms coming out of his mouth

Lector who did not keep God’s commandments (36)

Standing up to his knees in river of fire, lips and tongue cut off with a fiery razor

Men and women exacting usury on usury and trusting in their wealth instead in God as their helper (37)

Eaten by worms

Reviling the Word of God (37)

Chewing their tongues

Dispensing magical charms to men and women (38)

Submerged up to the lips in blood

Male and female adulterers (38)

With black faces in a pit of fire

Defiling virginity unknown to the parents (39)

Led into darkness

Harming orphans, widows and the poor (39)

With hands and feet cut off in snow and ice

Breaking the fast (39)

Unable to eat fruit within sight

Associating with adulterers (39)

Hung by their eyebrows and hair in a river of fire

Homosexuality and lesbianism (39)

In a pit of tar and brimstone, running in a river of fire

Pagans giving alms without knowing God (40)

Blind standing in a pit

Not paying attention to the reading of the Scriptures (40)

Being on an obelisk of fire and being torn apart by wild beasts

Aborting women and their lovers (40)

Being strangled in fire

False monks, who neglected the agape, widows, orphans, strangers, pilgrims and neighbours (40)

Clothed in rags of tar and brimstone with snakes around their necks

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Sin and sinners

Punishment

Denying the incarnation, the Virgin birth and the Eucharist (41)

Burning in a fiery well

Men and women denying the resurrection (42)

Coldness and snow

A comparison with the sins and sinners in the Apocalypse of Peter (Chapter  18.2) quickly shows some remarkable differences. The sins in that Apocalypse could be reasonably categorised, and they started with a typically Jewish concern for righteousness. In fact, there is not a single reference to a sin amongst them that is exclusively Christian and not Jewish, a characteristic of the work that is shared by the Apocalypse of Zephaniah (Ch. 20.4), which is found in a Coptic translation but may well go back to the same period as the Apocalypse of Peter. It is very different in the Apocalypse of Paul, where about half of the 25 types of sins are typically Christian, such as the concern for the clergy or the denying of certain Christian dogmas. Thus the Christian character of this Apocalypse is evident. Moreover, the enumeration is more fragmentary and not without doubles. So we hear twice of those lacking compassion with widows and orphans (35, 40), and also twice of adulterers (38–39). In other words, the enumeration shows signs of reworking by an author without great literary skills. Which sins and sinners were no longer considered worthwhile to mention? It is immediately striking that in comparison with the Apocalypse of Peter the categories of apostates, idolaters and persecutors are found no more. Such an omission can hardly have happened otherwise than in the time after the conversion of Constantine the Great.45 In fact, the absence of idolaters suggests that we are already well into the Christian period. The only reference to pagans is to those who gave alms but did not yet know the word of God (40). They have nice clothes (vestimenta clara), but are pictured as blind, probably symbolic of their pagan beliefs. It seems clear from this reference that the pagans are no longer considered a serious threat. Other absences are more puzzling. We now miss false witnesses, disobedient children, disobedient slaves, and murderers, and the still Jewish distinction between abortion and exposure is collapsed into one.46 Instead, the Apocalypse of Paul starts with a series of new crimes all related to the proper behaviour in church and the proper execution of ecclesiastical offices. Somewhat surprisingly, these begin with the priest (34), but in Late Antique Egypt most people lived in villages where the priests and the deacons were the most important clerics.47 45  For his conversion process, see J.N. Bremmer, ‘The Vision of Constantine’, in A. Lardinois et al. (eds), Land of Dreams (Leiden, 2006) 57–79. 46 Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, 96. 47 G. Schmelz, Kirchliche Amtsträger im spätantiken Ägypten nach den Aussagen der griechischen und koptischen Papyri und Ostraka (Munich, 2002) 295.

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The priest is followed by the bishop (35), deacon and lector (36), who, equally surprisingly, receives the severest penalty even though he occupies the lowest rank;48 it may well be that the author settles here local scores that escape us. The priest was absolutely indispensable for the Eucharist, which is mentioned three times here (31, 36, 41);49 its growing importance is illustrated by the fact that, as time went on, even silver plates and cups were sometimes used for its administration.50 Its importance in the monastic milieu is well illustrated by a story of a vision of the priest Piammonas: ‘Once when he was celebrating the Eucharist he saw an angel standing to the right of the altar. The angel was noting the brethren who came up for Communion and writing down their names in a book. As for those who were not present at the Synaxis, he saw their names erased. And in fact thirteen days later these died’.51 Only those who plotted crimes against their neighbours (31) are seemingly not connected to the faith, but this may be due to a mistake of the Vorlage, as the sin is lacking in the Syriac translation. This Christian beginning is followed by a series of sins that already occurred for the most part in the Apocalypse of Peter and that spoke to ever urgent Christian and monastic concerns. I explicitly say ‘Christian and monastic’. A number of the sins are clearly of a general nature but, since the origin of the Apocalypse of Paul probably has to be looked for in a monastic milieu, it seems justified also to look for connections with the monastic milieu where this is appropriate. Let us start with the concern for widows and orphans (35, 39, 40), which is already found in the New Testament.52 In the second century, widows and orphans were prominent enough to visit the philosopher Peregrinus in prison during the Christian period in his life.53 In the fourth and fifth centuries, we have so many references to bishops caring for widows and the poor that the references in our Apocalypse must have been perfectly understandable and sympathetic to its

48  For the lector/anagnôstês in Egypt, see E. Wipszycka, Études sur le christianisme dans l’Égypte de l’antiquité tardive (Rome, 1996) 238–48; Schmelz, Kirchliche Amtsträger, 38–9. In papyri he is not attested before the end of the fifth century. 49  For the Eucharist in Egypt around 400, see H.B. Meyer, Eucharistie (Regensburg, 1989) 147–51; for the early and later Eucharist, see also N. Tanner, ‘The Eucharist in the Ecumenical Councils’, Gregorianum 82 (2001) 37–49; Archbishop Basileios, ‘Eucharist’, in The Coptic Encyclopedia 4 (New York, 1991) 1056–62. 50  J. Toynbee and K. Painter, ‘Silver Picture Plates of Late Antiquity. A.D. 300 to 700’, Archaeologia 108 (1986) 15–65; Archbishop Basileios and E.M. Ishaq, ‘Eucharistic Vessels and Instruments’, in The Coptic Encyclopedia 4, 1064–66; Schmelz, Kirchliche Amtsträger, 102 f. 51  Historia Monachorum 25.2, tr. N. Russell and B. Ward, The Lives of the Desert Fathers (Oxford and Kalamazoo, 1981) 116. See also T. Vivian, Histories of the Monks of Upper Egypt and The Life of Onnophrius by Paphnutius (Kalamazoo, 1993) 26–30. 52  See this volume, Chapter  4. 53 Lucian, Peregrinus 12: this volume, Chapter  5.

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readers;54 in such a society, where poverty was always around the corner, concern for usurers and the rich (37) can hardly come as a surprise either. At first sight, the mention of peregrini, ‘wanderers’, in addition to strangers (40), may look somewhat strange, and influence from the Vulgate can hardly be excluded.55 Even though there were early visitors of the holy places in Palestine, more frequent pilgrimage hardly started before Constantine, and the earliest references to peregrinus in the meaning of ‘pilgrim’ do not antedate the ninth century.56 Of course, the main focus of pilgrims was the Holy Land, but Egypt with its holy men was often a second stage in the religious ‘grand tour’ of the Middle East.57 In any case, if the original already contained a reference to pilgrims, the reference can hardly be dated to the earlier third century. Sex, marriage and virginity had always been Christian concerns, and Peter Brown has given us a wonderful book on this subject that shows how that concern pervaded all layers of Christian society.58 Athanasius shows us the attention paid to virgins and their growing isolation in Egypt. From his writings we can see many a virgin living at home and some parents must have been concerned as to what their daughters would do unbeknownst to them (39), the more so because ‘tokens of the virginity of the bride’ had to be produced by servants from the bridal chamber.59 54  See the fine pages by P. Brown in his Power and Persuasion in late Antiquity. Towards a Christian Empire (Madison, 1992) 71–103 and Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Hanover and London, 2002) 45–73; S.R. Holman, The Hungry are Dying: Beggars and Bishops in Roman Cappadocia (Oxford, 2001); Schmelz, Kirchliche Amtsträger, 256–9; R. Finn, Almsgiving in the Later Roman Empire: Christian Promotion and Practice (313–450) (Oxford, 2006); P. Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD (Princeton and London, 2012) and Treasure in Heaven (Charlottesville, 2016). 55 Note advenam et peregrinum in Leviticus 25.35 (Vulgate). For the importance of hospitality in the monastic world, see Historia Monachorum VIII.55; Regula S. Benedicti 53; note also Visio Beati Esdrae 31: advenas et hospites non susceperunt. 56  See my ‘Pilgrimage Progress?’, in T.M. Kristensen and W. Friese (eds), Excavating Pilgrimage (London and New York, 2017) 275–84. 57  B. Kötting, Peregrinatio religiosa. Wallfahrten in der Antike und das Pilgerwesen in der alten Kirche (Münster, 19802) 188–211 (Egypt) and Ecclesia peregrinans, 2  vols (Münster, 1988) 2.252–9 (‘Koptische Wallfahrten’); E.D. Hunt, Holy Land Pilgrimage in the Later Roman Empire AD 312–460 (Oxford, 1982) 185–89 (Egypt); F. Parente, ‘La conoscenza della Terra Santa come esperienza religiosa dell’occidente cristiano dal IV secolo alle crociate’, in Popoli e paesi nella cultura altomedievale I (Spoleto, 1983) 231–316; S. Elm, ‘Virgins of God’ (Oxford, 1994) 273–4 (Egypt); D. Frankfurter (ed.), Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt (Leiden, 1998); B. Caseau et al. (eds), Pélerinages et lieux saints dans l’antiquité et le Moyen Âge: Mélanges offerts à Pierre Maraval (Paris, 2006). 58  P. Brown, The Body and Society (New York, 20002); see also G. Schöllgen, ‘Jungfräu­ lich­keit’, in RAC 19 (2001) 523–92. 59 Elm, ‘Virgins of God’, 34–9, 231–2; D. Brakke, Athanasius and Asceticism (Oxford, 1995) 17–79 at 26–28 (virgins living at home). Tokens: E.A.W. Budge, Coptic Martyrdoms in the Dialect of Upper Egypt (London, 1914) 398.

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In line with its Jewish ancestry, Christianity had been hostile to same-sex relations since its beginning, and in 390 the first male prostitutes had been burned alive in Rome (CTh 9.7.6). We could thus take the mention of gays and lesbians (39), who are also found in the Apocalypse of Peter, as a general prescription, but if we contextualise the underlying injunction in a monastic milieu, its mention is perhaps more pressing. Isolated from heterosexual relationships, the temptations of the flesh naturally directed themselves to homosexual ones. This is clear not only from the instructions of Horsiesius and the Pachomian community, but also from the anecdotes about the Desert Fathers that regularly mention the temptations of pederasty.60 Nuns were no exception to these attractions of the flesh. Shenoute explicitly says that ‘those, then, among us or among you [women] who will touch some boys or girls whether they are sleeping or awake and those who touch them that they might know that they are mature, they are accursed whether a man or a woman’. 61 Magic (38) is also mentioned by the Apocalypse of Peter (12.4–7E). Once again we can look at this sin in the general context of the time or, more specifically, in the world of the monks. In the course of Late Antiquity the Roman emperors had completely outlawed magic so that in 392 it had become equated with crimen maiestatis by Theodosius I (CTh 16.10.12.1). 62 As such, magic clearly was a contemporary category, and we could perhaps also look at magicians as the competition for the monks. The Lives of the Desert Fathers regularly tells us of miraculous feats, such as flying, walking over water or the resurrection from the dead. In other words, the monks became the competition for other miracle workers and may well have supported the suppression of magic for that reason. 63 On the other hand, an undoubtedly Christian and new sin is the breaking of the fast before the appointed hour (39). Its mention is interesting, as it is one of several references to the world of ascetics and monks that can be found in the Apocalypse of Paul. When the angels report to God the deeds of men, they men60 Brown, Body and Society, 246; Testament of Jacob 8, ed. K.S. Kuhn; B.J. Diebner, Zephanjas Apokalypsen (Gütersloh, 2003) 1141–1246 at 1230; D. Brakke, Demons and the Making of the Monk (Cambridge MA, 2006) 206–8. 61 Shenoute, De vita monachorum 21 = Leipoldt, Sinuthii Archimandritae Vita, 124, cf. B. Brooten, Love Between Women. Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism (Chicago, 1996) 349–50; R. Krawiec, Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery (Oxford, 2002) 37–8, 42, 148; T. Wilfong, ‘“Friendship and Physical Desire”. The Discourse of Female Homoeroticism in Fifth-Century CE Egypt’, in N.S. Rabinowitz and L. Auanger (eds), Among Women (Texas, 2002) 304–29; Brakke, Demons and the Making of the Monk, 208–09. 62 For the process, see M.Th. Fögen, Die Enteignung der Wahrsager (Stuttgart, 1993); V. Neri, I marginali nell’occidente tardo antico (Bari, 1998) 258–86; A. Lotz, Magiekonflikte in der Spätantike (Bonn, 2005); this volume, Chapter  13.1. 63  For the powers of monks, see D. Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt (Princeton, 1998) 267–77.

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tion people that ‘wander as strangers and live in a cave of the rocks, 64 weeping every hour they dwell on earth, and they are hungry and thirsty for the sake of thy name. Their loins are girt, and they hold in their hands the incense of their hearts. They pray and bless at every hour, they are distressed and subdue themselves more than all others who live on earth, weeping and mourning’ (9). It is not difficult to recognise in this picture the world of the early Egyptian ascetics, who also seem to be alluded to when an angel mentions ‘those that have not used their power over these things (the world) but went hungry without them and afflicted themselves for the name of the Lord God’ (23). If these are references to individuals, the mention of communal psalm singing (29, 30) points to communities of monks. 65 This is also the case when the angelus interpres explains why men and women were dressed in rags full with tar and sulphur with snakes around them: ‘They are those who seemed to renounce the world by wearing our raiment’, but then miserably failed in charity (40). The reference is clearly to the white habit of the monks, which reflects that of the angels, the angelikon schêma.66 Hilhorst and Silverstein recognise that the expression does not occur before the fourth century, and, given their dating of the text to the second and third centuries, find it hard to accept. That is why they suggest that ‘no one has yet sought instances, earlier or later, of “our” life, “our” habit or costume, meaning “angelic” from context’, 67 but this is clearly special pleading. Their additional argument that the enumeration of objects of charity (agape, widows, orphans, strangers and pilgrims) suggests people living in their own homes rather than in monasteries is a reasonable one. Yet, even if true, it won’t help their argument. Recent investigations into Egyptian monastic life, based on evidence from Oxyrhynchus and elsewhere, have demonstrated that monastic communities lived in a continuum stretching from houses in towns via monasteries in towns or villages to monasteries in the desert. 68 Surely, the reference to agapes (40) and the breaking of the fast ‘before the appointed hour’, ante constituta ora (39: i.e. ante constitutam horam), suggest monastic communities, urban or not, with certain rules about fasting, even though Christians also fasted before the rise of the monastic movement. 69 Such communities did not exist before the fourth century.

64 

This is perhaps a reference to Hebrews 11.38. For psalm singing monks, see Historia Monachorum II.12, VIII.48–9; Palladius, Historia Lausiaca 48.2; Wipszycka, Études sur le christianisme, 251. 66  Historia Monachorum II.12, VIII.19; Theodorus, Vita Theodosii 71.23, with Usener ad loc.; Schmelz, Kirchliche Amtsträger; 114. 67  Silverstein and Hilhorst, Apocalypse of Paul, 14. Note that Hilhorst, ‘The Apocalypse of Paul’, 18 now recognises the monks in chapters 30, 39 and 40. 68  J. Goehring, Ascetics, Society and the Desert (Harrisburg, 1999) 73–88. 69  R. Arbesmann, ‘Fasttage’, in RAC 7 (1969) 500–24; T. Shaw, The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity (Minneapolis, 1998). 65 

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The list of sinners is concluded by those denying Christian dogmas (the incarnation, the Virgin Birth and the resurrection) qualified as sins (41–42). Their enumeration has been taken to suggest the Nestorian conflict.70 Yet the simple formulations hardly point to the complicated Christological debates of that period, which, moreover, seem to be somewhat too late. On the other hand, later tradition pictured Shenoute as a great opponent of Nestorius.71 Perhaps the debates had already thrown their shadows ahead. With these new sins we have come to the end. When we now look back we can see that the interest of the author has mostly concentrated on matters of religious concern, whereas, in the Apocalypse of Peter, more general ethical problems, such as murder or false witnesses, still play a role. Moreover, there is no longer a border drawn against the pagans outside the Church but against those who do not profess the orthodox doctrines. In short, the sins in the Apocalypse of Paul define the borders of proper belief, worship and morality for those inside the Church.72 We are well into Late Antiquity with these sins.

3. Punishments Having looked at the sins and sinners, let us now make a few observations on the punishments of the sinners. When Paul arrives in hell he first sees fluvium ignis ferventem, ‘a river boiling with fire’ (31), filled with sinners that have committed not the most serious crimes but clearly are indicative of a tendency to discipline the faithful by stressing the awful consequences of gossiping, slandering and fornicating after the Eucharist, amongst others. The river of fire most likely derives from Plato’s Phaedo (114a), which was a great inspiration for imagined hellscapes in later antiquity.73 It is a device of the author of the Apocalypse of Paul to let the fire reach different parts of the body, depending on the seriousness of the crime. The choice of fire coming to the lips for those that slandered in the church (31) cannot be fortuitous. The Apocalypse of Peter contains many punishments that are based on the principle of measure-for-measure, which is part of a wider Near Eastern pattern, although it was not absent in Greek thought either.74 We find other examples in the men and women that had to chew their tongues for reviling God’s Word (37), in the adulterous men and women that were hung by their eyebrows and hair (39), and in the punishment 70 

48.

71 

T. Silverstein, ‘The Date of the “Apocalypse of Paul”’, Mediaeval Studies 24 (1962) 335–

Vita Sinuthii 128–9, cf. Hahn, Gewalt und religiöser Konflikt, 223 f. Thus, rightly, Czachesz, ‘Torture in Hell and Reality: The Visio Pauli’, in Bremmer and Czachesz, Visio Pauli, 130–43 at 131–3. 73  For a good discussion of the ‘river of fire’, see Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, 110–14. 74 Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, 75ff; J.P. Brown, Israel and Hellas III (Berlin and New York, 2001) 27–30. 72 

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of the lector who did not keep God’s commandments and whose lips and tongue were cut off with a fiery razor (36). The latter punishment does not come from the Greeks but eventually derives from the Babylonians and Assyrians. There can be little doubt that they, together with the Persians, were the inventors of the cruelest penalties in the Eastern Mediterranean. However, I have been unable to find there the penalty of the priest who had his entrails pulled out via the mouth (34, version St Gall, one of the two manuscripts of the best Latin version, L1). Strangely, it is reminiscent of the cruel king Echetos in the Odyssey (18.83– 7), who cut off nose and ears and pulled out the vitals to give them raw to the dogs – surely a reflection of contemporary Assyrian kings.75 The question has been put to what extent the punishments have been inspired by the penalties and tortures of the martyrs and historical reality. Were they mainly inspired by literary tradition or by the historical reality?76 The question is not that easy to answer. Judicial savagery had gradually risen during the empire and the harshest times began in the late 370s and 380s.77 From that perspective, the contemporaries of the Apocalypse of Paul will have been less impressed than we perhaps might think. Many of the punishments are of course mythological, such as all those connected with standing in fire, although the mire, borboros, of the Orphic tradition has disappeared, which is still very present in the Apocalypse of Peter.78 Other punishments may have been inspired by the historical experience of the persecutions, which were still very much alive – witness Prudentius’ poems on the martyrs.79 For example, cutting off the hands and feet, a punishment for those not caring for widows, orphans and the poor (39), is attested by Lactantius (Mort. pers. 36.7). His testimony is typical of the persecutions under Diocletian that were much worse than the previous ones, when the Romans often just executed the leading martyrs instead of torturing them as well.80 On the other hand, the beasts that tore to pieces the men and women who had not paid attention to the Scriptures (40) had been there from the very beginning of the persecutions and were the product of the Roman spectacles. 81 In the end, there are only two instruments mentioned that reflect contemporary instruments of torture. The first is the ferrum trium angulorum (34) that 75 R. Rollinger, ‘Herodotus, Human Violence and the Ancient Near East’, in V. Karageorghis and I. Taifacos (eds), The World of Herodotus (Nicosia, 2004) 121–50 at 140 (Echetos), 141 (lips, tongue). 76  Czachesz, ‘Torture in Hell’, 143. 77  R. MacMullen, Changes in the Roman Empire (Princeton, 1990) 204–17, 357–64. 78  See this volume, Chapter  17. 79  A.M. Palmer, Prudentius on the Martyrs (Oxford, 1989). 80  As observed by P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Scritti agiografici, 2  vols (Vatican City, 1962) 1.385, 389. 81  For the damnatio ad bestias, see K. Coleman, M. Valerii Martialis: Liber Spectaculorum (Oxford, 2006) passim; A. van den Hoek and J. Herrmann, Jr., Pottery, Pavements, and Paradise (Leiden, 2013) 405–34.

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was used to draw out the entrails of the priest. This is a reflection of the ungulae that were used to scrape the sides of the martyrs and were still in use in the time of Chrysostom. 82 But the historical ones had only two prongs and were not used to remove the entrails.83 In other words, the Apocalypse of Paul has conflated the historical instrument with the trident and given us an exaggerated, if no less gruesome, punishment. The second instrument is the obeliscum igneum (40 St Gall) for those, already mentioned, who did not pay attention to the Scriptures. The term is translated in different ways: ‘stang van vuur’ (Hilhorst), which is much more sensible than ‘fiery pyramid’ (Duensing and de Santos Otero) and ‘obelisque de feu’ (Kappler), but none is really satisfactory. It should be ‘fiery spit’, as it is in the Apocalypse of Peter (30G) and in Eusebius’ report of the martyrdom of Polycarp who, significantly, combines them with trumpet shells. 84 Finally, it is an innovation of the Apocalypse of Paul that it introduces a period of respite from these punishments. When Michael, the angels and Paul beg God for mercy, Jesus appears and pronounces: ‘on the very day on which I rose from the dead I grant to you all who are being punished a day and a night of refreshment forever’ (44). In other words, the dead may rest from their tortures and punishment on Sundays. The Coptic version even extends this respite to the fifty days after Easter, but other translations, such as the Syriac and an Armenian version, clearly have trouble with this idea: apparently, not everybody was happy with this easing of damnation.85 The Coptic mention of Easter is perhaps supported by the fact that Prudentius in his Cathemerinon (V.125–36) also mentions Easter as a day of respite for the damned. 86 The ground for this idea was probably prepared by the fact that the emperors occasionally used Easter as a day for amnesty in the later fourth century.87 Now it is generally argued that the idea of the Sunday respite derives from the Jewish idea of a Sabbath rest.88 82  Johannes Chrysostomus, Contra Iudaeos et gentes quod Christus sit Deus 10 (Migne PG 48.826). 83  Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Scritti agiografici, 2.130 note  3; J. Vergote, ‘Folterwerkzeuge’, in RAC 8 (1972) 112–41 at 122. 84 Eus. HE 4.15.4 = Mart. Polycarpi 2.4. It is perhaps noteworthy that the wild beasts also figure in this passage. Did the author of the Apocalypse know the Martyrium from readings in the liturgy? For such readings, see H. Urner, Die ausserbiblische Lesung im christlichen Gottesdienst (Göttingen, 1952); B. de Gaiffier, ‘De l’usage et de la lecture du martyrologe: Témoignages antérieurs au xie siècle’, AB 79 (1961) 40–59; Palmer, Prudentius on the Martyrs, 229–32; add P. Iand. VIII 154 (a martyrologos). 85  R. Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead (Leiden, 1998) 149–59 (the idea in Augustine); Roig Lanzillotta, ‘The Coptic Apocalypse of Paul’, 193. 86  S. Merkle, ‘Die Sabbatruhe in der Hölle. Ein Beitrag zur Prudentius-Erklärung und zur Geschichte der Apokryphen’, Römische Quartalschrift 9 (1895) 489–505. 87  CTh IX.38.3, 8 (367); Const. Sirmond. 7 (380); CTh IX.38.7 (384), IX.38.8 (385); Const. Sirmond. 8 (386). 88  I. Lévi, ‘Le repos sabbatique des âmes damnées’, Revue des Études Juives 25 (1892) 1–13 and ‘Notes complémentaires sur le repos sabbatique des âmes damnées’, ibidem 26 (1893) 131–35.

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This may be true (although the reverse does not seem impossible either), but in any case we should realise that Sunday became a day of rest fairly late in Christianity. This happened only after the rise to power by Constantine, who issued the first of a series of laws on Sundays that gradually turned it into the familiar day of rest. 89 Yet the Church started to issue orders and exhortations regarding this rest not before the second half of the fourth century.90 Once again, then, the text as we have it suggests a later date than previously thought.

4. Conclusion Hell and the fate of the damned had already been a subject of reflection in early Christianity before the Apocalypse of Paul, in works such as in the Apocalypse of Peter; however, earlier theological studies and speculations lacked its dramatic power.91 Since there was no authoritative version of hell, it could exert such an influence in the East and West that it did not stop with Christianity: even the Zoroastrian Apocalypse Arda¯ Vira¯z is indebted to it.92 The Apocalypse of Paul is an important stage in the elaboration of hell. It is also a product of a specific place and time, undoubtedly produced for certain needs, even though these are no longer recoverable. Although it is just one of the hellscapes that were produced by early Christianity, it is the most important step in the direction that would find its apogee in Dante. The disappearance of these Apocalypses with their sadistic punishments is no great loss. Yet is a world where the late JeanPaul Sartre’s ‘L’Enfer, c’est les autres’ dominates always better?93

89  Constantine: Eusebius, Vita Constantini 4.18–20; CJ III.12.2 (321), CTh II.8.1 (321); POxy. 54.3759, 37–39 (AD 325: court case). Valens: CTh VIII.8.1 = XI.7.10 (368). Valentinianus: CTh II.8.18 = VIII.8.3 = XI.7.13 (386). 90  W. Rordorf, Sabbat und Sonntag in der Alten Kirche (Zürich, 1972); W. Kinzig, ‘“Aus­ zeit”. Anmerkungen zu Ursprung und Sinn von Sonn- und Feiertagen aus kirchenhistorischer Sicht’, Theologische Zeitschrift 62 (2006) 357–75 (with full bibliography). 91  T. Rasmussen, ‘Hölle II’, in TRE 15 (1986) 449–455 at 449–451; A. Bernstein, The Formation of Hell (Ithaca and London, 1993); W.F. Schäufele, ‘Die Höllen der Alexandriner. Negative Jenseitsvorstellungen im frühchristlichen Ägypten’, Zeitschrift für Kirchen­ ge­ schichte 117 (2006) 197–210. A. Segal, Life after Death. A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion (New York, 2004) has disappointingly little to say about hell. 92  M. Tardieu, ‘L’Arda ¯ Vira¯z Na¯ma¯g et l’eschatologie grecque’, Studia Iranica 14 (1985) 17–26. 93  I am most grateful to Stelios Panayotakis for information, to Jitse Dijkstra and Ton Hilhorst for their comments, and to Suzanne Lye for her correction of my English.

Chapter 20

Tours of Hell: Greek, Jewish, Roman and Early Christian Our possible destination after death has long fascinated mankind. But how do we know about it? One answer is: via a tour of hell. First in Greek culture, but then in Jewish and Christian circles, people elucidated hell for the living via books that purported to give eyewitness accounts. The genre really started to draw scholarly attention at the end of the nineteenth century when in the winter of 1886–87, a late sixth- or early seventh-century codex with substantial fragments of the Apocalypse of Peter in Greek (G) had been found in a grave in Akhmim, ancient Panopolis.1 From the many immediate reactions, the most interesting early contribution on the Apocalypse was Albrecht Dieterich’s Nekyia.2 In this learned book, which appeared only one year after the editio princeps, Dieterich argued that the Christian ideas of hell had been nourished by Orphic ideas without, however, paying much attention to possible Jewish roots. Eduard Norden, who, like Dieterich, had also immediately reacted to the new discovery, also stressed the Orphic sources of Virgil in his brilliant commentary on Aeneid VI and equally underplayed possible Jewish sources for Virgil’s underworld.3 This situation changed only in 1983 when a young Jewish scholar, Martha Himmelfarb, published a book, Tours of Hell, in which she argued that previous scholars had grossly neglected the Jewish sources of the depictions of hell and had also overrated the Greek influence.4 Moreover, she constructed a family tree of the various tours of hell, in which she paid much attention to both the nature of the punishments and the literary structure of the reports. Himmelfarb’s book remains an important contribution to the nature and historical development of the tours of hell. Yet the unbiased reader can hardly escape the impression that she, in turn, overrated the Jewish influence. As recent decades have 1 

For the Apocalypse, see this volume, Chapters 17 and 18. Dieterich, Nekyia (Leipzig and Berlin, 1893, 19132). For Dieterich, see this volume, Chapter  17, note  19. 3  E. Norden, ‘Die Petrusapokalypse und ihre antiken Vorbilder’, in his Kleine Schriften zum klassischen Altertum (Berlin, 1966) 218–33 (18931) and P. Vergilius Maro Aeneis VI (Leipzig, 19031, 19273) 5–6 (sources); for a re-evaluation of the Orphic sources of Virgil, see Horsfall on Verg. Aen. 6.120; J.N. Bremmer, Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World (Berlin and Boston, 2014) 190–93; M. Herrero de Jáuregui, ‘Traditions of Catabatic Experience in Aeneid 6’, LEC 83 (2015) 329–49. For Norden, see this volume, Chapter  17, note  18. 4  M. Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell (Philadelphia, 1983). 2  A.

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given us many more Orphic texts than were available to Dieterich, Norden and even Himmelfarb,5 we will take a fresh look at the problem. Starting with the Greeks, and continuing with the Jews and Romans, we will try to identify the main elements of the Christian tours of hell and determine their Greek and/or Jewish origins.

1.  The Greeks Eduard Norden, to whom we owe the most incisive discussion of early Apocalypses with tours of hell, identified the descriptions of three ancient descents into Hades (katabaseis) as important sources for Virgil: the one by Odysseus in the Homeric Nekyia, the Descent of Heracles,6 and the Descent of Orpheus.7 Unfortunately, Norden did not date the latter two Descents, but thanks to subsequent findings of papyri we can make some progress here. On the basis of a probable fragment of Pindar (fr. dub. 346 Maehler), Bacchylides, Aristophanes’ Frogs, and the second-century mythological handbook of Apollodorus (2.5.12), Hugh Lloyd-Jones (1922–2009) has reconstructed an epic Descent of Heracles, in which Heracles was initiated by Eumolpus in Eleusis before starting his descent at Laconian Taenarum.8 The Eleusinian initiation suggests Eleusinian or Athenian influence, which is strongly supported by Heracles’ liberation of Theseus in this epic. In the Odyssey, Theseus and Pirithous are the last heroes seen by Odysseus in the underworld, just as in Virgil ’s Aeneis Aeneas and the Sibyl see Theseus last in Tartarus, even though Pirithous has been replaced by Phlegyas (6.617–20). Now originally Theseus and Pirithous were condemned to an eternal stay in the underworld, either fettered or grown to a rock. This is not only the picture in the Odyssey, but seemingly also in the late-archaic Minyas (Paus. 10.28.2, cf. fr. dub. 7 Bernabé = Hes. F 280 M/W), and certainly so on Polygnotos’ painting in the Cnidian lesche (Paus. 10.29.9) and in Panyassis (F 9 Davies = F 14 Bernabé). This clearly is the older situation, which is still referred to in the hypothesis of Critias’ Pirithous (cf. F 6 Snell-Kannicht), but it must have changed through Hera5 

See the bibliography in Chapter  17, this volume. Aeneis VI, 5 note  2 notes an influence of Heracles’ katabasis on the following lines: 131–2, 260 (cf. 290–4, with H. Lloyd-Jones, Greek Epic, Lyric and Tragedy [Oxford, 1990] 181 on Bacch. 5.71–84, and F. Graf, Eleusis und die orphische Dichtung Athens in vorhellenistischer Zeit [Berlin, 1974]145 note  18 on Ar. Ra. 291, where Dionysus wants to attack Empusa), 309–12 (see also Norden, Kleine Schriften, 508 note  77), 384–416, 477–93, 548–627, 666–78; see also Horsfall on Verg. Aen. 6.120: M.A. Santamaria, ‘The Parody of the katábasis-motif in Aristophanes’ Frogs’, LEC 83 (2015) 117–36. 7 Norden, Aeneis VI, 5 note  2 notes influence of Orpheus’ katabasis on lines 120 (see also Norden, Kleine Schriften, 506–7; Horsfall ad loc.), 264ff (?), 384–416 and 548–627. 8  H. Lloyd-Jones, ‘Heracles at Eleusis: P. Oxy. 2622 and P.S.I. 1391’, Maia 19 (1967) 206–29 = Greek Epic, 167–87; R. Parker, Athenian Religion (Oxford, 1996) 98–100. 6 Norden,

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cles’ descent into Hades, in which he liberated Theseus, but left Pirithous where he was, at least in some sources.9 The connection of Heracles, Eleusis and Theseus points to the time of the Pisistratids, and Lloyd-Jones has persuasively dated the Descent of Heracles to the middle of the sixth century; his dating is supported by a shard in the manner of Exekias of about 540 BC that shows Heracles amidst Eleusinian gods and heroes.10 Wilamowitz expressed strong doubts regarding the existence of a Descent of Orpheus,11 but there can be little doubt that Norden was correct in his reconstruction of elements of such an descent on the basis of Aeneid VI and Aristophanes’ Frogs. The appearance of the Bologna papyrus in 1954, a katabasis in a third- or fourth-century papyrus, the text of which seems to date from early imperial times and is generally accepted to be Orphic in character,12 has only strengthened Norden’s position. This papyrus, as has often been seen, contains several close parallels to Virgil, and both will have used the same, identifiably Orphic, source.13 Now in Greek and Latin poetry, Orpheus’ descent into the underworld is always connected to his love for Eurydice.14 As references to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice do not start before Euripides’ Alcestis (357–62 = OF 980) of 438 BC, a red-figure loutrophoros from 440–430 BC,15 and the decorated reliefs of, probably, the altar of the Twelve Gods in the Athenian Agora, dating from about 410 BC,16 the poem about Orpheus’ descent that was used by Virgil prob9  Hypothesis Critias’ Pirithous (cf. F 6 Snell-Kannicht); Philochoros FGrH 328 F 18; Diod. Sic. 4.26.1, 63.4; Hor. C. 3.4.80; Hyg. Fab. 79; Apollod. 2.5.12, Ep.  1.23–24; J.N. Bremmer, ‘Theseus’ and Peirithoos’ Descent into the Underworld’ and S. Dova, ‘Theseus, Peirithoos, and the Poetics of a Failed Katábasis’, LEC 83 (2015) 35–49 and 51–68, respectively. 10  J. Boardman et al., ‘Herakles’, in LIMC IV.1 (1988) 728–838 at 805–8. For Heracles’ Eleusinian initiation, see also ThesCRA II (2004) 25, 29, 34–5, 37. 11  U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Der Glaube der Hellenen, 2  vols (Darmstadt, 19593) 2.191–202 12  For the text, see, with extensive bibliography and commentary, A. Bernabé, Orphicorum et Orphicis similium testimonia et fragmenta II, 2 (Munich and Leipzig, 2005) 271–87 (= OF 717), who notes on p.  271: ‘omnia quae in papyro leguntur cum Orphica doctrina recentioris aetatis congruunt’; for the text and interpretation of lines 1–4, see D. Shanzer, ‘Voices and Bodies: The Afterlife of the Unborn’, Numen 56 (2009) 326–65 at 355–60. 13  See Horsfall on Verg. Aen. 6.548–636; id., ‘P. Bonon.4 and Virgil, Aen.6, yet again’, ZPE 96 (1993) 17–8 and Virgil, Aeneid 7. A Commentary (Leiden, 2000) 155; this volume, Chapter  18.2 and 3. 14 Wilamowitz, Glaube der Hellenen, 2.194; F. Graf and S.I. Johnston, Ritual Texts for the Afterlife (London and New York, 20132) 172–74. 15  E. Simon, ‘Die Hochzeit des Orpheus und der Eurydike’, in J. Gebauer et al. (eds), Bildergeschichte. Festschrift für Klaus Stähler (Möhnesee, 2004) 451–56. 16  They have survived only in Roman copies, cf. G. Schwartz, ‘Eurydike I’, in LIMC IV.1 (1988) 98–100 at no.  5; R. Olmos, ‘Las imágenes de un Orfeo fugitivo y ubicuo’, in A. Bernabé and F. Casadesús (eds), Orfeo y la tradición órfica: un reencuentro, 2  vols (Madrid, 2008) 1.137–77; O. Palagia, ‘Archaism and the Quest for Immortality in Attic Sculpture During the Peloponnesian War’, in eadem (ed.), Art in Athens During the Peloponnesian War (Cambridge, 2009) 24–51 at 38–39.

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ably arrived in Athens around the middle of the fifth century BC, and its use by Aristophanes shows that it was well known in Athens. On the other hand, the use of Orphic eschatological material by Pindar suggests that he already knew an earlier version of this poem or a different one. Other poems about Orpheus’ descent may have been circulating too, as seems suggested by the mention of the Descent into Hades ascribed to Orpheus from Sicilian Camarina (Suda s.v. Ὀρφεύς = OF 708, 870, 1103). As this town had close ties to Athens,17 influence from that quarter is not unthinkable. For our purpose I would like to note two aspects of these two Descents. First, we do not know who narrated the story of Heracles’ Descent. It may have been the poet himself, but it may also have been Heracles: we simply do not know. This is different with the Descent of Orpheus, where Orpheus himself seems to have related what he saw. Although the Sicilian Orpheus clearly is a fictitious person, as Martin West (1937–2015) noted,18 his name as author is remarkable. Surely, he owed this distinction to the fact that he told his descent in the first person singular, just like Orpheus himself tells us in the beginning of the Orphic Argonautica in the first person singular: ‘I told you what I saw and perceived when I went down the dark road of Taenarum into Hades, trusting in our lyre,19 out of love for my wife’. Norden had already noted the close correspondence with the line that opens Orpheus’descent in Virgil’s Georgica, Taenarias etiam fauces, alta ostia Ditis, / ... ingressus (4.467–9), and persuasively concluded that both lines go back to the Descent of Orpheus, which was thus written as a first person account.20 Secondly, these Descents must have contained catalogues of sinners. As is well known, among the persons met in the underworld Odysseus sees three sinners – Tityus, Sisyphus and Tantalus – whose fate is narrated in a famous passage that drew much attention in antiquity.21 It is in line with the epic character of Odysseus’ visit that he meets well known figures from Greek mythology. Similarly, in the Descent of Heracles the hero meets with Meleager and Theseus, and 17  F. Cordano, ‘Camarina città democratica?’, La parola del passato 59 (2004) 283–92; S. Hornblower, Thucydides and Pindar (Oxford, 2004) 190–2. 18  M.L. West, The Orphic Poems (Oxford, 1983) 10 note  17. 19  Norden compares Aen. 6.120: Threicia fretus cithara; see also his Kleine Schriften, 506 f. 20  See also Norden, Kleine Schriften, 508 f. For Orpheus’ account in the first person singular, Wilamowitz, Glaube der Hellenen, 2.194–95 also compares Plut. Mor. 566c (= OF 412). H. Diels, Parmenides (Berlin, 1897) 14 had already observed the importance of the Icherzählung in connection with descents to the underworld; similarly, K. Meuli, Gesammelte Schriften, 2  vols (Basel, 1975) 2.858 notes the narration in the first person singular of the mythical journey of Aristeas in the Arimaspeia (see also ibid. p.  869). The counter arguments of R.G. Edmonds III, ‘“When I Walked the Dark Road of Hades”: Orphic katábasis and the katábasis of Orpheus’, LEC 83 (2015) 261–79 ate not persuasive. 21  Od. 11.576–600, cf. the interesting commentary on the passage by W. Burkert, ‘Pleading for Hell: Postulates, Fantasies, and the Senselessness of Punishment’, Numen 56 (2009) 141– 60.

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none of the literary sources for his descent makes any reference to nameless humans or initiates seen by him in the underworld.22 It was different in the Orphic underworld. In Virgil (Aen. 6.608–13), we find a list of anonymous sinners against the family and familia, then a brief list of their punishments (614–17), and then more sinners, both named and anonymous (618–24). In the Orphic papyrus, we find a list of anonymous sinners (1–24), then the Erinyes and Harpies as agents of their punishments (25–46), and subsequently again sinners (47 ff.). As Virgil and the Bologna papyrus both go back to an older Orphic source (above), this source will probably have contained separate catalogues of anonymous sinners and their punishments too, since catalogues of anonymous sinners were most popular in Orphic and Orphic-influenced literature, as Dieterich and Norden extensively demonstrated.23 Such catalogues of sinners were relatively small in the beginning, but in the course of time they grew in size: the Christian Apocalypse of Peter and the Apocalypse of Paul clearly gloated in these enumerations of sins and sinners (§  4).

2. Palestine Let us now leave Greece for a moment and turn to Palestine. In the last centuries BC a series of apocalyptic texts were composed in, probably, Palestine with Enoch, the man who walked with God in Genesis, as their protagonist.24 They were collected in one book, which is nowadays known as 1 Enoch. Its size is roughly comparable to that of the Book of Isaiah, and it contains religious, scientific, intellectual and social material. It is a strange world with flights to heaven, ghosts of dead giants roaming the world and fallen angels mating with mortal women. The work was originally composed in Aramaic, but already around 1600 Josephus Justus Scaliger (1540–1609) detected Greek fragments in the ninth-century Byzantine author George Syncellus. These were the only textual evidence for 1 Enoch in the West before the publication of an early Ethiopic translation in 1773. For us it is interesting to note that the same codex that gave us the Apocalypse of Peter also gave us Greek fragments of the beginning of 1 Enoch; in other words, some ancient circles must have seen a certain similarity in these writings.25 But what is the date of this Greek translation? Most investigations suggest the turn of the Christian era without really any hard facts. Yet 22  Contra: Graf, Eleusis, 145–6. Note also the doubts of R. Parker, Polytheism and Society at Athens (Oxford, 2005) 363 note  159. 23 Dieterich, Nekyia, 163–213; Norden, Kleine Schriften, 229–31 and Aeneis Buch VI, 287 f. 24  G. Boccaccini and J. Collins (eds), The Early Enoch Literature (Leiden, 2007). 25  G. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1 (Minneapolis, 2001) 101–4; J. Lightfoot, The Sibylline Oracles (Oxford, 2007) 142, 149, 253.

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we may actually have a very interesting piece of evidence that has not yet been brought to bear on the problem. Let us first turn to Enoch himself, however. As part of his grand cosmic tours, Enoch also travels to the Northwest (chapters 17–19), where he arrives not in the hell proper but in a kind of underworld, a land of great darkness with a river of fire, most likely inspired by the Pyriphlegethon. There are also other underworld rivers, and the Homeric Nekyia is now generally accepted as one of the author’s sources. Enoch sees all kinds of things, which ‘no one among humans has seen as I saw’ (1 Enoch 19.3), but one example will be sufficient for us. In Chapter  18.13 we read: ‘There I saw seven stars like great burning mountains. To me, when I inquired about them, the angel said: “This place is the end of heaven and earth; this has become a prison for the stars and the hosts of heaven. The stars that are rolling in the fire, these are they that transgressed the command of the Lord in the beginning of their rising”’. Two interrelated aspects of this passage are typical of such apocalyptic literature. First, unlike in the Homeric Nekyia and the Descents of Heracles and Orpheus, there is a guide, the angelus interpres as he is normally called, who explains to the underworld traveler what he actually sees. Second, as Martha Himmelfarb has noted, in order to explain what is seen the angel habitually uses demonstrative pronouns to answer questions in the form: ‘Who are they? These are those who...’. She also notes that such questions and answers are absent from Greek Descents into Hades. Unlike what she seems to think,26 though, this usage was not invented by the author of 1 Enoch. In fact, he took it straight from Homer’s Iliad, as we find exactly the same structure in the famous teichoskopia of Book III of the Iliad. Here Priam asks Helen to identify certain conspicuous figures among the Greek warriors in the following manner: ὥς μοι καὶ τόνδ᾽ ἄνδρα πελώριον ἐξονομήνῃς, ὅς τις ὅδ᾽ ἐστὶν Ἀχαιὸς ἀνὴρ ἠΰς τε μέγας τε So you could tell me the name of this man who is so tremendous; Who is this Achaian man of power and stature?

Helen answers Priam’s question with: οὗτός γ᾽ Ἀτρεΐδης εὐρὺ κρείων Ἀγαμέμνων That man there is Atreus’ son, wide-ruling Agamemnon. 27

And a similar structure of ‘Who is that?’ ‘That is...’ we also find in the cases of Odysseus (III.192–93 and 200) and Aias (III.226–27 and 229). Moreover, Homer was imitated by Euripides in his Phoenissae, where, standing on the roof of

26 Himmelfarb,

Tours of Hell, 50–56. Iliad. III.166–67 and 177, tr. E.J. Bakker, ‘Homeric οὗτος and the Poetics of Deixis’, CPh 94 (1999) 1–19. 27 

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the Theban palace, Antigone asks a servant about the Seven against Thebes (119–21; transl. D. Kovacs, Loeb): τίς οὗτος ὁ λευκολόφας, πρόπαρ ὃς ἁγεῖται στρατοῦ πάγχαλκον ἀσπίδ᾽ ἀμφὶ βραχίονι κουφίζων; Who is he of the white plume who stands in front of the army to lead it, bearing lightly upon his arm a shield all of bronze?

And the servant answers (125): οὗτος Μυκηναῖος μὲν αὐδᾶται γένος That man is said to be a Mycenaean by birth. 28

The conclusion seems inevitable that the author of 1 Enoch transposed a striking feature of the Greek teichoskopia to his description of a kind of underworld, which is shown to Enoch from a height (see also §  3). Given that the author used the Homeric Nekyia (above), his use of another Greek literary motif should not surprise us. But do we find this use of guides and demonstrative pronouns also outside the Greek and Enochic traditions?

3. Rome Now both a form of the angelus interpres and the use of demonstrative pronouns in the explanation of what is seen in the underworld do occur in Virgil’s Aeneid VI.29 On the bank of the river Acheron, Aeneas sees a number of souls and he asks the Sibyl who they are (318–20). The Sibyl, thus, is his ‘travel guide’. Such a guide is not a feature of Orphic descriptions of the underworld, even though Aeneas’ visit is clearly put into an Orphic light by Virgil. At the very moment that Hecate is approaching and the Sibyl and Aeneas will leave her cave to start their entry into the underworld, at this emotionally charged moment, the Sibyl calls out: procul, o procul este, profani (258). The formula alludes almost certainly to the beginning of the, probably, oldest Orphic Theogony, which has now turned up in the Derveni Papyrus (Col. VII.9–10, ed. Koure28  Note also Phoen. 133–35 and 145–50. For the scene, see D.L. Burgess, ‘The Authenticity of the Teichoskopia of Euripides’ “Phoenissae”’, Classical Journal 83 (1987–1988) 103–13. For the popularity of the Phoenissae, J.M. Bremer, ‘The Popularity of Euripides’ Phoenissae in Late Antiquity’, in Actes du VIIe Congrès de la F.I.E.C. I (Budapest, 1983) 281–88; D.J. Mastronarde, ‘A Ptolemaic Scrap of Euripides’ Phoenissae: P. Tebt. Suppl. 1245’, ZPE 160 (2007) 29–31; H. Essler et al., ‘The Würzburg Scholia on Euripides’ Phoenissae: A New Edition of P. Würzb. 1 with Translation and Commentary’, Würzburger Jahrbücher für die Altertums­ wissenschaft. 37 (2013) 31–98; E. Scharffenberger, ‘Phoenician Women’, in R. Lauriola and K. Demetriou (eds), Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Euripides (Leiden, 2015) 292–319. 29  For Rome, see also this volume, Chapters 18.3 and 21.3.

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menos et al. = Col. 47 §21 Kotwick), but allusions to which may perhaps already be found in Pindar (O. 2.83–5), Empedocles (B 3.4 DK), who was heavily influenced by the Orphics,30 and Plato (Symp.  218b = OF 19): ‘I will speak to whom it is right to do so: close the doors, you uninitiated’ (OF 1 and 3).31 The ritual cry, then, is an important signal for our understanding of the Virgilian text,32 as it suggests the theme of the Orphic Mysteries and indicates that the Sibyl acts as a kind of mystagogue for Aeneas. That Virgil derived this idea of an angelus interpres from 1 Enoch was already seen by Ludwig Radermacher (1867–1952) in his book on the underworld of 1903, one more sign of the infernal interest at the turn of the century. He was overlooked by Himmelfarb, but not by Lloyd-Jones, who, however, wrongly disputed Radermacher’s insight, as Radermacher knew what he was talking about: only 2 years before he had cooperated in a translation of the Ethiopic version of 1 Enoch.33 Now one can always quarrel in such cases, but surely not any more when we find other features of 1 Enoch in the same text. As Himmelfarb already noted – and she has recently been followed by Jane Lightfoot in her excellent commentary on the first two Sibylline Oracles – demonstrative pronouns also occur in Aeneid VI. Aeneas’ questions at 318–20 and 560–1 can be seen as rhetorical variations on the question ‘who are these?’, and the Sibyl’s replies, 322–30, contain haec (twice), ille, hi.34 There is at least one more possible derivation from 1 Enoch. Norden has noted that Musaeus shows the valley where Anchises lives from a height (678: desuper ostentat) to Aeneas and the Sibyl. He compares a number of Greek, Roman and Christian Apocalypses, but his comparison confuses two different motifs, even though they are related.35 In the cases of Plato’s Republic (10.615d, 616b) and Timaeus (41e) as well as Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis (Rep.  6.11), souls see the other world, but they do not have a proper tour of hell (or heaven) in which a supernatural person (Musaeus, God, [arch]angel, Devil) provides a view from a height or a mountain. That is what we find in 1 Enoch (17–18: the chapters of Enoch’s visit to the underworld), Philo (SpecLeg 3.2), Matthew (4.8), Revelation (21.10), the Testament of Abraham (10), the Apocalypse of Abraham (21), the 30  See Bernabé ante OF 447 V with the bibliography; add C. Megino Rodríguez, Orfeo y el Orfismo en la poesía de Empédocles (Madrid, 2005). 31  For further versions of the highly popular opening formula, see the full bibliography in Bremmer, Initiation into the Mysteries, 182 note  16. 32  For similar ‘signs’, see Horsfall, Virgilio, 103–16 (‘I segnali per strada’). 33  L. Radermacher, Das Jenseits im Mythos der Hellenen (Bonn, 1903) 14–5; Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, 49–50; Lloyd-Jones, Greek Epic, 183, cf. J. Flemming and L. Radermacher, Das Buch Henoch (Leipzig, 1901). For Radermacher, see A. Lesky, Gesammelte Schriften (Munich and Berne, 1966) 672–88; A. Wessels, Ursprungszauber. Zur Rezeption von Hermann Useners Lehre von der religiösen Begriffsbildung (Berlin and New York, 2003) 129–54. 34  For more details, see this volume, Chapter  18.3. 35  This is also the case with Horsfall on Aen. 6.678.

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Apocalypse of Peter (15–16), and still in the Apocalypse of Paul (13), which drew on earlier, Jewish influenced apocalypses (see above Chapter  19). Finally, we may have one more example of Jewish influence in Virgil, which will bring us back to Orphic literature. After Cerberus has been drugged, Aeneas proceeds and hears the sounds of a number of souls (6.426–9). Babies are the first category mentioned. The expression ab ubere raptos (6.428) suggests infanticide, which is also condemned in the Bologna papyrus (OF 717.1–4).36 As ‘blanket condemnation of abortion and infanticide reflects a Jewish or Christian moral perspective’. As we have already noted Jewish influence (§  1), we may perhaps assume it here too, as ‘abortion/infanticide in fact occurs almost exclusively in Christian tours of hell’.37 And indeed, Setaioli has persuasively argued that the origin of the Bologna papyrus has to be looked for in Alexandria in a milieu that underwent Jewish influences,38 even if much of the text is of course not Egyptian-Jewish. We may add that the so-called Testament of Orpheus is a Jewish-Egyptian revision of an Orphic poem and thus clear proof of the influence of Orphism on Egyptian (Alexandrian?) Judaism.39 Admittedly, Norden himself still stated that from 1 Enoch, as from other Jewish Apocalypses, ‘kaum ein Motiv angeführt werden kann, das sich mit einem vergilischen berührte’.40 I hope to have demonstrated that this is not convincing, and one can only wonder to what extent Norden’s own Jewish origin played a role in this negative judgement.41 Jewish influence in Rome has long been debated, and recent discussions have been more generous than Norden in allowing the possibility of Jewish influence on Virgil and Horace. Virgils’s acquaintance with Isaiah and Jewish Sibylline literature, as manifested in Eclogue 4, can hardly be denied any longer.42 It is of course much harder to answer the question how Virgil could have acquired knowledge of Greco-Jewish texts. Nicolas Horsfall has recently reviewed the problem and persuasively argues that Asinius Pollio might have been an important cultural broker in this respect. In addi36 

Differently, but hardly persuasively, Horsfall on Aen. 6.428. Sibylline Oracles, 513 (quotations), who compares 1 Enoch 99.5; see also Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, 71–2, 74–5; D. Schwartz, ‘Did the Jews Practice Infant Exposure and Infanticide in Antiquity?’, Studia Philonica Annual 16 (2004) 61–95; L.T. Stuckenbruck, 1 Enoch 91–108 (Berlin and New York, 2007) 390 f. 38  A. Setaioli, ‘Nuove osservazioni sulla “descrizione dell’oltretomba” nel papiro di Bologna’, Studi italiani di Filologia classica 42 (1970) 179–224 at 205–20. 39  C. Riedweg, Jüdisch-hellenistische Imitation eines orphischen Hieros Logos (Munich, 1993) and ‘Literatura órfica en ámbito judío’, in Bernabé and Casadesus, Orfeo y la tradición órfica, 1.379–92; F. Jourdan, Poème judéo-hellénistique attribué à Orphée (Paris, 2010). 40 Norden, Aeneis Buch VI, 6. 41  For Norden’s attitude towards Judaism see J.E. Bauer, ‘Eduard Norden: Wahrheitsliebe und Judentum’, in Kytzler, Eduard Norden (1868–1941), 205–23; R.G.M. Nisbet, Collected Papers on Latin Literature, ed. S.J. Harrison (Oxford, 1995) 75; this volume, Chapter  17. 42  C.W. Macleod, Collected Essays (Oxford, 1983) 218–99 (on Horace’s Epode 16.2); Nisbet, Collected Papers, 48–52, 64–5, 73–5, 163–64; L. Watson, A Commentary on Horace’s Epodes (Oxford, 2003) 481–2, 489, 508, 511 (on Horace’s Epode 16). 37 Lightfoot,

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tion, during Virgil’s lifetime there were many ‘Levantine literati’, as Horsfall calls them, working in Rome, who could have mediated knowledge of Jewish literature and culture.43 We do actually know that Alexander Polyhistor, a Greek who also worked in Rome during Virgil’s lifetime, wrote a book entitled On the Jews that shows acquaintance with books of the Old Testament and Jewish-Hellenistic literature as well as familiarity with Egyptian-Jewish Sibylline literature.44 As there were many points of contact between the Sibylline and Enochic traditions, there seems to be no reason why the two traditions could not have influenced one another.45 Now Virgil has the guide, the catalogue of sinners and the demonstrative pronouns. We can therefore reasonably conclude that Virgil made use not only of Orphic traditions but also of material from 1 Enoch. Thus it seems likely that among the literature that Virgil had used, there also were Jewish-Orphic Descents with Enochic influence, if not a Greek translation of 1 Enoch itself.46 The date of the latter is not yet established with any certainty, but scholars agree that it ‘may well go back to the first century BC or earlier still’.47 Unfortunately, however, we have so little left of that literature that all too certain conclusions would be misleading. We may even wonder if not other Roman authors, too, had used Jewish literature in Augustan times. The most recent commentary on Horace’s Epodes observes that Ep.  16 ‘exhibits detailed traces of the Sibylline and Oriental prophecies which were circulating at this period’.48 And in Ovid’s version of the creation in Book I of his Metamorphoses earth is already there (15), but there is darkness (10–11: Genesis 1.2) until a deus (21: Gen 1.3ff) creates the world in its present form (21–68). Then we have the creation of mankind (76–88), which will dominate everything (76–77: Gen 1.26) and is created in the image of the gods (83: Gen 1.26–27), a kind of paradisiacal era (89–112) followed by a ‘fall’ (113– 252: Gen 3) with murders like fratricide (146: Gen 4) and cannibalism (163–252), 43  N. Horsfall, ‘Vergil and the Jews’, Vergilius 58 (2012) 67–80; add S. Mitchell, ‘Rom und das Judentum in der frühen Kaiserzeit: Überlegungen zu den Grenzen zwischen Heiden, Juden und Christen’, in J. Dümmer and M. Vielberg (eds), Leitbild Wissenschaft? (Stuttgart, 2003) 149–72 at 165–67 (Asinius Pollio as important source for Virgil’s Jewish knowledge). 44  Alexander Polyhistor FGrH 273 F 79 (4) quotes Or. Sib. 3.97–104, if probably in an older form than we have now, cf. E. Schürer, The history of the Jewish people in the age of Jesus Christ (175 B.C.-A.D. 135), 3  vols (Edinburgh, 1973–1987) 3,1.646–47 (no Babylonian influence); R. Buitenwerf, Book III of the Sibylline Oracles and Its Social Setting (Leiden, 2003) 167–71; Lightfoot, Sibylline Oracles, 95; see also Norden, Kleine Schriften, 269. 45 Lightfoot, Sibylline Oracles, 70–77. 46  For Enochic influence on Virgil, see also my ‘Vergil and Jewish Literature’, Vergilius 59 (2013) 143–50. 47 Lightfoot, Sibylline Oracles, 71; see also M. Knibb, ‘Reflections on the Status of the Early Enochic Writings’, in M. Popovic´ (ed.), Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism (Leiden, 2010) 143–54 at 145 f. 48 Watson, A Commentary on Horace’s Epodes, 481, note also 472, 489 and 508; similarly already Macleod, Collected Essays, 218–99.

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and finally, the Flood (253–312: Gen 6–8), in which Ovid seems to use the unique Latin verbal form ararat (194) in reference to Mount Ararat (Gen 8.4).49 Admittedly, Virgil’s Eclogue 6 contains the motifs of a cosmogony, flood and Golden Age (in this order!) and individual motifs, such as darkness, creation of mankind by a god in the image of the gods, the domination of animals, paradise, fall, fratricide and flood, can be found elsewhere in ancient cosmogonies or philosophical writings such as Plato’s Timaeus. However, Ovid’s overall order and combination of motifs are unique, and look like having been influenced by the creation story of Genesis, even if we have no idea whether indirectly or directly.50 In fact, in the last volume of his great commentary on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Franz Bömer (1911–2004) concludes that Ovid had an ‘ungewöhnliches Verhältnis zu jüdischen Traditionen’.51

4.  Early Christianity Having looked at Greece, Rome and early Judaism, let us now turn to the early Christian tours of hell, of which we will subsequently discuss the Apocalypse of Peter, the Acts of Thomas, the Apocalypse of Elijah, the Apocalypse of Zephaniah and the Apocalypse of Paul, even if only briefly. We will start with the Apocalypse of Peter, our earliest example, of which we have discussed the place and time of composition as well as the sins and punishments in the previous chapters.52 We will therefore be brief here. Now the Apocalypse of Peter is highly important in the history of hell, as it is ‘the first major Christian account of post mortem punishment outside the New Testament’.53 However, the sins of the 49  As is attractively argued by K. Fletcher, ‘Ovidian “Correction” of the Biblical Flood?’, Class. Philol. 105 (2010) 209–13, who also notes Ovid’s great interest in the Sabbath (Ars am. 1, 75–76, 413–6; Rem. am. 219–20). 50  W. Speyer, Frühes Christentum im antiken Strahlungsfeld (Tübingen, 1989) 431–39; E.A. Schmidt, ‘Ovids poetische Menschenwelt: die Metamorphosen als Metapher und Symphonie’, SB Heidelberg, Philos.-Hist. Kl. 1991.2, 29 (Posidonius as likely source); W. Stroh, ‘Horaz und Vergil in ihren prophetischen Gedichten’, Gymnasium 100 (1993) 289–322 at 299–301. From the standard commentaries, Bömer has nothing about possible parallels between Ovid and Genesis, and Haupt-Ewald (ad 76f) observes: ‘Die Übereinstimmung mit 1. Mos. 1, 26, 28 is nur zufällig’. Barchiesi (ad 82–83), however, notes that this is the first passage in antiquity in which the resemblance between man and god is physical and not only spiritual, and he refers to G. Liedberg, ‘Sulla creazione dell’uomo in Ovidio. L’uomo immagine degli dei (Met I 82–83)’, Bollettino di studi latini 29 (1999) 89–95, who does indeed accept influence from Genesis. I am most grateful to Ruurd Nauta for a discussion of this problem. 51  F. Bömer, P. Ovidius Naso, Metamorphoses Buch XIV–XV (Heidelberg, 1986) 295; note also p.  404: ‘Aber die Frage ist eigentlich nicht, wie solche Orientalia nach Rome kamen, sondern warum gerade Ovid, auf welchem Wege auch immer, über Judaica ungewöhnlich gut informiert war’. 52  See this volume, Chapters 17–19. 53  A. Bernstein, The Formation of Hell (Ithaca and London, 1993) 282, with an informative account of the Apocalypse (282–91).

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Apocalypse are not that interesting. We do not hear anything about specific ritual or dogmatic transgressions. Most decent Jews, Christians and, probably, even some pagans would hardly have any difficulty with the great majority of its implicit commandments, such as the prohibition to murder, to commit adultery, to practice homosexual and lesbian sex, to utter blasphemies or to perform magic. This may well be another indication that the prescriptions ultimately derived from Jewish Hellenistic ethical monostichs, as these also avoided all too explicit references to Jewish practices and doctrines.54 On the other hand, it is different with the punishments.55 To start with, they are shown to Peter by Jesus. He does this by pointing to certain categories of sinners, such as the ones ‘hanging by their tongues’ (22G[reek]) and then says: ‘And these were those who had blasphemed the way of righteousness’, and to ‘women hanging by their hair over boiling mire’ (and I will come back to the mire), and then says: ‘these were they who had adorned themselves for adultery’ (24G), and in this way, the Apocalypse continues in enumerating and explaining the various sinners. In other words, we have a guide to inform us about the underworld, and the guide likes to use demonstrative pronouns to explain what the visitor or spectator of the underworld sees,56 just as in 1 Enoch and Virgil. The pronouns often follow the question ‘Who are these’, but they can also follow an enumeration of the sinners by the visitor of hell, as in Virgil and in this Apocalypse. As we already saw (Chapters 17 and 18.2), the picture of hell in the Apocalypse of Peter is partially inspired by Aristophanes, Plato (or Pseudo-Plato) and the Orphic tradition, from whom the author took the mire and the bad smells, but the burning mud must be the author’s own invention, just as the stress on blood, which Lucian took over in his True Histories (2.30). The great transgressors of Greek mythology, such as Sisyphus and Prometheus, clearly were another source of inspiration. It is obvious that the author, or his source, was a thoroughly Hellenised intellectual. Let us now turn to the tour of hell in the Greek version of the Acts of Thomas (55–57),57 where a resurrected girl relates what has been shown to her during her death. As in the Apocalypse of Peter, she has a guide, but in her case it is not an apostle or an angel but a kind of devil-like figure: ‘A man received me, hideous in appearance, entirely black,58 and his clothes exceedingly filthy … and that man said to me’ (55). The Greek version also has the same hanging punishments 54  P.W. van der Horst, ‘Pseudo-Phocylides Revisited’, Journal for the Study of the Pseud­ epigrapha 3 (1988) 3–30 at 1–12. 55  See also this volume, Chapter  18.2. 56  See also 26G (translated by Kraus and Nicklas with ‘And there were the ones ...’, which overlooks the demonstrative pronoun), 27–32G, 34G; 7–10E. 57  For the priority of the Greek version, see this volume, Chapter  11, Introduction. 58  For the colour black, see this volume, Chapter  9.1.

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(56) as the Apocalypse of Peter (7.1–2 E/22G and 7.5–6 E/24aG), and it has the mire (56: borboros) of the Apocalypse of Peter (23, 24, 31G), the demonstrative pronouns (56: ‘These are the souls of the women that forsook their husbands and committed adultery with others’ and ‘these are they that lightly and eagerly ran in evil ways’), although without the question/answer structure, as well as the pits and the sins of adultery, slandering and homosexuality.59 The tour is lacking in the detailed charts of the tours of hell in which Martha Himmelfarb has combined the Jewish and Christian ancestors and descendants of the genre. Yet although Himmelfarb discusses the Acts of Thomas in some detail, in the end she arrives at the conclusion, in which she is followed by ­K lijn,60 that both the Apocalypse of Peter and the Acts of Thomas go back to the same Jewish apocalyptic traditions rather than the latter’s description being the case of a literary dependence. 61 This is hardly persuasive, as the Jewish traditions adduced by Himmelfarb, the Joshua b. Levi fragment and the Gedulat Moshe, are both very late. Moreover, contacts between east Syria, the likely place of origin of the Acts of Thomas, and Egypt, the likely place of origin of the Apocalypse of Peter, are well established.62 However, given the context of the description, the Syriac version of the Acts has concentrated on sexual sins. The third tour derives from an Apocalypse of Elijah, of which a Latin fragment has survived in the apocryphal Epistula Titi discipuli Pauli de dispositione sanctimonii. The fragment describes Gehenna where the angel of the Lord showed Elijah a series of torments that are related to the Apocalypse of Peter, in that men and women are hanging by the limbs with which they sinned, but without the question/answer structure, if with the demonstrative pronouns. The sins are mainly sexual, but those who committed blasphemy and gave false testimonies are also mentioned and hang of course by their tongues. The fragment relates that ‘some virgins are burnt on a gridiron (craticula), and other souls undergo unceasing torment’, but breaks off at the very moment that these two punishments should be explained. Himmelfarb wants the fragment to come from a Jewish apocalypse and suggests that the author of the treatise has added these categories to an earlier work, but she produces no arguments to support such a tinkering with the original, which we no longer have, although this is of course neither impossible nor improbable. 63 Now the virgins give us a valuable indication for the date and place of origin of this version of the Apocalypse of Elijah. The roasting on a craticula, which 59 Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, 46 (pronouns); A.F.J. Klijn, The Acts of Thomas (Leiden, 20032) 134–35 (sins: homosexuality in the Syriac version). 60 Klijn, Acts of Thomas, 136 f. 61 Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, 11–13, 132–3 (use of same traditions), 133, 171 (charts). 62  G. Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes (Princeton, 19932) 203 f. 63  For the most recent edition, see M. Stone and J. Strugnell, The Books of Elijah Parts 1&2 (Missoula, 1979) 14–5, cf. Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, 34–7.

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was considered to be one of the tormenta molestiora (Prudentius, Peristeph. 5.207), is not attested before the persecutions of Diocletian and was used mainly in Antioch. 64 This may perhaps give us not only the terminus post quem, but, probably, also the place of origin of this version of the Apocalypse. In the fourth century, Jews constituted not only a large part of the Antiochene population, but many Christians were sympathising with them; in fact, so many that Chrysostom regularly fulminated against those Christians as we can still read in his sermons. 65 It is therefore imaginable that the Apocalypse of Elijah was written or revised in such a Jewish-Christian milieu that, naturally, would have highly respected Elijah. Its late date, however, is further supported by the fact that the earliest reference to Hades as underworld in the Apocalypse comes from the equally fourth-century Didymus the Blind. 66 The fourth tour of hell is the Apocalypse of Zephaniah. The parallels of the Akhmimic version at 2.1–4 to Matthew 24.40–1 and Luke 17.34–6, the resemblance of the angel Eremiel at 6.11–15 to angels from the canonical Apocalypse of John and the mention of a katêchoumenos, ‘catechumen’, in 10.9 suggest a Jewish-Christian milieu as the place of origin. 67 And in fact, the most recent, very detailed and perceptive study by Diebner comes to that conclusion. He even states in an additional note that, after first having thought of the end of the second to the end of the third century as its date of final composition, he could now consider possible ‘einer letzten “produktiven Gestaltung” des uns tradierten ach-Textes noch im Laufe des 4. Jh.s’. 68 The Coptic translation of the Apocalypse of Zephaniah was found at Akhmim, exactly the same place where 64  P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, I Martirii di s. Teodoto e di s. Ariadne (Rome, 1901) 33 note  1; Note agiografiche 5 (Rome, 1915) 70, 73 and Scritti agiografici, 2  vols (Vatican City, 1962) 1.408–9 (19001). 65  For Antioch and Chrysostom, see J. Hahn, ‘Die jüdische Gemeinde im spätantiken Antiochia’, in R. Jütte and A. Kustermann (eds), Jüdische Gemeinden und Organisationsformen von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (Vienna, Cologne and Weimar, 1996) 53–85 and Gewalt und religiöser Konflikt (Berlin, 2004) 139–89; H.I. Newman, ‘Jerome’s Judaizers’, JECS 9 (2001) 421–53; R. Ziadé, Les martyrs Maccabées: de l’histoire juive au culte chrétien. Les homélies de Grégoire de Nazianze et de Jean Chrysostome (Leiden, 2007) 111–35; I. Sandwell, Religious Identity in Late Antiquity. Greeks, Jews and Christians in Antioch (Cambridge, 2007); L.V. Rutgers, Making Myths. Jews in Early Christian Identity Formation (Leuven, 2009) 19–48. All have overlooked A. Hilhorst, ‘Fourth Maccabees in Christian Martyrdom Texts’, in C. Kroon and D. den Hengst (eds), Ultima Aetas. Time, Tense and Transience in the Ancient World. Studies in Honour of Jan den Boeft (Amsterdam, 2000) 107–21. 66 Didymus, Comm. Eccles. 92.6–7 on Eccles. 3.16, ed. M. Gronewald, Didymos der Blinde: Kommentar zum Ecclesiastes (Tura-Papyrus) 2 (Bonn, 1977) 130, cf. Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead, 59 note  34. 67  Contra: O.S. Wintermute, ‘Apocalypse of Zephaniah’, in J. Charlesworth (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2  vols (London, 1983) I.497–515 (whose translation I have used), who discusses the possible Christian elements in detail. 68  B.J. Diebner, Zephanjas Apokalypsen (Gütersloh, 2003) 1141–1246 at 1230; G. Oegema, Apokalypsen (Gütersloh, 2001) thinks of the second to fourth century as time of composition (182–4) in a monastery (185).

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Greek fragments of the Apocalypse of Peter were also found. Given its big influence on the Apocalypse of Paul, we may infer that the Akhmim Apocalypse of Zephaniah was written not long before it, just like Diebner supposed. Although it contains only a very brief account of the torments in hell, the question/response structure does recur in the Apocalypse of Zephaniah. When the seer sees a soul being punished he asks the accompanying angel: ‘Who is this whom they are punishing?’ The latter answers: ‘This is [a] soul which was found in its lawlessness’ (B 5–6). And when Zephania sees angels with faces like a leopard, their tusks being outside their mouth [like] the wild boars, he understandably asks; ‘Of what sort are these?’ And the angels answers: ‘These are the servants of all creation who come to the souls of ungodly men and bring them and leave them in this place’ (B 4). In passing we note that the Apocalypse of Paul has closely followed this passage, the question/answer structure included (11: qui sunt isti ... Hii sunt). In the end, the reliance on Jewish models and the stress on persecution must have made the Apocalypse of Peter and the Apocalypse of Zephaniah look old fashioned, and in due time they were replaced by the Apocalypse of Paul, our fifth tour of hell, which is also the last major ancient Apocalypse and the most popular medieval one, whose author almost certainly knew the Apocalypses just mentioned and borrowed elements from them.69 Yet a comparison with the sins and sinners in the Apocalypse of Peter quickly shows some remarkable differences. The sins in that Apocalypse could be reasonably categorised, and they started with a typically Jewish concern for righteousness. In fact, there is not a single reference to a sin amongst them that is exclusively Christian and not Jewish, a characteristic of the work that is also shared by the Apocalypse of Zephaniah. It is very different in the Apocalypse of Paul, where about half of the 25 types of sins are typically Christian, such as the denying of certain dogmas. What about the punishments of the sinners? When Paul arrives in hell he first sees fluvium ignis ferventem, ‘a river boiling with fire’ (31), filled with sinners that have committed not the most serious crimes but clearly are indicative of a tendency to discipline the faithful by stressing the awful consequences of gossiping, slandering and fornicating after the Eucharist, amongst others. The river of fire most likely derives from Plato’s Phaedo (114a), which was a great inspiration for imagined hellscapes in later antiquity.70 It is a device of the author of the Apocalypse of Paul to let the fire reach different parts of the body, depending on the seriousness of the crime. The choice of fire coming to the lips for 69 Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, 140–47, contests the borrowing from the Apocalypse of Peter, although she notes clear significant parallels, but postulates ‘a well-known tradition or traditions, not necessarily written’ as its explanation. This is unnecessary, as the author of the Apocalypse of Paul could easily have known the Apocalypse of Peter, which was still available in Egypt in his time. For the Apocalypse of Paul, see this volume, Chapter  19. 70  For a good discussion of the ‘river of fire’ see Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, 110–4.

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those that slandered in the church (31) cannot be fortuitous: the Apocalypse of Peter also contains many punishments that are based on the principle of measure-for-measure.71 Although then the nature of the sinners and of the punishments has partially changed since earlier Apocalypses, this is not the case with the question/answer structure. In fact, from the late antique Apocalypses the Apocalypse of Paul contains the greatest number of answers and questions. I have already given one example, but let me give one more from the more than twenty examples in our Apocalypse.72 When he looked down on the earth, which clearly was far away, Paul saw a great cloud of fire spread out over the whole world and said to the angel: ‘Quid est hoc, domine?’ And the latter answered: ‘Haec iniusticia obmixta a principibus peccatorum’ (13). The frequency of these questions in our very popular Apocalypse is probably the reason that in later Christian Apocalypses the question/answer structure has become the rule, so that we find it even in the, undoubtedly Christian influenced, famous Zoroastrian apocalypse Arda¯ Vira¯z and in the popular medieval Islamic Book of Muhammad’s Ladder (ch. 79).73

5. Conclusion It is time to conclude. At the turn of the twentieth century the great German classicists Hermann Diels (1848–1922), Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) and Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1848–1931) created a picture of classical antiquity in which there was no place for Judaism or Christianity, thus consolidating a trend started with Friedrich August Wolf (1759–1824).74 Secularisation and different cultural ideals have gradually undermined this fateful decision. I hope to have shown that an integrated picture of antiquity can shed light not only on Jewish and Christian texts, but also on the literary masterworks of classical Greece and Rome.75

71 Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, 75ff; J.P. Brown, Israel and Hellas III (Berlin and New York, 2001) 27–30. 72  See the table in Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, 46. 73  M. Tardieu, ‘L’Arda ¯ Vira¯z Na¯ma¯g et l’eschatologie grecque’, Studia Iranica 14 (1985) 17–26 (Christian influence); R. Hyatte, The Prophet of Islam in Old French (Leiden, 1997) 190 f. 74  See R. Markner and G. Veltri (eds), Friedrich August Wolff. Studien, Dokumente, Bi­blio­ graphie (Stuttgart, 1999). 75  This chapter has greatly profited from audiences at Harvard (2008), Jena (2009), Groningen (2009), Yale (2010) and Philadelphia (2010). For comments, information and correction of my English I am also most grateful to Annemarie Ambühl, Sible de Blaauw, Jitse Dijkstra, Ruurd Nauta, Eibert Tigchelaar and, especially, Walter Ameling, Ton Hilhorst and Nicholas Horsfall.

Chapter 21

Descents to Hell and Ascents to Heaven in Apocalyptic Literature Journeys to the hereafter have a long history and are already attested in third and second millennium BC Mesopotamia. In literature, we probably find a journey to the underworld first thematized in the Sumerian poem Bilgames (the Sumerian form of Gilgamesh) and the Netherworld, one of a series of Sumerian narrative poems about Gilgamesh. We also hear of the first ascent to heaven in Mesopotamia. Etana, a mythical king of the city of Kiš, is already mentioned in the Sumerian Kinglist as ‘a shepherd, he who ascended to heaven (and) who consolidated all countries’.1 The themes of descent and ascent can be traced from ancient Mesopotamia to the present time, but we have to limit ourselves, and I will concentrate on the ancient world, that is, from Homer to Late Antiquity. Moreover, although both themes have received excellent studies in recent decades, these have treated the evidence systematically rather than diachronically.2 That is why in this chapter 1  M. Haul, Das Etana-Epos. Ein Mythos von der Himmelfahrt des Königs von Kisch (Göttingen, 2000) 39–49; J.R. Novotny, The Standard Babylonian Etana Epic (Helsinki, 2001). 2  Descents in the ancient world: R. Ganschinietz, ‘Katabasis’, in RE 10 (1919) 2359–4249; J. Kroll, Gott und Hölle. Der Mythos vom Descensuskampfe (Leipzig, 1932); M. Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell (Philadelphia, 1983); G. Stroumsa, ‘Mystical Descents’, in J.J. Collins and M. Fishbane (eds), Death, Ecstasy, and Other Worldly Journeys (Albany, 1995) 137–54; C. Colpe, ‘Jenseitsfahrt II’, in RAC 17 (1995) 466–89; R. Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead (Leiden, 1998) 9–96; F. Graf, ‘Katabasis I’, in Der neue Pauly 6 (1999) 327–99; I. Maennlein-Robert, ‘Von Höhlen und Helden. Zur Semantik von Katabasis und Raum in Platons “Politeia”’, Gymnasium 119 (2012) 1–21 and ‘Vom Mythos zum Logos? Hadesfahrten und Jenseitsreisen bei den Griechen’, in J. Hamm and J. Robert (eds), Unterwelten. Modelle und Transformationen (Würzburg, 2014) 29–57; special issues of Les Études Classiques 83 (2015) and Cahiers des études anciennes 53 (2016); this volume, Chapters 17–20. Ascents: A.F. Segal, ‘Heavenly Ascent in Hellenistic Judaism, Early Christianity and Their Environment’, in ANRW II.23.2 (1980) 1333–94; M. Dean-Otting, Heavenly Journeys (Frankfurt, 1984); J. Tabor, Things Unutterable: Paul’s Ascent to Paradise. Its Greco-Roman, Judaic, and Early Christian Contexts (Lanham, 1986); B.H. Young, ‘The Ascension Motif of 2 Corinthians 12 in Jewish, Christian and Gnostic Texts’, Grace Theological Journal 9 (1988) 73–103; M. Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (Oxford, 1993) and ‘The Practice of Ascent in the Ancient Mediterranean World’, in Collins and Fishbane, Death, Ecstasy, 123–37; C. Colpe et al., ‘Jenseitsfahrt I (Himmelfahrt)’, in RAC 17 (1995) 407–66; L. Carlsson, Round Trips to Heaven: Otherworldly Travelers in Early Judaism and Christianity (Lund, 2004); P.R. Gooder, Only the Third Heaven? 2 Corinthians 12.1–10 and Heavenly Ascent (London and New York, 2006); A. Yarbro Collins, ‘Ascents to Heaven

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I will focus not so much on the often satisfactorily discussed contents and functions of the descents and ascents but on their diachronic developments and interrelationships within Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts. While descents to the underworld already occur in Homer, but an ascent to heaven is not attested in our Greek sources before the fifth century, and in Israel not before the book of Ezekiel, I will start with the descents in Homer.

1.  Descents in the classical world The oldest Greek descents into the underworld can be characterised as heroic feats that demonstrated the power or cunning of those heroes who managed to descend into the underworld and to come up again. Narratives about descents already pre-existed Homer, even if we cannot say for how long. If we accept an influence from the Gilgamesh epic, we might think of the early Archaic Age, when the ‘Orientalising revolution’ as Walter Burkert (1931–2015) called the influence of the Near East on early Greece, started to take place. In any case, Homer could already allude to epic poems that treated descents to hell. This is apparent from the end of the Nekyia, the eleventh book of the Odyssey, which describes the visit of Odysseus to the underworld. The last person that he meets is Heracles, who tells Odysseus that the Athenian king Eurystheus ‘sent me here to fetch the dog, since he could not think of any more difficult labour for me. I carried him off and led him out of Hades, and Hermes and owl-eyed Athena escorted me’ (Odyssey 11.621–26; see also Iliad VIII.362–69). In other words, the descent was the culmination of Heracles’s labours, and the clearly indispensable help of the gods shows the difficulty of descending into the underworld. During his visit to the underworld, which had become a popular subject by around 600 BC,3 Heracles met other heroes, such as Theseus and Meleager,4 but none of the earliest literary sources for Heracles’s descent makes any reference to nameless humans or Eleusinian initiates seen by him in the underworld, in contrast to one of our next two descents. In the first half of the fifth century BC, we start to hear of two new katabaseis, ‘descents’, those of Pythagoras and Orpheus. In the third century BC there

in Antiquity: Toward a Typology’, in E.F. Mason et al. (eds), A Teacher for All Generations: Essays in Honor of James C. VanderKam I (Leiden, 2012) 553–72 and ‘Travelling Up and Away: Journeys to the Upper and Outer Regions of the World’, in D.E. Aune and F. Brenk (eds), Biblical and New Testament Genres and Themes in the Context of Greco-Roman Literature (Leiden, 2012) 135–66. 3  V. Smallwood, ‘Herakles M’, in LIMC V.1 (1991) 85–100. 4  J.N. Bremmer, Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World (Berlin and Boston, 2014) 191.

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was a treatise available to Hieronymus of Rhodes,5 which was ascribed to Pythagoras, in which he related his descent into Hades. There he saw the souls of Homer and Hesiod atoning for what they had said about the gods, the former hung on a tree with serpents writhing about it, the latter tied to a pillar and gibbering. The passage perhaps derives, indirectly rather than directly, from an old katabasis poem,6 in which Pythagoras was represented as having given an account in the first-person singular of his underworld visit.7 Now criticism of the gods is hardly imaginable before Xenophanes, which suggests a post-500 BC date, 8 and the mention of named sinners in the Homeric tradition points to a not too late date for Pythagoras’s descent, since the katabasis of Orpheus no longer mentioned these (below). Other contemporaries of Hieronymus, such as Hermippus (FGrH 1026 F 24), also mentioned a pretended descent of Pythagoras into Hades by withdrawing into a subterranean chamber of his own house in Croton. The famous report about a similar practice of the Thracian Zalmoxis in Herodotus (4.94–96) might well be a reflection of this withdrawal.9 However, it is impossible to disentangle the truth from all these different notices in detail, and any reconstruction of the Pythagoras tradition in this respect (as in many others!) remains built on sand.10 We are better informed about the tradition of Orpheus’s descent into the underworld. In Greek and Latin poetry, Orpheus’s descent into the underworld is always connected to his love for Eurydice. As references to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice do not start before Euripides’s Alcestis (357–62 = OF 980) of 438 BC, a poem about Orpheus’s katabasis will have arrived in Athens around the middle of the fifth century BC. Although the poem has not survived, its use by Aristophanes in the Frogs shows that it was well known in Athens at the end of that century. Where did this poem originate? The probably late fifth- or early fourth-century Epigenes informs us that the Orphic Descent to Hades was actually written by Cercops the Pythagorean, which points to southern Italy, as does the mention of an Orpheus of Croton and a Descent to Hades ascribed to Orpheus from Sicilian Camarina.11 Given the use of Orphic eschatological material by Pindar in his Second Olympic Ode for Theron of Agrigento in 476 BC, 5  Hieronymus, fr. 42 Wehrli = 50 White, cf. E. Rohde, Kleine Schriften, 2  vols (Tübingen, 1901) 2.106 note  1; Ganschinietz, ‘Katabasis’, 2410. 6  Thus F. Graf, Eleusis und die orphische Dichtung Athens in vorhellenistischer Zeit (Berlin, 1974) 122. 7 Rohde, Kleine Schriften, 2.106 note  1; Ganschinietz, ‘Katabasis’, 2410. 8  W. Burkert, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism (Cambridge MA, 1972) 199. 9 Burkert, Lore and Science, 156–59; F. Graf, ‘Orpheus: A Poet among Men’, in J.N. Bremmer (ed.), Interpretations of Greek Mythology (London, 1987) 80–106 at 91–92; J. Bollansée, Hermippos of Smyrna and His Biographical Writings: A Reappraisal (Leuven, 1999) 51–52; C. Riedweg, Pythagoras (Munich, 2002) 78–79). 10  For the latest analysis, see M.A. Santamaría Álvarez, ‘La catábasis de Pitágoras’, Eme­ rita 84 (2016) 31–50. 11 Bremmer, Initiation, 60 f.

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the poem may well have been composed somewhat earlier. Unfortunately, we have no direct quotation from this poem, but it likely gave a depiction of the underworld, concentrating on the various afterlife rewards and penalties of nameless sinners, in contrast with the older katabaseis, which focused on heroic and famous sinners. We can now see that the descents of Pythagoras and Orpheus must have been closely related. They originated in the same area, in the same intellectual milieu, around, presumably, the same time, and both related their descent in the first-person singular. Surely, one must have imitated the other, but it is hard to say who was first. The number of descents ascribed to Orpheus makes clear, however, that the latter was the most popular descent by far. Moreover, the descent of Orpheus likely contained catalogues of anonymous sinners and their punishments, since such catalogues were most popular in Orphic and Orphic-influenced literature.12 They were relatively small to begin with, but grew in size in the course of time: the Christian Apocalypse of Peter and the Apocalypse of Paul (below §  3) clearly gloated in these enumerations of sins and sinners. Mediated by these Christian interpretations, Orpheus’s descent would become influential in subsequent times.

2.  An Enochic interlude Let us now leave Greece and turn to Palestine. In the last centuries BC, a series of apocalyptic texts were composed most probably in Palestine with Enoch, the man who walked with God in Genesis (5:24) as their protagonist. They were collected in one book, which is nowadays known as 1 Enoch, of which the socalled Book of the Watchers (1–36) is the oldest section. As part of his grand cosmic tours, Enoch also travels to the Northwest (17–19), where he arrives not in hell proper but in a kind of underworld, a land of great darkness with a river of fire, most likely inspired by the Homeric Pyriphlegethon. There are also other underworld rivers, and the Homeric Nekyia is now generally accepted as one of the author’s sources in these chapters.13 In contrast to the Orphic descents, 1 Enoch does not see all kinds of sinners, but is clearly focused on the angels that had been having intercourse with mortal women. Yet for the tradition of descents to the underworld 1 Enoch would prove to be most influential. Highly interestingly, the recent publication of a Greek papyrus, dating from the first half of the third century AD, has shown that the chapters 17.1–5 of 1 Enoch circulated separately in a paraphrase of what must have been a (the?) 12  A. Dieterich, Nekyia (Leipzig, 19132) 163–213; E. Norden, P. Vergilius Maro Aeneis VI (Leipzig, 19273) 287–88 and Kleine Schriften zum klassischen Altertum (Berlin, 1966) 229–31. 13  M. Knibb, Essays on the Book of Enoch and Other Early Jewish Texts and Traditions (Leiden, 2009) 115.

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Greek translation of 1 Enoch.14 Can it be that the early Christian interest in Apocalypses, as exemplified by the Apocalypse of Peter and others, induced a reader to single out this part of 1 Enoch? At present, the papyrus raises more questions than I can answer here. Unlike in the Homeric Nekyia and the Descents of Heracles and Orpheus, in 1 Enoch there is a guide, the angelus interpres as he is normally called, who explains to the underworld traveler what he actually sees. Martha Himmelfarb has delineated this aspect as one of two striking characteristics of the tours of hell, as she calls the descents in which somebody is given a tour of the underworld.15 The second feature that she has noticed is that, in order to explain what is seen, the angel habitually uses demonstrative pronouns to answer questions in the form: ‘Who are they? These are those who...’. Himmelfarb noted the absence of such questions and answers in Greek Descents into Hades and stressed the Jewish background of these features, in opposition to the work of Albrecht Dieterich (1866–1908) and Eduard Norden (1868–1941 at the turn of the twentieth century, who had minimised Jewish influence on the development of the Apocalypses.16 And indeed, both these characteristics can be seen, to a smaller or larger extent, in Ezekiel 40–48 and Zechariah 1–8. However, Himmelfarb did not take into account the fact that 1 Enoch originated in a thoroughly Hellenised world. As its author, according to general consent, had made use of Homer for the underworld,17 1 Enoch will certainly also have known the famous teichoskopia of Book III of the Iliad. Here Priam asks Helen to identify certain conspicuous figures among the Greek warriors in the following manner: ‘So you could tell me the name of this man who is so tremendous? Who is this Achaian man of power and stature?’ To which Helen answers: ‘That man there is Atreus’s son, wide-ruling Agamemnon’ (Iliad III.166–67, 178). Similar Who / That is structures we also find in the cases of Odysseus (III.192–93 and 200) and Aias (3.226–27 and 229), and Homer was imitated by Euripides in his hugely popular Phoenissae, where, standing on the roof of the Theban palace, Antigone asks a servant about the Seven against Thebes: ‘Who is he of the white plume who stands in front of the (Greek) army to lead it, bearing lightly upon his arm a shield all of bronze?’ (119–21, tr. D. Kovacs, Loeb). And the servant answers: ‘That man is said to be a Mycenaean by birth’ (125). Evidently, the author of 1 Enoch transposed a striking feature of the Greek

14  M. Bagnoud, ‘P.Gen.inv.187: un texte apocalyptique apocryphe inédit’, Museum Helveticum 73 (2016) 129–53. 15 Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell; see also M. Benz, Gesicht und Schrift. Die Erzählung von Jenseitsreisen in Antike und Mittelalter (Berlin and New York, 2013). 16 Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, 58. For Dieterich and Norden, see this volume, Chapter  17 notes 19 and 18, respectively. 17  G. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch I (Minneapolis, 2001) 282–83.

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teichoskopia to his description of a kind of underworld, as it is shown to Enoch from a height.18 Moreover, given this manifest Greek influence, we may perhaps also surmise some influence from Plato’s myth of Er in the Phaedo (§  4.1), which is the first account of a visit to the underworld with its various compartments and the fate of its inhabitants, the just and the unjust.19 I would like to stress the coming together of Jewish and Greek traditions here. Even if the use of demonstrative pronouns was already current in Jewish ‘tours of hell’ contexts, their usage in combination with a view from a height (see also §  3) points to a confluence of Greek and Jewish traditions. 1 Enoch was not only a pivotal text for descents to hell, but also proved highly influential for ascents to heaven. Before Enoch has seen hell, he is taken up to heaven in a vision that is partially influenced by Ezekiel,20 in which he sees God and his throne. We might perhaps assume here too an influence of Plato’s Er (above), as Er clearly speaks about ascending to heaven, but the Jewish background of 1 Enoch is clear from the fact that Enoch’s description of heaven is very much temple centered. Thus, in this case, the Jewish tradition and historical context seem to have been the most important factors. Let us now return, however, to the descents, and ask if we find the use of guides and demonstrative pronouns during a ‘tour of hell’ also outside Greek and Enochic traditions.

3.  A descent in Rome Rather surprisingly, perhaps, both a form of the angelus interpres and the use of demonstrative pronouns in the explanation of what is seen in the underworld occur in Virgil’s Aeneid VI, the highpoint of which is the descent of Aeneas, accompanied by the Sibyl, into the underworld. On the bank of the river Acheron, Aeneas sees a number of souls and he asks the Sibyl who they are (318–20). The Sibyl, thus, is his ‘travel guide’. Although Ludwig Radermacher’s (1867– 1952) suggestion that Virgil had taken over this idea from 1 Enoch may seem rather adventurous,21 Himmelfarb has noted that demonstrative pronouns also occur in the descent of Aeneid VI.22 Considering the ‘Enochic’ features of the travel guide and the demonstrative pronouns, we may at least observe one other 18 

See also this volume, Chapter  20.2. F. Casadesús Bordoy, ‘The Myth of Er: between Homer and Orpheus’, LEC 83 (2015) 299–311. 20  1 Enoch 14; Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven, 10–12. 21  L. Radermacher, Das Jenseits im Mythos der Hellenen (Bonn, 1903) 14–15. 22 Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, 49–50; see also J. Lightfoot, The Sibylline Oracles (Oxford, 2007) 502–03; Bremmer, Initiation, 185. 19 Cf.

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similarity with 1 Enoch. Having noted that Musaeus shows the valley where Anchises lives from a height (678: desuper ostentat) to Aeneas and the Sibyl, Norden has compared a number of Jewish and Christian Apocalypses in which a supernatural figure (God, [arch]angel, Devil) provides a view from a height or a mountain.23 In other words, Virgil seems to draw here too on a Jewish source. And indeed, during Virgil’s lifetime there were many ‘Levantine literati’, as Horsfall calls them,24 working in Rome, who could have mediated knowledge of Jewish literature and culture. Did Virgil actually know 1 Enoch, directly or indirectly? Perhaps there were among the writings that Virgil had used also Jewish-Orphic Descents with Enochic influence, if not a Greek translation of 1 Enoch itself,25 which is currently dated to the beginning of the first century BC.26 In any case, Sibylline and Enochic literature had many points of contact,27 but, as we have so little left of that literature, our conclusions must remain tentative.28

4.  Descents in early Christianity Let us now turn to the five early Christian tours of hell, of which the first four clearly derive from communities that are still close to their Jewish roots. Yet before we do so, we first have to mention the descent of Christ himself into hell, as the earliest testimonies to this belief, in the Ascension of Isaiah (4.21, 10.7–10, 11.19) and the Odes of Solomon (42.11–22), almost certainly precede the earliest Christian tour of hell. This belief became gradually an established part of the Christian creeds and even entered the liturgy with Easter.29 However, it had no impact, seemingly, on the later reports of the tours of hell and as such stands alone in the tradition of the descents. Regarding those ‘tours of hell’, it is unfortunate that our earliest example, the Apocalypse of Peter, has survived only in a late Ethiopic translation and some Greek fragments,30 but neither its date nor place of origin are unequivocally attested, although its mention by Clement of Alexandria constitutes its terminus ante quem, and Alexandria seems the most likely place of composition.31 In 23 

For the examples, see this volume, Chapter  20.3. N. Horsfall, ‘Vergil and the Jews’, Vergilius 58 (2012) 67–80 at 77. 25  See also the discussion between Horsfall, ‘Vergil and the Jews’, 68–70 and J.N. Bremmer, ‘Vergil and Jewish Literature’, Vergilius 59 (2013) 143–50. 26 Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch I, 14. 27 Lightfoot, Sybilline Oracles, 70–77. 28  See also this volume, Chapters 18.3 and 20.3. 29 For a detailed discussion, see R. Gounelle, La descente du Christ aux enfers (Paris, 2000). 30  See this volume, Chapter  17. 31  See this volume, Chapter  18.1. 24 

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the Ethiopic version of the Apocalypse Jesus shows Peter the punishments that await the damned at the Last Judgement, but in the Greek version, undoubtedly edited at this point, the punishments appear in a kind of vision. Jesus shows the punishments by pointing to certain categories of sinners, such as the ones ‘hanging by their tongues’ (22G[reek]) and then says, ‘And these were those who had blasphemed the way of righteousness’, nd to ‘omen hanging by their hair over boiling mire’ (below), and then says, ‘these were they who had adorned themselves for adultery’ (24G), and in this way the Apocalypse continues in enumerating and explaining the various sinners (Chapter  18.2). In other words, we have a guide to inform us about the underworld, who likes to use demonstrative pronouns to explain what the visitor or spectator of the underworld sees, just as in 1 Enoch and Virgil. He also sees measure-for-measure punishments, which can go back equally to a Jewish and an Orphic background, as the talion principle is explicitly attested for the Pythagoraeans.32 In her 1983 book on the tours of hell, Himmelfarb could not yet know the discovery in 1984 of a new and much better manuscript of the Latin Vision of Ezra. This has now shown that its original Greek text was probably written in the earlier second century, most likely in Egypt; it is not that far in time from the Apocalypse of Peter, with which it shows a close relationship.33 Ezra, who, like Orpheus and Peter, relates his descent in the first-person singular,34 descends into Tartarus, where he is shown the righteous and the damned. As is the case in the Apocalypse of Peter, his questions follow the question/response structure with the demonstrative pronouns and they are answered by the angelus interpres; moreover, the sinners are grouped according to certain categories, and the punishments follow the measure-for-measure pattern. In other words, the Vision displays all the characteristics of an early tour of hell. Other tours occur in an Apocalypse of Elijah, of which a Latin fragment has survived in the apocryphal Epistula Titi discipuli Pauli de dispositione sanctimonii, and in the Apocalypse of Zephaniah. Both of these, at least in their Christian final form, derive from the fourth century, probably from Egypt, but certainly the latter originated as a Jewish Apocalypse and the former may well have originated in a Jewish-Christian milieu. Both contain the characteristic features of the tours of hell, that is, the question/response structure, the angelus inter32 Himmelfarb,

Tours of Hell, 68–105. P.-M. Bogaert, ‘Une vision longue inédite de la “Visio Beati Esdrae” dans la légendier de Teano (Barberini lat. 2318)’, RB 94 (1984) 50–70. For the shorter vision, see the edition by O. Wahl, Apocalypsis Esdrae; Apocalypsis Sedrach; Visio Beati Esdrae (Leiden, 1977) 49–61 and ‘Vier neue Textzeugen der Visio beati Esdrae’, Salesianum 40 (1978) 583–89. For a translation, see R. Bauckham, ‘The Latin Vision of Ezra’‚ in id. et al. (eds), Old Testament Pseud­ epigrapha. More Noncanonical Scriptures, vol.  1 (Grand Rapids, 2013) 498–528. Bauckham could use the useful French translation of F. Nuvolone, ‘Vision d’Esdras’, in F. Bovon and P. Geoltrain (eds), Écrits apocryphes chrétiens, 2  vols (Paris, 1997–2005) 1.593–632. 34  For this feature, see this volume, Chapter  20.1. 33 

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pres and the measure-for-measure punishments.35 A tour of hell also occurs in the apocryphal Acts of Philip. Although fragments of these Acts had been known for a long time, a longer, earlier version was published only in 1999, which dates to about AD 400.36 Here a resurrected young man tells the apostle what he saw during his stay in hell. In the beginning of his account, we find the angelus interpres and the question/response structure (Act I.5–6), but these features are soon abandoned, and the rest of the existing account looks like a later version of an earlier more traditional tour of hell. In the end, though, the reliance on Jewish models and the stress on persecution made the earlier Apocalypses look old fashioned, and in due time they were replaced by the Apocalypse of Paul, the last major ancient apocalypse with a descent and the most popular medieval one. We still have several long Latin versions, of which a new text has recently been discovered, although most medieval versions are heavily abbreviated.37 Eventually, they all go back to the lost original Greek version, which was written in a monastic Egyptian milieu at the end of the fourth century and translated into Latin in Rome at the end of the sixth century.38 A comparison with the sins and sinners in the earlier Apocalypses quickly shows some remarkable differences. Whereas the former do not contain a single reference to a sin that is exclusively Christian and not Jewish, about half of the twenty-five types of sins in the Apocalypse of Paul are typically Christian, such as the denying of certain dogmas. What about the punishments of the sinners? When Paul arrives in hell, he first sees fluvium ignis ferventem, ‘a river boiling with fire’ (31). It is filled with sinners that have committed not the most serious crimes, but their punishment is clearly indicative of a tendency to discipline the faithful by stressing the awful consequences of gossiping, slandering, and fornicating after the Eucharist, among other sins. The river of fire most likely derives from Plato’s Phaedo (114a), which was a great inspiration for imagined hellscapes in later antiquity. Although then the nature of the sinners and of the punishments has partially changed since earlier Apocalypses, this is not the case with the question/answer structure. In fact, among the late antique Apocalypses the Apocalypse of Paul contains the greatest number of answers and questions.39 The frequency of these questions in our very popular Apocalypse is probably the reason that in later Christian Apocalypses the question/answer structure has become the rule, so that we find it even in the, undoubtedly Christian-influenced, famous Zoroas35 

See this volume, Chapter  20.4. F. Bovon et al., Acta Philippi, 2  vols (Turnhout, 1999); F. Bovon and C.R. Matthews, The Acts of Philip: A New Translation (Waco, 2012). 37  For the bibliography, see this volume, Chapter  19, notes 10 and 15. 38  See this volume, Chapter  19.1. 39 Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, 46. 36 

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trian Apocalypse Arda¯ Vira¯z and in the popular medieval Islamic Book of Muhammad’s Ladder (ch. 79).40

5.  Ascent to heaven If descent to hell was the most authoritative way of relating the fate of the good and the bad in the hereafter, an ascent to heaven was the best way to relate the contents of the heavenly world. However, unlike the descents, the writings with an ascent are not that easy to fit in one continuous trajectory, let alone locate them into their precise social and religious context, as the dates and contexts of most of the Apocalypses that contain ascents are highly debated; moreover, several originally Jewish texts have clearly undergone a Christian elaboration. It seems methodologically acceptable to focus on the original dates of these writings, in so far as they can be reasonably reconstructed. As there are various types of ascent – the ascent of the soul to heaven, the ‘round trip’ to heaven, of both persons and souls, and the ascent of a person in order to remain in heaven – with different purposes and origins, we will treat them individually, even though they sometimes influenced one another.

5.1  The ascent of the soul to heaven: round trips and single journeys The idea of the ascent of the soul presupposes two major conditions: the existence of a soul that represents the whole person and can move free from the body, and the existence of heaven as a place of destination of the souls. Both conditions were fulfilled in Greece only in the later decades of the fifth century BC and should not be explained by a shamanistic background that is only postulated and not proven.41 The development of the soul in opposition to the body took place within archaic and classical Greece, but the Greek idea of a journey of the soul to heaven may well have been influenced by Iranian ideas, given the Persian conquest of Ionia in the later sixth century and the probable presence of Persian magi in Athens in the late fifth century.42 Yet the fixation on Iranian origins that was paramount around 1900 has long impeded scholars from seeing the many 40 

See this volume, Chapter  19.4. Contra C. Colpe, ‘Die “Himmelsreise der Seele” ausserhalb und innerhalb der Gnosis’, in U. Bianchi (ed.), Le origini dello gnosticismo (Leiden, 1967) 429–45 and ‘Die “Himmels­ reise der Seele” als philosophie- und religionsgeschichtliche Problem’, in E. Fries (ed.), Festschrift für Joseph Klein (Göttingen, 1967) 85–104; C. Colpe and P. Habermehl, ‘Jenseitsreise’, in RAC 17 (1995) 490–543. 42 J.N. Bremmer, ‘Body and Soul between Death and Funeral in Archaic Greece’, in P. Berger and J. Kroesen (eds), Ultimate Ambiguities (New York, 2015) 227–51 (with further bibliography). 41 

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influences of early Greek philosophers with their speculations about the soul.43 Moreover, in the later Greek fifth century BC we do not meet the idea of souls going to heaven, but they ascend to the aithêr, the ‘upper air’.44 Even if some Iranian influence is likely, other determining factors such as the teachings of Pythagoras and Plato also have to be taken into account.45 Admittedly, the Mithraic ascent of the soul, as mentioned by Celsus (Origen, Contra Celsum 6.22) and Porphyry (De antro 24) seemed to underpin these Iranian speculations, but recent research is much more reticent, notes the ascent’s Neo-Platonic character, and no longer mentions Iran in this respect.46 Highly influential in connection with the ascent of the soul would remain the myth of Er in Plato’s Republic, where Plato describes how the soul of Er left his body after his seeming death and ascended to a heaven-like place. In his case and others, such as that of Scipio in Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis, of Ardiaeus in Plutarch’s On the Delays of the Divine Vengeance, and of Timarchus in The Sign of Socrates, Er came back into his body to tell about what happens after death.47 Somewhat differently, but also of Platonic inspiration, is the ascent of the soul in Philo’s De specialibus legibus, which, however, is inspired by the ascent of the soul in Plato’s Phaedrus rather than by the myth of Er.48 The fact that in the early Christian Ascension of Isaiah it is the mind, the most important part of the soul, that is lifted into the heavens (6.10; note also the return into the body in 7.5) also points to an influence from Platonic traditions. The idea of the ascent of the soul experienced its heyday especially in pagan circles during the first centuries AD; Lucian could even make fun of it in his Icaromenippus. From the fragments of the second-century AD Chaldaean Oracles we learn of a theurgic ritual in which a priest officiated and which clearly demanded purification before the ascent. Subsequently, angels helped the theurgist to separate his soul from the body. During the ascent the soul had to pronounce a password, which strongly reminds us of the Orphic-Bacchic Mysteries, where this was also necessary, as the Orphic Gold Leaves have shown. Similar Orphic-like passwords occur in Gnostic treatises about the post mortem journey of the soul; and indeed, Orphic influence on both the Chaldaean Oracles and Gnostic writings seems persuasive.49 The final aim of the theurgic 43  W. Bousset, ‘Die Himmelsreise der Seele’. ARW 4 (1901) 136–69, 229–73, reprinted as Die Himmelsreise der Seele (Darmstadt, 1960); R. Reitzenstein, Poimandres (Leipzig, 1904). 44  J.N. Bremmer, The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife (London and New York, 2002) 7. 45 Burkert, Lore and Science, 357–68. 46  R. Gordon, ‘Mithras’, in RAC 24 (2012) 964–1009 at 987–88. 47  Colpe and Habermehl, ‘Jenseitsreise’; Bremmer, Rise and Fall, 90–94. 48  P. Borgen, ‘Heavenly Ascent in Philo: An Examination of Selected Passages’, in J.H. Charlesworth and C.A. Evans (eds), Pseudepigrapha and Early Biblical Interpretation (Sheffield, 1993) 246–68; B. Heininger, ‘Paulus und Philo als Mystiker? Himmelsreisen im Vergleich (2 Kor 12,2–4; SpecLeg III 1–6)’, in R. Deines and K.-W. Niebuhr (eds), Philo und das Neue Testament (Tübingen, 2004) 189–204. 49  E. Thomassen, ‘Gnostics and Orphics’, in J. Dijkstra et al. (eds), Myths, Martyrs, and

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ascent was the ‘immortalisation’,50 as is the case in the famous Mithras Liturgy, which is closely related to the theurgic milieu.51 Yet it was only a temporary immortalisation, as the Liturgy stresses that the ascent can take place three times a year (748–49). The incorporation of the Mithras Liturgy in a magical papyrus fits a notice of Arnobius (Adv. Nat. 2.62, cf. 2.13) that magicians taught their pupils to send up their souls to the heavens with magical means. In the case of the Hermetic treatise Poimandres, which was composed in Egypt and is currently dated to about AD 100, the soul journeys to the eighth heaven: ‘this is the good, the aim of those who have gnosis: to become god’ (26). Here the visit to the highest heaven also serves a missionary purpose, as on his return Poimandres’s pupil has to teach mankind what he has seen (26): an interesting expansion of the traditional goals of these ascents, namely to legitimate or to authenticate certain claims to a higher wisdom or revelation. Rather striking is the fact that the narrator relates his vision in the first-person singular and is instructed by a kind of angelus interpres. Moreover, he ascends to the eighth heaven (25–26). Such layered heavens were not part of the Greek tradition, and in this respect the Hermetic treatise must have been influenced by Jewish(-Christian) apocalyptic traditions, in which we find many such heavens. In the Jewish writings from the turn of the Christian era the number of heavens was not fixed. We find three, five and seven in the well-known Apo­ calypses, from 2 Enoch to the Testament of Abraham,52 and such layering must have been familiar enough for Paul to refer to it in his Second Letter to the Corinthians (12.1–4) without further explanation.53 These numbers are clearly influenced by Babylonian views of ancient cosmology,54 even though we must be careful with postulating up-to-date contacts between Jewish and Babylonian scholars. Recent insights clearly demonstrate that the former had been left behind in comparison with their Greek colleagues,55 but that did not keep them from being aware of snippets of Babylonian cosmology. From the numbers, the Modernity: Studies in the History of Religions in Honour of Jan N. Bremmer (Leiden, 2010) 463–73. 50 S.I. Johnston, ‘Rising to the Occasion: Theurgic Ascent in its Cultural Milieu’, in P. Schäfer and H. Kippenberg (eds), Envisioning Magic (Leiden, 1997) 165–94. 51 H.-D. Betz, The “Mithras Liturgy”: Text, Translation, and Commentary (Tübingen, 2003); M. Zago, La ricetta di immortalità (Milan, 2010). 52  For a table, see Carlsson, Round Trips to Heaven, 254; add Vision of Ezra 60 to his examples. 53  A. Destro and M. Pesce. ‘Il viaggio celeste in Paolo. Tradizione di un genere letterario giudaico apocalittico o prassi culturale in contesto ellenistico-romano?’, in L. Padovese (ed.), Paolo di Tarso. Archeologia. Storia. Ricezione, vol.  1 (Cantalupa, 2009) 401–35 (with excellent bibliography). 54  A. Yarbro Collins, Cosmology and Eschatology in Jewish and Christian Apocalypticism (Leiden, 1996) 21–53. 55  M. Popovic ´ , ‘Networks of Scholars: The Transmission of Astronomical and Astrological Learning between Babylonians, Greeks and Jews’, in J. Ben-Dov and S. Sanders (eds), Ancient Jewish Sciences and the History of Knowledge (New York, 2013) 161–91.

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number seven was so current that it seems that the author of Poimandres wanted to trump the traditional ascent cosmologies by introducing an eighth heaven. The author of 2 Enoch, which until recently had only been preserved in Slavonic, but is now attested in Coptic fragments and probably goes back to a Jewish writing of, perhaps, about AD 100,56 even related an ascent to the tenth heaven, but this exaggeration did not find many imitators.57

5.2  Roundtrips to heaven in vision or ‘reality’ As the Greek opposition of the soul to the body did not enter Jewish anthropology immediately after the Greek conquest of Palestine, 1 Enoch narrated the ascent of Enoch as happening in a vision. His authority meant that those subsequent Jewish Apocalypses that employ the theme of ascent often used the framework of a vision. It is remarkable how popular this theme was in the first centuries before and after the turn of the era. Unfortunately, the Dead Sea Scrolls have been less informative at this point than one might perhaps have expected,58 even though we can see from the surviving fragments of Aramaic Levi (4Q213) that Levi ascended to heaven where he was invested with the eternal priesthood, such an investiture being an important theme of early Jewish Apocalypses.59 In fact, visions occur in a whole series of Apocalypses: the Testament of Levi, 2 Enoch, the Similitudes of Enoch (1 Enoch 37–71), the Ascension of Isaiah, the Vision of Ezra, the Life of Adam and Eve, the Apocalypse of Zephaniah, the Apocalypse of Abraham and 3 Baruch, but also in Hermetic and Gnostic literature. As with the accounts of descent, those of ascent equally want to inform but also to authenticate and legitimate the information they purport to have received in heaven. It would be out of the scope of this contribution to discuss all these ascents in detail, and I will therefore limit myself to taking a closer look at a representative selection of the standard corpus with a focus on interrelationships between these accounts and those of descents. It seems only reasonable to start with 1 Enoch as this was the oldest ascent, then I will proceed with the Jewish Apocalypse of Abraham, which was written after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, and I will conclude with Gnostic Christian accounts that seem to have been the last ones to have innovatively used the ascent motif in late antiquity.

56  A.A. Orlov and G. Boccaccini (eds), New Perspectives on 2 Enoch: No Longer Slavonic Only (Leiden, 2012). 57  For a few later examples, see J.-M. Rosenstiehl and M. Kaler, L’Apocalypse de Paul (NH V, 2) (Quebec, 2005) 40. 58  J.Davila, ‘Heavenly Ascents in the Dead Sea Scrolls’, in P.W. Flint and J.C. VanderKam (eds), The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years I (Leiden, 1999) 461–85. 59 Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven, 29–46.

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In 1 Enoch we hear of the ascent of Enoch (14.8–24), ‘the scribe of truth’ (15.1), which is interesting as priests and their misdeeds play a central role in his thought: the social milieu seems to be that of the temple. The ascent itself takes place in a vision (14.8), in which winds bear Enoch aloft. It is important to note that, unlike the scene in later visions, Enoch is alone and that there is nobody accompanying him, no angelus interpres. When he is in heaven, he horizontally passes through two houses before he arrives at the lofty throne of God who is surrounded by thousands of watchers. Rather striking in the description is the way the author tries to evoke the terrifying magnificence of God, even though much of his vision derives from Ezekiel, as has often been seen. That also means that we perhaps have to be reticent in presupposing a mystical experience or practice as the precondition for being able to report such an ascent. Although this cannot be excluded and some indications exist for the use of incantations in 1 Enoch,60 none of our other sources gives us any clear indication of such practices. 61 Literary tradition may well suffice to explain many of these visions, and a certain skepticism seems preferable over all too adventurous speculations. 62 We are in a different world with the Apocalypse of Abraham, which was probably originally written in Palestine some decades after the destruction of the temple, even though it acquired Christian features in the course of its transmission. The heavenly ascent takes place on the wings of two sacrificial doves, on which both Abraham and the accompanying angel are sitting. They ascend straight to the seventh heaven, where Abraham sees not only the earth and Gehenna (from above: §  3), the heavens, but also, and most importantly, the throne chariot of God: as with 1 Enoch, Ezekiel once again is an important source of inspiration. Yet in its message there are important differences, as it is unique in constructing a world that embraces both cosmology and history. 63 Also, unlike 1 Enoch, it is not so much the angel that serves as the angelus interpres but God himself, which looks like an attempt to trump the other Apocalypses. More­ over, we also find the demonstrative pronouns in the tours of hell (above §  3) in Abraham’s account (22, 23, 25). Evidently, the author borrowed features from those tours to compose his own tour of heaven. Several types of ascent can also be found in Gnostic writings. The more traditional form of ascent we find in the Gnostic Apocalypse of Paul, which perhaps dates from about AD 200 and was probably composed in Egypt.64 The aim of this ascent was to explain to its Gnostic readers how to escape from the demiur60  J.J. Collins, ‘A Throne in the Heavens: Apotheosis in Pre-Christian Judaism’, in Collins and Fishbane, Death, Ecstasy, 43–58. 61  Himmelfarb, ‘The Practice of Ascent’. 62  Contra: M. Stone, ‘A Reconsideration of Apocalyptic Visions’, HThR 96 (2003) 167–80, repr. in his Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha and Armenian Studies I (Leuven, 2006) 353–66; Destro and Pesce, ‘Il viaggio celeste in Paolo’. 63  J.J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination (Grand Rapids, 19982) 229. 64  Rosenstiehl and Kaler, L’Apocalypse de Paul (NH V, 2).

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gic trap of the cosmos and to provide the Gnostic ‘correct’ interpretation of Paul’s writings. To that end it describes an ascent of Paul, which has clearly been inspired by the passage from 2 Cor, but which also draws on the Testament of Abraham and the Apocalypse of Zephaniah. The Apocalypse changes to an account in the first-person singular at the very moment that it begins and describes the ascent of Paul through the heavens until he has arrived at the tenth one, where he greets his fellow spirits. In other words, he has been transformed into what we probably have to see as the highest kind of perfection. In fact, the ascent must have been considered as being of the highest importance in Gnostic circles, considering the words in the Gospel of Truth: ‘Since the perfection of the all is in the Father, it is necessary for the all to ascend to him’ (21). The use of Paul and the allusions to Christian rituals such as baptism suggest that the author worked within a Christian community whose teachings he intended to correct into a Gnostic direction.65 More complicated ascents occur in a number of Gnostic Sethian treatises, such as Zostrianos, Allogenes, Marsanes, and the Three Steles of Seth, which probably date from the first half of the third century. In them we find a spiritual ascent to the divine, from the lowest to the highest degree of reality while a revealer provides instruction at each stage of the ascent. But it is not a permanent ascent. In the end, the visionary has to return to earth to inform the community about the possibility of the ascent and the final return of the soul to its origins. The treatises are closely informed by the Platonic philosophy of the day, but the notion of angelic guides instructing visionaries about the nature and content of the successive heavenly levels undoubtedly derives from Jewish and Christian Apocalypses.66

5.3  Ascent to immortal heavenly life At the turn of the Christian era, we suddenly start to hear of Romans who saw Romulus (Livy 1.16) and Augustus (Suetonius, Life of Augustus 100; Cassius Dio 56.31.2–43.1) ascending to heaven after their death. 67 The ascents are clearly related to the special positions of these politicians, but the origins of this idea remain obscure. Similarly, the ascent of Jesus remains hard to explain from the point of view of the traditional trajectories of descent and ascent,68 although influences of the ascent of Elijah cannot be excluded.69 On the other hand, the 65 

M. Kaler, Flora Tells a Story: The Apocalypse of Paul and Its Contexts (Waterloo, 2007). J.D. Turner, Sethian Gnosticism and the Platonic Tradition (Quebec, 2001). 67  J.N. Bremmer, ‘Romulus, Remus and the Foundation of Rome’, in id. and N.M. Horsfall, Roman Myth and Mythography (London, 1987) 25–48 at 45–46. 68  For good surveys, see H.G. Pöhlmann, ‘Himmelfahrt Christi’, in TRE 15 (1986) 330–41; C. Colpe, ‘Himmelfahrt’, in RAC 15 (1991) 212–19. 69  P. Pilhofer, ‘Livius, Lukas und Lukian: Drei Himmelfahrten’, in id., Die frühen Christen und ihre Welt (Tübingen, 2002) 166–82. 66 

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suggestion of ascension by the pagan sage Apollonius at the end of his life, as described by Philostratus in his Life of Apollonius (8.30), can hardly be understood separately from the stories about the Roman emperors and Jesus.70 There is of course much more to be said about single trips to heaven. For example, we find an ascension of the soul and a layered heaven in the vision of Saturus of the Christian Passio Perpetuae (11.2) of the early third century.71 Yet these accounts, like the ascension of the Roman Emperors and Christ, are usually not connected to the genre of the Apocalypses and we leave them for another occasion.

6. Conclusion It is time to draw a conclusion, even though we have not exhausted the material by any means. As we have seen, regarding the descents to hell there is a coming together of both Jewish and Greek traditions in the early Jewish and Christian tours of hell. The Jewish tradition, of which 1 Enoch was immensely influential, contributed especially the question/answer structure with the demonstrative pronouns, the angelus interpres, and the talion principle. The Orphic tradition contributed the catalogues of sinners and punishments, and the accounts in the first-person singular. Yet the fact that the question/answer structure with the demonstrative pronouns and the talion principle also existed in Greek literature suggests that we should be careful in postulating exclusive Jewish or Greek traditions. In the Hellenised world of the Near East after Alexander the Great there was a coming together of all kinds of traditions that often can be separated only artificially. Regarding the ascent motif, it has proved more difficult to trace the various trajectories. For the study of the ancient Apocalypses, we can see that the vision framing of 1 Enoch was here most influential, although Platonic influence was not negligible either. It is rather surprising to see how in the Hermetic and theurgic narratives about the ascent of the soul there is a clear influence discernible from the Jewish-Christian Apocalypses with the angelus interpres, the account in the first-person singular, and the concept of the layered heavens. At the same time, we can also note a certain, still to be defined, influence from the Orphic tradition. In the Jewish and Christian Apocalypses with the ascent motif there is also a clear influence notable from those with the descent motif in that several of them have a kind of angelus interpres, and even the question/answer structure with the demonstrative pronouns can be found in at least the Apocalypse of Abraham. Evidently, the authors of the Apocalypses read widely before composing their narratives. In my contribution I have tried to sketch the trajectories 70 J.-J. Flinterman, ‘Apollonius’ Ascension’, in K. Demoen and D. Praet (eds), Theios Sophistes: Essays on Flavius Philostratus’ Vita Apollonii (Leiden, 2009) 225–48. 71  For the vision, see this volume, Chapter  26.

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of the various motifs and their interrelationships, but we should keep reminding ourselves that much early material must have been lost, and that future discoveries can amend and improve our findings so far.72

72  I am most grateful to Ton Hilhorst for his careful scrutiny of my text and to Meghan Henning for her skilful correction of my English.

Section IV

The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas

Chapter 22

Perpetua and her Diary: Authenticity, Family and Visions Of all the Acts of the ancient Christian martyrs, the Passion of Perpetua (henceforth: Perpetua) has drawn the most attention in recent decades. The 1980s witnessed the publication of a wonderful study of Perpetua’s last vision and an excellent commentary,1 the 1990s saw the appearance of a new edition and two books, 2 and in the first two decades of the present millennium we have had two more editions, two translations,3 a collection of articles,4 a study of its reception in the early church as well as many articles during all these decades.5 The tale of this brave young woman, who was executed in Carthage on 7 March, 203, is clearly irresistible to men and women alike. 6

1  Vision: L. Robert, ‘Une vision de Perpétue martyre à Carthage en 203’, CRAI 1982, 228–76, reprinted in his Opera Minora Selecta V (Amsterdam, 1989) 791–839; note also the study of the visions by P. Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1984) 1–17. Commentary: A.A.R. Bastiaensen et al., Atti e Passioni dei martiri (Milano, 1987) 412–52 (by Bastiaensen). 2  Edition with commentary: J. Amat, Passion de Perpétue et de Félicité suivi des Actes (Paris, 1996), to be read with the reviews by R. Godding, AB 115 (1997) 194–96; F. Dolbeau, RÉAug 43 (1997) 350–53; C.P. Jones, JThS 49 (1998) 361–63; G.J.M. Bartelink, VigChris 52 (1998) 208–09; A.A.R. Bastiaensen, REA 101 (1999) 575–77. Books: P. Habermehl, Perpetua und der Ägypter (Berlin, 1992, 20042); J.E. Salisbury, Perpetua’s Passion (New York and London, 1997). Note also the more popular S. Maitland, The Martyrdom of Perpetua (Evesham, 1996), who reprints a translation by W.H. Shewring (1931), and L.C. Seelbach, Perpetua und Tertullian (Jena, 2000). 3  V. Hunink et al., Eeuwig geluk. De passie van de vroeg-christelijke martelaressen Perpe­ tua en Felicitas & Drie preken van Augustinus (Zoetermeer, 2004); P. Maraval, Actes et passions des martyrs chrétiens des premiers siècles (Paris, 2010) 117–44. 4  Editions: Th.J. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity (Oxford, 2012), M. Formisano, La Passione di Perpetua e di Felicita (Milano, 20152). Collection: J.N. Bremmer and M. Formisano (eds), Perpetua’s Passions (Oxford 2012). 5  For a full bibliography, see Bremmer and Formisano, Perpetua’s Passions, 371–76; add R. Mentxaka, ‘Género y violencia(s) en la Pasión de Perpetua y Felicidad’, Index 40 (2012) 447–74; E.R. Urciuoli, ‘“Che non abbia a vergognarmi di fronte alla gente”. Campo religioso e campo familiare nella Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis’, in P. Bourdieu, Il campo religioso, edited, translated and postfaced by R. Alciati, E.R. Urciuoli and E. Pace (Turin, 2012) 133–82; K. Greschat, Gelehrte Frauen des frühen Christentums (Stuttgart, 2015) 30–41; P. Kitzler, From ‘Passio Perpetuae’ to ‘Acta Perpetuae’ (Berlin and Boston, 2015); B. Sowers, ‘Pudor et Dedecus: Rhetoric of Honor and Shame in Perpetua’s Passion’, JECS 23 (2015) 363–88. 6  For a concise survey of the Passio and its problems, see now Bremmer, ‘Perpetua und Felicitas’, in RAC 27 (2015) 178–91.

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Yet much is still unclear about Perpetua. The background, immediate milieu and mental world of the protagonist are only known in outline. Moreover, opinions still differ widely as to the language in which Perpetua originally wrote her diary, the extent of possible revisions or even the degree of authenticity. Given all these uncertainties, it is not unreasonable to return to Perpetua and discuss once again some of these more or less debated aspects. Subsequently, I will look at (§  1) the genre of the Acta martyrum, (§  2) the authenticity and tradition of the text, (§  3) Perpetua herself and her family, and (§  4) her visions.7

1.  The Acta martyrum Before we start with the problem of the language and composition of Perpetua, let us first make a few introductory remarks about the Acta martyrum, as their nature has not always been properly understood.8 Such misunderstanding occurs in the best ancient historical circles, as evidenced by the words of Keith Hopkins (1934–2004): ‘Martyr Acts were a new genre of Christian literature, invented in the second century’.9 His observation neglects to note that the term ‘Martyr Acts’ is a modern construct that imposes a unity on what is, at least initially, an essentially heterogeneous corpus of texts and certainly not a genre. For example, the Acta Scillitanorum is basically the report of a court case, the Letter of Lyons is, as it says, a letter, albeit from one congregation to another, and Perpetua is a combination of a diary, a report of a dream and editorial comments. Given this variety of origins, we should refrain from lumping all these texts together and calling them a genre merely in order to dismiss them as valuable historical evidence, as Hopkins does.10 The collective efforts of historians over the ages deserve more respect than his flat dismissal. On the other hand, his misunderstanding shows that a few words on the ‘genre’ are not out of order.

7  I also incorporate some of the results of J. den Boeft and J.N. Bremmer, ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae II’, VigChris 36 (1982) 383–402 and of J.N. Bremmer and M. Formisano, ‘Perpetua’s Passions: A Brief Introduction’, in eidem, Perpetua’s Passions, 1–13. 8  I quote the text of the Acta martyrum, where possible, from Bastiaensen et al., Atti e passioni and the Passio Montani et Lucii from the new edition by F. Dolbeau, ‘La Passion des saints Lucius et Montanus’, RÉAug 29 (1983) 39–82, reprinted in his Sanctorum societas, 2  vols (Brussels, 2005) 1.83–129, to be used with his study ‘Lucius, Montanus et leurs compagnons’, in A. Mandouze (ed.), Histoire des saints et de la sainteté Chrétienne II (Paris, 1987) 211–16. 9  K. Hopkins, A World Full of Gods (London, 1999) 114–21 at 114. S. Treggiari, Roman Social History (London and New York, 2002) 31 is equally wrong in stating that the Acta martyrum ‘provide a vivid picture of provincial society and of Roman administration seen from below’. This misjudges the fact that many martyrs belonged to the higher social levels of the Roman Empire. 10  Contra: Hopkins, World Full of Gods, 115, who differentiates insufficiently between early and late Acta.

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The most important part of the Martyr Acts was the report of the interrogation of the martyrs, their confession of Christianity – Christianus sum (§  3) – and the persistence of the martyr in his or her faith, even though in reports of African martyrdoms these elements received less attention than the visions of the martyrs, which were apparently considered more important. The words of the martyr during his process, which were taken down by an official stenographer,11 would subsequently serve as a model for future martyrs. That is why his fellow bishops could write to Cyprian: ‘As a good and true teacher you preceded us in declaring in the records of the official proceedings of the proconsul (apud acta proconsulis) what we, your pupils, treading in your footsteps ought to say before the governor’ (Cypr. Ep.  77.2.1).12 The apparent accessibility of earlier proceedings is also illustrated by the astonishing testimony of Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria. After he had been accused of, presumably, less than the required endurance during the persecution of Valerian, he issued a letter about his court hearing. In this letter, he first gave a short, personal impression of the interrogation, in which, as he stresses, he had testified outright that he was a Christian. He then supplied a number of verbatim quotations from the official recording of the interrogation (Eus. HE 7.11.3–11). As both passages from different parts of the Empire clearly demonstrate, official records of the proceedings of interrogations of martyrs were accessible to the public after the trial.13 We do not know who took the initiative in collecting the Acta martyrum, although Eusebius already speaks of his collection of ‘the martyrdoms of the ancients’.14 The idea was later ascribed to various early popes, but it is unclear on what grounds.15 Apparently, no precise information was available as to who had been the first to do so, but the fact of the collecting itself cannot be in serious doubt. Admittedly, Hopkins is not totally wrong in speaking of a ‘genre’ of Acta martyrum. But when and why was that genre invented? The latter question is less difficult to answer. Perpetua ends with the words ‘For these new manifestations of virtue will bear witness to one and the same Spirit who still operates, and to God the Father Almighty, to his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom is splendour and immeasurable power for all the ages. Amen’ (21.11; note also 1.1–

11  W. Ameling, ‘Zwei epigraphische Bemerkungen zum Martyrium Pionii (c. 9, 1; c. 23)’, ZPE 198 (2016) 68–74 at 68–71. 12 These acta are also mentioned in Vita Cypriani 11.1: et quid sacerdos Dei proconsule interrogante responderit, sunt acta quae referant. 13  For the accessibility of the legal archives, see B. Anagnostou-Canas, ‘La documentation judiciaire dans l’Égypte romaine’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome (Antiquité) 112 (2000) 753–79. 14 Eus. HE 4.15.47 and 5. praef. 2, cf. V. Saxer, ‘Les Actes des martyrs chez Eusèbe de Césarée et dans les martyrologues syriaque et hiéronymien’, AB 102 (1984) 85–95. 15  Liber pontificalis 4 (Clemens I), 20 (Anteros), 21 (Fabian) and 31 (Marcellus).

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3).16 This doxology, which concludes numerous other Acta martyrum,17 testifies to a liturgical use; in fact, this use is already stressed by the redactor of Perpetua.18 We know indeed that from an early date onwards Christians started to celebrate the heavenly birthday of their heroes. This appears already clearly from the Martyrdom of Polycarp (18.3), the sending of the Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne ‘to our brothers in Asia and Phrygia’ (1), and from the Martyrdom of Pionius, who was arrested ‘on the anniversary of the blessed martyr Polycarp’ (2).19 The importance of recording the day of the martyrs’ deaths is also illustrated by the fact that the Carthaginian calendar of martyrs was kept up to date even under the difficult conditions of Decius’ persecution (Cyprian, Ep.  12). The practice seems to have become official only at the end of the fourth century, when the third Council of Carthage (AD 397) stated: ‘It is also permitted to read the passions of the martyrs, when their anniversaries are celebrated’.20 The genre, then, must have evolved very gradually over the first centuries of Christianity. Given the popularity of these texts, it is not surprising that, in the course of these centuries, the orthodoxy of the martyrs came to be stressed, although the Martyrium Pionii (11.2, 21.5) still mentions heterodox martyrs. Yet, there is no reason to doubt the essential reliability of the corpus that has survived the critical efforts of the last centuries, as Musurillo has presented it in his well-known edition – even if that collection is still too inclusive, on the one hand, and should be somewhat expanded, on the other.21 16  For the translations of the smaller quotations, I have used H. Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford, 1972). The larger ones I have translated myself, but I have gratefully used the translations by Musurillo and P.C. Miller, Dreams in Late Antiquity (Princeton, 1994) 148–83. 17  Mart. Pol. 22.3; Mart. Carpi (Greek) 47; Mart. Justini 6; Mart. Pionii 23; Passio Fructuosi 7, etc. 18  Perpetua 1.1 (lectione), 1.5 (lectione), 1.6 (audivimus … per auditum), 21.11 (legere). 19 H. Urner, Die ausserbiblische Lesung im christlichen Gottesdienst (Göttingen, 1952) 25–42. 20  Reg. Eccl. Carth. Exc. canon 46 = CCSL 149, p.  186.135–6 Munier. 21  For example, the Acts of Conon and Dasius are clearly spurious, whereas we have to add (1) the martyrdom of Guddenis (AD 203), cf. H. Quentin, Les martyrologes historiques du Moyen Age (Paris, 1908) 174; T. Barnes, Tertullian (Oxford, 19852) 334; (2) the martyrdom of Gallonius (AD 303), cf. P. Chiesa, ‘Un testo agiografico Africano di Aquileia: Gli Acta di Gallonio e dei martiri di Timida Regia’, AB 114 (1996) 241–68; S. Lancel, ‘Actes de Gallonius. Texte critique, traduction et notes (ed. Paul Mattei)’, RÉAug 52 (2006) 243–59 ; (3) the martyrdom of Athenogenes under Diocletian, cf. P. Maraval, La passion inédite de S. Athénogène de Pédachthoé en Cappadoce (BHG 197b) (Brussels, 1990); (4) a martyrdom of AD 305, cf. P. van Minnen, ‘The Earliest Account of a Martyrdom in Coptic’, AB 113 (1995) 13–38; (5) the new material on Phileas (AD 306) in A. Pietersma, The Acts of Phileas, Bishop of Thmuis (Geneva, 1984); (6) the martyrdom of Dioscurus (AD 306/7): P.Oxy. 50.3529; (7) the martyrdom of Pamoun (AD 310?): P.Oxy. 70.4759, cf. X. Lequeux, ‘Le martyr Pamoun: une nouvelle victime d’Apellianos? À propos de POxy 4759’, AB 129 (2011) 11–12; (8) the martyrdom of Theodotus (AD 312), cf. P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, I martirii di S. Teodoto e di S. Ariadne (Rome, 1901); St.

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2.  The text of the Passion of Perpetua The text of Perpetua has been handed down in two versions, Greek and Latin, the latter again in a longer and two shorter versions. Louis Robert (1904–1985), when discussing the text of the famous wrestling scene with the Egyptian, Perpetua’s third vision, writes: ‘Je le donne (i.e. the text) naturellement d’après le grec, puisque c’est le récit même de la main de Perpétue’.22 Evidently, Robert was so convinced that Perpetua’s original writing was in Greek that he hardly took the time to argue the case in any detail. This is rather surprising, since the greatest epigrapher of the twentieth century was always extremely careful and usually stopped his analysis at that very moment that evidence gives way to speculation. In this case, his strong opinion is the more surprising, since he evidently had not gone through all the literature about the original language of Per­petua.23 In fact, it appears that he had limited himself to only a few examples of the secondary literature and had concentrated mainly on the Greek text. Thus he had overlooked previous careful investigations of the prose rhythm of the longer Latin text and neglected the problems raised by earlier scholars. Moreover, he had not pondered the precise relationship between the Greek text and the various Latin versions of Perpetua either. In short, Robert is not the right guide in this minefield.24 Unfortunately, my compatriot Van Beek (1899–1987) never published the promised second volume of his standard edition of Perpetua in which he was going to elucidate these problems.25 However, summing up present knowledge we can say the following.26 Perpetua is a composition of at least three parts, all of which were written in Latin, viz. by an editor, Perpetua herself and her teachMitchell, ‘The Life of Saint Theodotus of Ancyra’, Anatolian Studies 32 (1982) 93–113; (9) P. Canart and R. Pintaudi, ‘Il martirio di san Pansofio’, Analecta Papyrologica 16–17 (2004– 05 [2007]) 189–245 (purportedly under Decius and rather rhetorically elaborated). 22  Robert, ‘Une vision’, 256. 23  For example, the priority of the Latin version had already been argued in great detail only a few years after the appearance of the Greek version (1890) by P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Scritti agiografici, 2  vols (Rome, 1962) 1.41–155 (first published in 1896). 24  Although regarding the Greek origin of Perpetua’s diary he has persuaded R. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (London, 1986) 401; D. Potter, ‘Martyrdom as Spectacle’, in R. Scodel (ed.), Theater and Society in the Classical World (AnnArbor, 1993) 53–88 at 76 note  31; G. Bowersock, Martyrdom & Rome (Cambridge, 1995) 34. 25  C.I.M.I. van Beek, Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis I (Nijmegen, 1936) 84*, 90*. 26  See especially W. Shewring, ‘Prose Rhythm in the Passio S. Perpetuae’, JThS 30 (1929) 56–7, and ‘En marge de la Passion des Saintes Perpétue et Félicité’, RB 43 (1931) 15–22; Å. Fridh, Le problème de la Passion des Saintes Perpétue et Félicité (Gothenburg, 1968); A.A.R. Bastiaensen, ‘Heeft Perpetua haar dagboek in het Latijn of in het Grieks geschreven?’, in A. Hilhorst (ed.), De heiligenverering in de eerste twee eeuwen van het christendom (Nij­ megen, 1988) 130–35; Amat, Passion, 51–66, who concludes at 66, after a very detailed discussion, that ‘la traduction grecque est quelque peu postérieure à la Passion latine’. Consequently, R. Herzog and P.L. Schmidt (eds), Handbuch der lateinischen Literatur der Antike IV (Munich, 1997) 425 notes that ‘die Priorität der lat. Fassung als gesichert gelten darf’.

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er Saturus. As the mention of natale Getae Caesaris (7.4) and the analysis of the clausulae demonstrate, the editor combined two independent pieces together with an introduction and brief description of Perpetua’s death at the beginning of the third century.27 Although the name of the editor has not been handed down, we can be absolutely certain that he was not Tertullian, as has often been suggested.28 The stylistic differences between these various pieces seem the best possible argument for the priority of the Latin version,29 since the latter would surely have been stylistically homogeneous if the original had been in Greek.30 Although the Greek version is a translation of the Latin edition, it is undoubtedly the product of an expert on Greek sport, who does not hesitate to replace more general Latin words and expressions with technical Greek terms.31 The preservation by the Greek version of both the place of origin of Perpetua, Thuburbo Minus, and the name of the predecessor of Hilarianus, Minicius Opimianus (§  3), suggests that it goes back to a very early stage in the transmission of the original Latin text, certainly before the extant Latin version. It may well date from shortly after AD 260, since both the present version of the Greek translation and the shorter Latin Acta locate the martyrdom during the consulate of Valerian and Gallienus (1), and the persecutions under Valerian seem to have stimulated an extraordinary interest in Perpetua. Both the contemporary Passion of Montanus and Lucius and the Passion of Marian and James display its strong influence (§  4.2),32 and the Vita Cypriani of Pontius even clearly polemicises against it.33 The absence of a large-scale persecution in the area of Carthage is probably the reason that we do not hear anything about Perpetua and Felicitas until the end of the fourth century when African Christianity once again became interested in some of its first martyrs. The renewed interest clearly appears in Augustine and his contemporaries, who frequently allude to both martyrs in ser27 Fridh,

Le problème, 28; Barnes, Tertullian, 263–5 (Geta). See the convincing arguments of R. Braun, Approches de Tertullien (Paris, 1992) 287–99 (= VigChris 33, 1979, 105–17), 322. 29  See also the detailed discussion by Heffernan, Passion of Perpetua, 77–79. 30  For the Acta Perpetuae, see this volume, Chapter  23. 31  For the importance of the Greek text, see the review of Amat’s edition by C. Mazzucco, Rivista di Storia e Litteratura Religiosa 36 (2000) 157–67. 32  For the verbal echoes of Perpetua in Marianus, see P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, La Passio SS. Mariani et Iacobi (Rome, 1900) 13 note  1. 33  R. Reitzenstein, ‘Die Nachrichten über den Tod Cyprians’, SB Heidelberger Ak. Wiss., Philos.-hist. Kl. 14 (1913) 46–66, passim; J. Aronen, ‘Indebtedness to Passio Perpetuae in Pontius’ Vita Cypriani’, VigChris 38 (1984) 67–76; V. Saxer, ‘La Vita Cypriani de Pontius, “première biographie chrétienne”’, in Orbis romanus christianusque ab Diocletiani aetate usque ad Heraclium (Paris, 1995) 237–51 at 239–42; E. Jurissevich, ‘Le prologue de la Vita Cypriani versus le prologue de la Passio Perpetuae: de la prééminence du récit de la vie et du martyre d’un évêque sur le récit de la passion de simples catéchumènes et laics’, in A. D’Anna and C. Zamagni (eds), Cristianesimi nell’antichità: fonti, istituzioni, ideologie a confronto (Hil­des­heim, 2007) 131–48. 28 

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mons on the occasion of their natale,34 and it lasted well into Vandal times, when the names of Perpetua and her fellow martyrs still appeared in an inscription and on mosaics.35 The renewed interest was probably caused by the already mentioned (§  1) liturgical readings that were intended to institute gladness and thankfulness for the great deeds of the martyrs. As Augustine says, ‘not merely without sorrow, but even with great gladness, in reading the documents we lovingly recall everything that happened then’ (Sermo 309.1). However, there were evidently not that many interesting and non-Donatist texts to be read during those occasions. That must be the reason why Augustine comments in a sermon on Stephen, who became the Christian martyr par excellence in Late Antiquity:36 ‘Whereas concerning the other martyrs we can hardly find reports that we could read on their feast-days, his (Stephen’s) passion is in a canonical book’ (Sermo 315.1). Given the dearth of reliable documents, it cannot be surprising that the description of the passion of Perpetua and her fellow martyrs was the source of frequent attention, although the renewed interest does not mean, of course, that the text was first written or extensively revised in that period.37 Admittedly, Augustine admitted the possibility of doubts about the authorship of Perpetua,38 but there are no strong arguments against accepting that our text is basically a reflection of her own diary, although the first editor must have revised the text of Perpetua to some extent.39 In addition to having clausulae 34  See the enumeration by Van Beek, Passio, 149*-63*; add F. Dolbeau, ‘Un sermon inédit d’origine africaine pour la fête des Saintes Perpétue et Félicité’, AB 113 (1995) 89–106. See also C. Lambot, ‘Les sermons de saint Augustin pour les fêtes des martyrs’, AB 67 (1949) 249–66, repr. in RB 79 (1969) 82–97; K.B. Steinhauser, ‘Augustine’s Reading of the Passio sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis’, SP 32 (1997) 244–9; I. Schiller et al., ‘Sechs neue Augustinuspredigten. Teil 1 mit Edition dreier Sermones’, Wiener Studien 121 (2008) 227–84 (Sermo 282 auct. edited by C. Weidmann). 35  See the most recent editions in W. Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions and Testimonia (Macon, 1997) 105–17; J. Divjak and W. Wischmeyer, ‘Perpetua felicitate oder Perpetua und Felicitas? Zu ICKarth 2, 1’, Wiener Studien 114 (2001) 613–27. 36  On Stephen, see Bowersock, Martyrdom & Rome, 75–76; F. Bovon, ‘The Dossier on Stephen, The First Martyr’, HThR 96 (2003), 279–315; L. Grig, Making Martyrs in Late Antiquity (London, 2004) 94–102; F. Bovon and B. Bouvier, ‘La Révélation d’Étienne ou l’Invention des reliques d’Étienne, le saint premier martyr (Sinaiticus Graecus 493)’, in A. Frey and R. Gounelle (eds), Poussières de christianisme et de judaïsme antiques (Lausanne, 2007) 79–105; D. Labadie, ‘Une version éthiopienne des Actes du protomartyr Étienne. Édition, traduction et commentaire du manuscrit BnF d’Abbadie 110 (f. 81r-88r)’, Le Muséon 128 (2015) 415–72; S. Uljas, ‘Lost Coptic Texts from Herbert Thompson Papers I: The “Acts of Stephen”’, Journal of Coptic Studies 17 (2015) 1–31. 37  Contra the all too sceptical R.S. Kraemer and S.L. Lander, ‘Perpetua and Felicitas’, in P. Esler (ed.), The Early Christian World, 2  vols (London and New York, 2000) 2.1048–68. 38 Augustine, De natura et origine animae, CSEL 60.1.10: nec illa scripsit vel quicumque illud scripsit, but see this volume, Chapter  25 on c. 2.3. 39  Thus, convincingly, T. Heffernan, ‘Philology and Authorship in the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis’, Traditio 50 (1995) 315–25, to be read with the comments by F. Dolbeau, RÉAug 42 (1996) 312–3.

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different from the other pieces (above), the original independence of Perpetua’s piece is also apparent from a stylistic feature: to indicate the passage of time, she regularly uses expressions such as ‘after a few days’, ‘many days’ and ‘a few days later’, expressions that are not found in the rest of Perpetua. It has been objected that the prison conditions were not conducive to Per­ petua’s writing down her thoughts.40 Yet letters from imprisoned Christians are well attested since the letters of Ignatius: Perpetua stresses that not only Per­ petua but also Saturus wrote his own account of his vision (11.1: ipse conscripsit); Montanus notes regarding its first part: haec omnes de carcere simul scripserant (12.1), and the Smyrnean Pionius had left a syngramma that formed the basis for the report of his martyrdom (Pionius 1.2).41 The objection overlooks the fact that prisons in the Roman Empire were not like modern ones. Many Roman prisons were divided into two sections. The first, the carcer inferior,42 was like a prison in many third-world countries: dark, hot and over-crowded (§  4.2). In fact, Perpetua never experienced tales tenebras (3.5), and Montanus and his fellow martyrs stress that, unlike Perpetua (3.5: et expavi), they did not fear foedam illam loci caliginem (Montanus 4.2). Clearly, keeping a diary or making notes was impossible in this part of the prison. However, after deacons had bribed the wardens, as was quite normal in antiquity,43 Perpetua and her group were allowed some hours each day in meliorem locum carceris (3.7), where she could receive visitors such as her brother and mother (3.8); there is no reason why during that time she could not have made some notes as well.44 Moreover, after a period of time she was transferred from the dark, municipal prison to a military prison (7.9), probably in the centre of Carthage.45 Here, as she mentions, the director of the prison, the optio Pudens,46 started to ‘honour’ (magnificare) them and to allow visitors. It seems reasonable, therefore, to assume that Perpetua either started or continued her report within this prison which, given the circumstances, cannot have been too uncomfortable.

40 

Heffernan, ‘Philology’, 322 f. Although A. Hilhorst, ‘“He Left Us This Writing”: Did He? Revisiting the Statement in Martyrdom of Pionius 1.2’, in J. Leemans (ed.), Martyrdom and Persecution in Late Antique Christianity (Leuven, 2010) 103–21 doubts Pionius’ authorship of this apology. For more examples of writing in prison, see Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 471. 42 Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Scritti agiografici, 1.213–14 (with some other examples from Carthage). 43 J.-U. Krause, Gefängnisse im Römischen Reich (Stuttgart, 1996) 305–8; this volume, Chapter  10.1. 44  For this part of the prison, see P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Note agiografiche IX (Rome, 1953) 7–9; Krause, Gefängnisse, 278. 45 Krause, Gefängnisse, 261 f. 46  Note also CIL VI.531 and 2406, IX.1617 (optio carcaris [sic], cf. H. Freis, Die cohortes urbanae [Bonn, 1967] 44, 51, 71–5); XIII.1833, 6739 (optio cust[odiarum: Mainz); AE 1983, 48 (op[tio] kark[eris]); Augustine, Sermo 256.1: alius dicit de optione, alius de carcere liberatus. 41 

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Even though, then, Perpetua does not always contain the ipsissima verba of the martyrs, there is no reason not to accept its text as a valuable source for the history of early African Christianity in general as well as of some of its male and female members.47

3.  Perpetua and her family What does Perpetua tell us about Perpetua herself? We learn that she was a member of a group of five adolescentes catechumeni (2.1), although these were clearly older than youths we would nowadays consider being ‘adolescents’: Perpetua herself was about twenty-two years old (2.3) and Felicitas was pregnant (15.2). The information is not uninteresting. The little that we know about the persecutions under Septimius Severus seems indeed to indicate that they targeted catechumens and their instructors.48 In addition to the evidence from Per­ petua and Eusebius (Eus. HE 6.3.1–5.6), we may perhaps note a fourth-century Coptic papyrus that mentions a presbyter and some virgins during persecutions in ‘the sixth year of Severus’. If it is really incomplete, as its first editor suggests, it could well have been another example of the arrest and execution (?) of catechumens.49 However this may be, Perpetua certainly testifies to the attraction of Christianity to young people.50 Perpetua’s full name was Vibia Perpetua, and she was characterised as honeste nata, liberaliter instituta, matronaliter nupta (2.1). The description, however concise, is informative. The name Vibius suggests that her family descended from a freedman or an African, enfranchised during the proconsulship of A. Vibius Habitus or C. Vibius Marsus. The latter was in office under Tiberius, which means that Perpetua had grown up in a thoroughly Romanised family.51 Honestus indicates that her father was at least a town councillor, a member of the class of the decuriones.52 Liberaliter instituta explains her skill in writing as

47 Similarly, with additional arguments, V. Hunink, ‘Did Perpetua Write Her Prison Acoount?’, Listy filologické 133 (2010) 147–55. 48  See this volume, Chapter  25 on c. 2.1–2. 49  A. Alcock, ‘Persecution under Septimius Severus’, Enchoria 11 (1982) 1–5, re-edited by H.-M. Schenke, Enchoria 18 (1991) 86–88. A first translation appeared in E. Reymond and J. Barns, Four Martyrdoms from the Pierpont Morgan Coptic Codices (Oxford, 1973) 16. The papyrus has been overlooked by D. Brakke, Athanasius and Asceticism (Baltimore and London, 1995) 19 (survey of early Christian virginity in Alexandria) and by A. Daguet-Gagey, ‘Septime Sévère, un empereur persécuteur des chrétiens?’, RÉAug 47 (2001) 3–32. 50  See also this volume, Chapter  2.3. 51  B. Thomasson, Laterculi praesidum, 3  vols (Gothenburg, 1984) I.373 f. 52  O. Hirschfeld, Kleine Schriften (Berlin, 1913) 679–81; G. Schöllgen, Ecclesia sordida? (Münster, 1984) 200 f. Note also Augustine on Apuleius: honesto patriae suae loco natus (Ep.  138.19).

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well as her knowledge of Greek (13.4).53 A bilingual education was not very common at that time, and several African inscriptions proudly mention the knowledge utriusque linguae as being exceptional.54 Finally, the mention of a formal wedding informs the reader that she is not an unmarried mother. It is therefore strange that we do not hear anything about her husband in the text. The reasons for this absence are obscure. He may have become estranged from her because of her Christian leanings. Yet the fact that in prison Perpetua does not give her son to her husband but to her mother (3.8), seems to point to a more permanent absence of the husband – the more so, since the son subsequently stayed with Perpetua’s parents (6.7). And indeed, he is also absent in her father’s enumeration of those whom Perpetua will affect by her persistence in Christianity (5.3). As it is unlikely that Perpetua herself could have made such a decision concerning her son during her husband’s lifetime, it is perhaps most likely that she had very recently become a widow, even though she is called nupta, not vidua. Normally, we would not have known anything about such a young wife. This is of course not uncommon. When the late English Queen Mother married in 1923, The Times commented: ‘people know very little about her, as of necessity they know very little about well-bred young ladies living quietly at home’.55 However, the situation was changed by Perpetua’s arrest in the winter of AD 202–203. This new situation catapulted her into a prominent position among the Christians and that is why we have such a unique insight into the social milieu, sentiments and mental world of this remarkable young woman. To what extent did Perpetua come from an average Roman ‘upper middle-class’ family? Although we have had a number of excellent studies of the Roman family in recent years, none of them has succeeded in discovering evidence that would allow us to see the relationships of a young woman with her parents, siblings and aunt within one and the same ‘upper middle-class’ family. In this respect Perpetua is a unique, although often neglected, piece of evidence in the study of family life in the Roman Empire.56 Regarding the composition of Perpetua’s family, we are told that her parents were still alive and that she had two brothers (2.2, 5.3) and an aunt (5.3); later we 53  Cf. P. McKechnie, ‘St. Perpetua and Roman Education in A.D. 200’, Antiquité. Classique 63 (1994) 279–91; K. Vössing, Schule und Bildung im Römischen Nordafrika der Kaiserzeit (Brussels, 1997) 476–9, but see also the objections of W. Ameling, ‘Femina Liberaliter Instituta – Some Thoughts on a Martyr’s Liberal Education’, in Bremmer and Formisano, Perpetua’s Passions, 78–102. 54  T. Kotula, ‘“Utraque lingua eruditi”: une page relative à l’histoire de l’éducation dans l’Afrique romaine’, in J. Bibauw (ed.), Hommages à Marcel Renard, 3  vols (Brussels, 1969) 2.386–92; add AE 1968, 643; more in general, Vössing, Schule und Bildung, 469–76. 55  Quoted by S. Treggiari, Roman Marriage (Oxford, 1991) 135 note  42. 56 But see D. Devoti, ‘La Passion de Perpétue: un noeud familial’, SP 21 (1989) 66–72; Habermehl, Perpetua, 56–63; G.S. Nathan, The Family in Late Antiquity (London and New York, 2000) 50 f.

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also hear that one other brother had died (7). This composition means that Perpetua came from a relatively large family of four children.57 Of her parents, her mother does not play a prominent role in Perpetua. However, when Perpetua had difficulty in giving her child sufficient milk – surely a reflection of the bad living conditions in prison (§  2) – she spoke to her mother to whom she entrusted her child (3.8). Indeed, visits by mothers to children in prison were normal and a standard part of descriptions of imprisonment.58 This fits the traditional Roman relationship between mothers and daughters that is always described as being quite close.59 Of her brothers, Perpetua mentions contact only with the Christian brother, also a catechumen (2.2), whom she comforts (3.8) and whom, just before her execution, she encourages to keep the faith (20.10). Everything points to a close relationship, probably strengthened by their shared conversion to Christianity. This, too, fits the normal situation in Rome and Greece where brothers and sisters were often very close to one another. 60 The absence of any reference to the other brother seems to suggest that he was not present in the area. It is much less common to hear of a maternal aunt, matertera. Yet this mention is not out of the ordinary either. Festus (p.  121 Lindsay) had already defined the matertera as matris soror quasi mater altera. The few indications we have do indeed indicate that just as the avunculus, ‘mother’s brother’, was the favorite uncle, so the matertera seems to have been the favorite aunt. Undoubtedly, the close tie with the sister, which must have often led to visits, will have promoted this special position.61 However, we hear most of Perpetua’s father. In Roman society, there was often a close tie between fathers and daughters.62 This is also illustrated by Per­ petua, since Perpetua’s father came to the first prison pro sua affectione, ‘because of his love for me’ (3.1) after her arrest. But when he tried to have her deny (evertere) her newly found faith,63 she asked him, pointing to a vase: ‘Could it be 57  B. Shaw, ‘The Cultural Meaning of Death: Age and Gender in the Roman Family’, in D. Kertzer and R. Saller (eds), The Family in Italy (New Haven and London, 1991) 66–90; T. Parkin, Demography and Roman Society (Baltimore and London, 1992) 112 f. 58 Krause, Gefängnisse, 289. 59  J.P. Hallett, Fathers and Daughters in Roman Society (Princeton, 1984) passim; S. Dixon, The Roman Mother (London and Sydney, 1988) 210–32. 60 Hallett, Fathers and Daughters, 152–80 (Rome); J.N. Bremmer, Religion and Culture, the Bible and the Ancient Near East (Leiden, 2008) 325–33 (Greece). 61  For more examples, see Hallett, Fathers and Daughters, 183–6; M. Bettini, Anthropology and Roman Culture (Baltimore and London, 1991) 67–80; add that both Atta (Pomponius Porphyrio, Ep.  2.1.79) and Afranius (Nonius 894L) published comedies, Materterae. For not wholly persuasive criticisms, see R. Saller, ‘Roman Kinship: Structure and Sentiment’, in B. Rawson and P. Weaver (eds), The Roman Family in Italy (Oxford, 1997) 7–34 at 24. 62 Hallett, Fathers and Daughters, passim; add Treggiari, Roman Social History, 49–73 (on Cicero and Tullia). 63  For the term, see Bastiaensen ad loc.; R. Petraglio, ‘Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis. Stile

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called by any other name than what it is?’ And he said: ‘No’. ‘Well’, she answered, ‘so too I cannot be called everything other than what I am, a Christian’. The word ‘Christian’ angered her father so much that ‘he moved towards me as though he would pluck my eyes out’ (3.2–3). The reaction of the father is significant. He must have known that those fateful words, Christiana sum, would be fatal for his daughter. In its direct or indirect form, this formula ‘I am a Christian’ occurs in virtually all the Acta martyrum that have been recognized as authentic; it is lacking only in the Passions of Montanus and Felix. Usually, the confession is placed right at the beginning of the proceedings, but in some cases the declamation is the climax of the hearing, following the refusal to partake in pagan ritual.64 This is the case in Per­ petua, where at her official hearing Perpetua refuses to sacrifice to the emperors (below) and immediately confirms the question of the procurator Hilarianus ‘Christiana es?’ with ‘Christiana sum’ (6.4). The Christians even volunteered this confession without being asked, as Euplus (1) well illustrates: ‘In the consulship of our lords Diocletian (for the ninth time) and Maximian (for the eighth time) on the 29th of April (AD 304), in the most famous city of Catana, in the court room, in front of the curtain, Euplus shouted out: “I wish to die, Christianos gar eimi”’. The statement ‘I am a Christian’ clearly is the answer to the question ‘Are you a Christian?’, 65 which single question enabled the Roman magistrates to minimise the rather embarrassing situation that they were trying people who were not really guilty of any obvious crimes. As the father must have surely been aware of this, the very words, Christiana sum, may well have incited him to such, at least in our eyes, unusual action. It has recently been suggested that when pronouncing these words Perpetua’s eyes were gleaming with love for Christ. 66 In other words, by plucking at Perpetua’s eyes her father would have really been striking out at the competition for his daughter’s love. This is not impossible, since the reaction is attested several times in cases of love relationships being threatened or going wrong. Yet this emotional reaction is not limited to erotic situations and may well have been caused by the very prospect of losing the daughter he loved so much.67

narrativo e sfondo biblico’, in La narrativa cristiana antica (Rome, 1995) 85–92 at 85–6 well notes the military metaphor in me pater verbis evertere cupiret. 64  See this volume, Chapter  1.3. 65  Cf. Pliny, Ep.  96.2: interrogavi ipsos an essent Christiani; Ptolemaeus and Lucius 10. 66  A. Kessler, ‘Der Angriff auf die Augen Perpetuas. Versuch einer Deutung von Passio Perpetuae 3, 3’, in id. et al. (eds), Peregrina Curiositas (Freiburg and Göttingen, 1994) 191– 201. 67  For the reaction, see Plautus, Aul. 53, Capt. 464, Men. 156, Pers. 794; Terentius, Ad. 318, Eun. 740; Hyginus, Fab. 122.3; Seneca the Elder, Contr. 1.4.10.7; Seneca, Dial. 2.15.1.2; Historia Augusta, Alex. Sev. 17.1.3; Dig. 9.2.52.1.4; C. Sittl, Die Gebärden der Griechen und Römer (Leipzig, 1890; repr. Hildesheim and New York, 1970) 44–46.

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The confrontation was so emotional that Perpetua was clearly relieved not to see her father for a few days. He had left her, she says, ‘defeated with his arguments of the Devil’ (3.3). The expression may surprise us, but it seems evident that the Devil and not the Roman magistrate was the real adversary for the early Christian martyrs. This is already evident in the Martyrdom of Polycarp, where it is stated: ‘Many were the stratagems the Devil used against them’ (3.1), and the Devil is mentioned in many other Acta. 68 The Devil is also seen behind the tortures of Perpetua and Felicitas in the arena (20.1). It is therefore not surprising that Perpetua interpreted the victory over the Egyptian in her fourth vision as a good omen for her final fight against the Devil (10.14: §  4.3). Her father made two further attempts to dissuade Perpetua. First, shortly before the hearing, he clearly humiliated himself as much as he could in order to evoke the pity of his daughter and he tried a second time during the court hearing. Here, he attempted to persuade his daughter to sacrifice ‘for the welfare of the emperors’, an attempt supported by the judge, the Roman procurator Hilarianus. Normally, martyrs were asked to sacrifice to the gods, and the father may perhaps have thought that it would be easier for his daughter to sacrifice on behalf of the emperors. Similarly, Polemon asks the martyr Pionius to sacrifice to the emperor. 69 Who was this procurator Hilarianus? Our Latin text mentions that he had accepted the ius gladii as the temporary successor of the recently defunct Minicius Timinianus,70 about whom none of the recent studies has any­ thing to say, just as they have little or nothing to say about Hilarianus. However, the careers of both men have recently become better known. As in the case of the home town of Perpetua, the Greek version seems to have preserved a more correct version of the name of the late proconsul, as it calls him Minucius Opianos, apparently a corruption of Minicius Opimianus, his real name, as we know from the full name of one of his ancestors, who also was proconsul Africae: T. Salvius Rufinus Minicius Opimianus (AD 139);71 the Latin variant Timinianus may have been caused by a dittography of Minutii, the reading of some manuscripts. 68  See also Letter of Lyons, passim; Mart. Pionii 14.9; Passio Fructuosi 7.2; Passio Mariani et Iacobi 2.2 and 5, 5.1 and 4, etc. 69  Mart. Pionii 8.3. For a full list of sacrifices to the gods or emperors in the Acta martyrum, see A.R. Birley, ‘Die “freiwilligen” Märtyrer. Zum Problem der Selbst-Auslieferer’, in R. von Haehling (ed.), Rom und das himmlische Jerusalem (Darmstadt, 2000) 97–123 at 121–3. 70 Cf. J. Ermann, ‘Ius gladii – Gedanken zu seiner rechtshistorischen Entwicklung’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Romanistische Abteilung 118 (2001) 365–77. For the succession itself, see the observations by C. Lepelley, Annuaire École Pratique des Hautes Études, Section sciences religieuses 106 (1997–1998) 307. 71  For the name of the pro-consul, see T. Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography and Roman History (Tübingen, 2010) 304–07 (note also Minicius’ name in Acta I.9.5); I. Topalilov, ‘A New Governor of Moesia Superior’, ZPE 201 (2017) 292–96. None of the recent editors of Perpetua has noted that the name must be emended to Minicius instead of Minucius, although the corruption is old and already occurs in the Greek version.

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Hilarianus was a native of Aphrodisias, where his career appears on two statue bases, honouring his homonymous grandson.72 The family had done well. Hilarianus himself had reached the position of procurator ducenarius in the 190s AD in Spain.73 Ten years later, his ‘ducenary’ African post was on the same salary level, but he ended up as a senator of consular rank. His son Apollonianus reached the primipilate as a magistrate in Aphrodisias,74 where his grandson evidently still belonged to the higher echelons of Aphrodisian society.75 Curiously, we do find one more Aphrodisian example of the name. In a well-known, possibly fifth- or sixth-century Aphrodisian inscription with Jewish names, there is mention of a Hilarianus, the son of Theodotos (SEG 36.970.A.11–2). However, although the name is rather rare in Greek inscriptions, its Jewish surroundings make it more likely to be a calque on Isaac than a late descendant of our governor. When Perpetua’s father persisted in trying to dissuade her, Hilarianus had him beaten (6.5). It is understandable that Perpetua did not pay much attention to the penalty paid by her father, but we should perhaps pause a minute. In the Roman Empire, forms of corporal punishment were considered to be degrading,76 and recently it had been explicitly forbidden to beat decuriones (Corpus Iuris 2.11.5: AD 198). After a discussion of forms of execution and heavy labour, a contemporary of Perpetua’s father, the jurist Callistratus, noted that ‘the remaining punishments relate to a person’s reputation […], such as being punished by beating with rods’ (Dig. 48.19.28). In other words, the father had put much at risk for his daughter. Why did the father make such strenuous efforts on behalf of his daughter? He evidently loved her very much, as Perpetua herself acknowledged (pro sua affectione: above). Yet there clearly was another reason too. The father was also afraid of the dedecus hominum (5.2), and he warned Perpetua that he and the family would never be able to speak freely again if she were condemned to death (5.4). The latter detail gives a unique insight into the consequences for a local 72  A.R. Birley, ‘Persecutors and Martyrs in Tertullian’s Africa’, in D.F. Clark et al. (eds), The Later Roman Empire Today (London, 1993) 37–68 at 48–9, overlooked by J. Rives, ‘The Piety of a Persecutor’, JECS 4 (1996) 1–25; X. Dupuis, ‘Hagiographie antique et histoire: l’exemple de la Passion de Lucius et de Montanus’, RÉAug 49 (2003), 253–65 at 262–3; Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography, 304 f. 73  AÉ 1968, 227–8, datable between 185 and 192. 74  For the development of the primipilate into a magistracy, see B. Dobson, Die Primipilares (Cologne, 1978) 139–45; J. Nollé, Side im Altertum II (Bonn, 2001) 401. 75  CIG 2792–93 (statuebases); D. MacDonald, The Coinage of Aphrodisias (London, 1992) no.  35 (magistrate). Both Birley and Rives have overlooked that CIG 2793 had been re-edited by Ph. le Bas and W.H. Waddington, Inscriptions Grecques et Latines recueuillies en Asie Mineure, 2  vols (Paris, 1870) 2.no.  595. 76  P. Garnsey, Social Status and Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1970) 138; see also R. Rilinger, Humiliores – Honestiores. Zu einer sozialen Dichotomie im Strafrecht der römischen Kaiserzeit (Munich, 1988).

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elite family, if one of its members was executed for being a Christian. Evidently, the father was not only motivated by love for his daughter but also by fear for his reputation. On the other hand, the daughter clearly loved her father but could no longer be bothered by the social consequences of her religious choice. It seems that spiritually she had already said farewell to her family. One thing seems now clear: Perpetua had grown up in a perfectly average Roman elite family. It is in these kinds of families that the divisive effects of Christianity must have had the impact of a thunderbolt – an effect that must have regularly occurred in the first centuries AD, although it is attested in our sources only fairly rarely.77 In the case of Perpetua, but also of Thecla, a reader must also be struck by their power of endurance. In real life, superhuman endurance is not easily attainable. This difference between literature and life is well illustrated by our two young women. When Thecla is carried off to the theatre for her execution, she is pictured looking for Paul, ‘as a lamb in the wilderness looks about for the shepherd’. But when she sees the Lord sitting in the form of the apostle, she exclaims: ‘As if I were not able to endure (anhypomonêtou), Paul has come to look after me’ (ATheclae 21). Perpetua is more human. When she is thrown into prison, she is initially afraid (3.5: expavi), and when struck on the bone she screams, but still helps the trembling gladiator to kill her (21.9). Hypomonê, ‘endurance’, the quality Thecla postulates for herself, had become a consciously elaborated ideology among the Christians, as Brent Shaw has shown in an important study.78 Instead of humiliating themselves in their final moments to evoke pity, Christians reached out for nobility through their endurance of suffering.79 As Thecla, Perpetua and the female slave Blandina in Lyons in AD 177 show, early Christianity included women as well as men among role models for hypomonê, even though in Cyprian’s De bono patientiae (AD 258), the voice of woman is systematically ‘read out’ of the explanation.80 Although Shaw’s analysis is highly admirable, there seems one element lacking in his study. It is certainly true that in various ways we find this interest in suffering and importance attached to endurance in Jewish, Roman and Christian writings, but in Christian literature there is a distinctive element that is lacking amongst the others. The endurance of the Christians cannot be separated from their belief in Christ himself. In 1 Clement Christ is called ‘the greatest model of endurance’ (5.7) and Polycarp wrote: ‘Let us become followers of His 77 

But see Matthew 10.34–6; Mark 3.31–5; Luke 12.51–3; this volume, Chapter  2.3. Shaw, ‘Body/Power/Identiy: Passions of the Martyrs’, JECS 4 (1996) 269–312; add C. Spicq, Notes de lexicographie néo-testamentaire. Supplément (Göttingen, 1982) 658–65. 79  Shaw gives only few passages from the Acta martyrum, but note Mart. Pol. 2.2–4, 3.1, 19.2; Mart. Carpi (Greek) 36; Mart. Iustini 5.2; Letter of Lyons 4, 6–7, 16, 20, 27, 36, 39, 45, 51, 54; Mart. Dasii 4.4; Passio Irenaei 4.9, 5.2; Acta Eupli (Greek) 2.2. 80  So Shaw, ‘Passion of Perpetua’. 78  B.

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endurance’ (8.2). It is the close connection of early Christians with Christ, a theme to which I shall return shortly (§  4.1), which is clearly highly important in this respect. It is also this close association, which explains why our reports mention not only the endurance but also the joy of the Christians in their suffering.81 Per­ petua tells us that from all her kin her father would be the only one who would not have joy about her suffering (de passione mea gavisurus non esset: 5.6), and when the crowd demanded that Perpetua and her fellow martyrs should be scourged by the group of venatores, they ‘rejoiced at this that they had obtained a share in the Lord’s sufferings’ (18.9). This joy is regularly mentioned in the Acta martyrum. A nice example is found in the Greek version of the martyrdom of Carpus. After his fellow martyr Papylus has been nailed to a stake, ‘Carpus smiled as he was nailed down. And the bystanders were amazed and said to him: “What are you laughing at?” And the blessed one said: “I saw the glory of the Lord and I was happy. Besides I am now rid of you and have no share in your sins’ (38–9). The martyrs of Lyons ‘advance joyously’ (35) and, amongst them, Blandina ‘rejoices and glories in her death’ (55). Montanus and Lucius ‘came to the place of martyrdom with joy and without fear’ (13.6) and Marian and James could hardly ‘check their overflowing joy’ when they were attacked by a squad of centurions (4.5).82 Modern ancient historians often have some trouble in understanding the behaviour of early Christians. In the case of Brent Shaw, too, his whole discussion of hypomonê does not mention once the importance of Christ to the early Christians. Such an omission misses an important aspect of early Christian endurance.

4.  Perpetua’s visions Perpetua’s diaries contain reports of four visions. It would take too long to give a detailed analysis of all four of these visions and a discussion of their modern interpretations. There is, nevertheless, room for some observations on these fascinating reports which are still not fully understood. This becomes particularly clear from the two most recent analysts, Habermehl and Miller, whose diverging approaches both raise important questions of method. For reasons of space, I cannot enter into a detailed discussion of the method(s) of interpreting ancient dreams, but both approaches call for some comments. Let us start with Miller. She explicitly rejects a search of the author’s meaning because this would involve a commitment to the ‘premises and protocols of the past’. Instead, follow81  For comparable Jewish examples of this joy, note  2 Macc. 6.30, 4 Macc. 9.29 and 31, 10.20; see also this volume, Chapter  24.3, 26.2. 82  Note also Montanus and Lucius 13.2, 21.1; Marianus 9.2; Maximilian 3.3; Bowersock, Martyrdom & Rome, 59 f.

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ing Jack Winkler (1943–1990), 83 she prefers a ‘reading against the grain’. More­ over, she starts from the premise that ‘dreams are vehicles for the forging of new understandings of self-identity’.84 In my opinion, there are at least six reasons not to follow Miller down this road. First, there does not seem to be much progress when the ‘premises of the past’ are replaced by the prison of the present. In support of her interpretation, Mil­ler quotes M. Bakhtin (1895–1975), J. Kristeva and L. Iragaray – fashionable icons of progressive literary criticism of the 1980s and 1990s. No ‘reading against the grain’ there! Secondly, Miller does not problematise her psychological reading of Perpetua’s dreams. Yet it should not be forgotten that, while the interpretation of dreams in later antiquity did became more focussed on psychological aspects, 85 the psychological identity of the dreamers was not its primary concern. Miller’s limited view of dreams as ‘vehicles for the forging of new understandings of self-identity’ is therefore unsatisfactory. Dreams can mean many things in antiquity and we should be very wary of applying such a reductionist approach.86 Thirdly, the interpretation is rather selective and neither discusses all the details of the dreams nor pays sufficient attention to the context of the vision. Fourthly, Miller neglects Perpetua’s own interpretations of her dreams. Admittedly, dreamers may have it all wrong, but in that case one should at least try to understand how they reached their interpretations and explain why these interpretations cannot be correct. Fifthly, if the proof of the pudding is in the eating, then the results of Miller’s analysis are rather disappointing. They hardly rise above the level of fairly banal feminism and Freudianism: the milking of the sheep is connected with ‘female sexual fluids’, the serpent signifies ‘exaggerated phallicism’ as well as ‘phallic terrorization’, and the father’s efforts at persuading his daughter are a framing ‘within the sexual dictates of patriarchal law’.87 Lastly and perhaps most importantly, although pretending to do justice to Perpetua as a woman, the focus on modern theories completely prevents

83 

J. Winkler, The Constraints of Desire (London and New York, 1990) 126. Dreams in Late Antiquity, 165 f. 85  C. Pelling, ‘Tragical Dreamer: Some Dreams in the Roman Historians’, Greece&Rome 44 (1997) 197–213 at 200. 86  For more satisfactory approaches, see G. Weber, Kaiser, Träume und Visionen in Prinzipat und Spätantike (Stuttgart, 2000) and the studies by C. Walde: Die Traumdarstellungen in der griechisch-römischen Dichtung (Munich and Leipzig, 2001) and Antike Traumdeutung und moderne Traumforschung (Düsseldorf and Zürich, 2001). 87 Miller, Dreams, 176 f. Salisbury, Perpetua’s Passion, 100, even assumes that Perpetua knew the Dreambook of Artemidorus (1.35): the head of the snake symbolizes the father. This is no great improvement. For the limited value of Artemidorus regarding the understanding of ancient dreams, see the good observations of C. Walde, ‘Dream Interpretation in a Prosperous Age? Artemidorus, the Greek Interpreter of Dreams’, in D. Shulman and G. Stroumsa (eds), Dream Cultures. Explorations in the Comparative History of Dreaming (New York and Oxford, 1999) 121–42. 84 Miller,

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Miller from helping us to understand why this independent young woman was prepared to die for her faith. The approach of Habermehl is much more satisfactory, although not in all respects. 88 First, he is too much enamoured of the phenomenological approach. In his case, this means that we are regaled with all kinds of parallels for the serpent and the ladder. Instead, we should look closely at the actual world of Perpetua in order to see how the elements of her vision fit into her own cultural environment before we have recourse to parallels from faraway cultures. Secondly, he too, as we will see, falls victim to modern fascination with Freudian psychology. Thirdly, the visions or dreams (the difference is not always clear) of Perpetua stand in a tradition of Christian visions – Revelation and Hermas – and were themselves influential on the African Passions of both Montanus and Lucius and Marian and James written about fifty years later. Given their proximity in time and place, these should also be taken into consideration as valuable sources of interpretation. Fourthly, Perpetua has her dreams in a particular order. Habermehl starts his analysis with the fourth vision, but this distorts the temporal sequence in which the visions take place. My own point of departure is, admittedly, fairly simple. We must not make the mistake of thinking that we are talking about Perpetua’s real dreams. Those are beyond recovery. We can discuss only the texts in which Perpetua relates her dreams. Now she will have first told the dreams to her brother (4.10) and her fellow martyrs before putting them down in writing. The dreams, then, will already have been discursively reshaped to make them as effective as possible.89 Moreover, they are meant to be read and thus understood by her fellow Christians. Any interpretation, therefore, should connect the dreams to the material and mental world of Perpetua. That is what we will try to do in the following analyses.90

4.1  Perpetua’s Ascent to Heaven So what did Perpetua see in her first vision (4)? As she told her brother: I see a bronze ladder of tremendous height, reaching as far as heaven, and narrow too: people could climb it only one at a time. And on the sides of the ladder all sorts of iron weapons were attached. There were there swords, spears, hooks, executioners’ swords

88 Habermehl,

Perpetua, 74–115. It would be worthwhile to compare the visions of Perpetua with other, later visions. For a very suggestive analysis of such a case, the visions of a young Dutchman in the early seventeenth century, see W. Frijhoff, Wegen van Evert Willemsz (Nijmegen, 1995). 90  See also V. Hunink, ‘“With the Taste of Something Sweet Still in my Mouth”: Perpetua’s Visions’, in B.J. Koet (ed.), Dreams as Divine Communication in Christianity: From Hermas to Aquinas (Leuven, 2012) 77–91. 89 

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(machaerae),91 and spikes, so that if anyone would climb up carelessly or not looking upwards, he would be torn and his flesh would adhere to the weapons. And beneath that ladder there lurked a serpent of wondrous size, which lay in ambush for those mounting and terrified them. Saturus then climbed up first, he who was the one who later had given himself up spontaneously on account of us (because he had instructed us): he had not been present when we were arrested. And he arrived at the top of the ladder and looked back and said to me: ‘Perpetua, I am awaiting you. But watch out that that serpent does not bite you.’ And I said: ‘It will not harm me, in the name of Jesus Christ.’ And under that ladder, as if afraid of me, the serpent slowly stuck its head out. And, using it as my first step, I trod on its head and went up. And I saw an immensely large garden, and in the middle a white-haired man sitting in shepherd’s garb, tall, milking sheep. And many thousands of people dressed in white garments stood around him. And he raised his head and looked at me and said to me: ‘It is good that you have come, my child’. And he called me and gave me about a mouthful of the cheese he was milking. And I took it with my cupped hands and ate it. And all the bystanders said: ‘Amen’. And at the sound of this word I woke up, while I still tasted something sweet.

Whatever one’s approach, surely any interpretation should start with the introduction to the vision. When her brother asks her to request a vision in order to discover whether she will be executed or released, she promises to do so, since me sciebam fabulari cum Domino (4.2). The self-confidence with which Per­ petua takes up her brother’s request is striking. Although such a request was not unusual, as the case of Hermas (Vis. 3.1.2, 4.1.3) illustrates, one cannot but read the laconic comment that follows with some surprise: et postulavi et ostensum est mihi hoc. We might have had our doubts about such a request. This young African woman clearly had not! In her vision, Perpetua first sees a bronze ladder of a ‘wondrous size’ (4.3), the same description that she applies to the serpent (4.4) and the Egyptian (10.8). The last two examples suggest that in the first case as well we should see the size as something frightening and not to be taken too lightly. The ladder is also narrow and covered with all kinds of weapons. What is its significance? For Miller ‘the ladder suggests that “beneath” the paternal position lurks a phallic figure of destruction’.92 However she then fails to analyse the significance of the instruments of torture attached to the ladder or the fact that Saturus has already ascended the same ladder. Habermehl compares the ladder as a connection between Diesseits and Jenseits with Jacob’s ladder in Genesis 28, but sees the instruments of torture as ‘Ausdruck ihrer (Perpetua’s) Zerrissenheit und Ausgeburten ihrer Angst’, the ladder as the symbol of the ‘Blutzeugnis, als den einen unmittelbaren Weg zu Gott’ and its narrowness as the symbol of the ‘Seltenheit und Schwierigkeit’ of this road to God.93 The problem with this 91  Given the context, machaera here means ‘executioner’s sword’ rather than the usually translated ‘dagger’, cf. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Scritti agiografici, 2.147 note  5. 92 Miller, Dreams, 176. 93 Habermehl, Perpetua, 77.

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psychological approach is that it is hard to see why Perpetua chose these particular symbols, the significance of which remains completely unexplained in contemporary society too. A different approach therefore looks more attractive. In Marianus, which, as we already noted (§  2), was heavily influenced by Perpetua, Marian relates that in a dream he saw ‘the towering front of a shining, high tribunal; in which, instead of the prefect, sat a judge of very handsome countenance. There was a scaffold (catasta) there, whose lofty platform was reached not merely by one but by many steps and was a great height to climb’. When Marian’ turn came to be executed, he ‘heard a loud, clear voice saying, “Bring up Marian!” So I started to climb the scaffold, when all of a sudden Cyprian appeared at the judge’s right hand. He stretched out his hand and lifted me up to a higher spot on the scaffold; then he smiled at me and said “Come and sit with me”’ (6.6–11, tr. Musurillo). Afterwards Marian joined the judge in his journey to his heaven-like palace (below: §  4.2).94 Here we have a vision in a similar situation of impending martyrdom. There are some important parallels, both positive and negative. To start with the latter, neither here nor in Perpetua is there any explicit reference to Jacob’s ladder. In fact, this ladder is much less important in African Acta martyrum than is often assumed. It is explicitly mentioned only in Montanus and Lucius (7.6), but even there its meaning is not elaborated.95 Instead, the ladder seems to have its origin in a different kind of staircase. What Marian sees is the series of steps leading up to the tribunal where the Roman judge customarily sat when he presided over the court cases against the Christians. This scaffold was also called gradus (Perpetua 6.2) and displayed weapons and instruments of torture for interrogation and execution.96 The presence of the weapons and the towering position of the Roman judge must have served to impress both the criminals and the local population. As this is the only place where we find this combination of instruments of torture, a (small) staircase and an elevated figure, the dreams of Perpetua and Marian seem to reflect, both in their different ways, this gradus, which they may have seen in reality before or will have been told about by their fellow Christians.97 In the case of Perpetua, the torture instruments also point to her im94 

For a more detailed discussion of this scene, see this volume, Chapter  27. Contra: Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Scritti agiografici, 1.231; S. Prete, ‘Il motivo onirico della “scala”. Note su alcuni Atti di martiri africani’, Augustinianum 19 (1979) 521–26; Dolbeau, ‘Passion des saints Lucius et Montanus’, 71; Habermehl, Perpetua, 76–7. 96  Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Scritti agiografici, 1.57 and 231, who compares Cyprian, Ad Donat. 10: hasta illic et gladius et carnifex praesto est, ungula effodiens eculeus etc. and De laude mart. 8: Quid…tam eximium adque sublime est quam inter tot instrumenta carnificum … cunctam fidei reservare virtutem? For the interrogation on the catasta, Franchi, Scritti agio­ grafici, 2.6, also compares Mart. Theodoti 6; Acta Phileae (Latin) 1. The latter passage, impo­ sito Filea super ambonem, is even more interesting than Franchi indicates, since ambon can mean both ‘ladder’ and ‘pulpit’ (LSJ s.v.) – in other words, it has exactly the same meanings as gradus. 97  Similarly, J. Amat, Songes et visions. L’au-delà dans la littérature tardive (Paris, 1985) 95 

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pending martyrdom. As she herself and her brother realised: passionem esse futuram (4.10). Why is the ladder narrow?98 In later Christianity the bridge to the other world is often (very) narrow,99 and the influence of Persian eschatology is likely in this respect.100 Yet such influence can hardly be expected here, and it seems better to think of Jesus’ words about the wide and narrow ways to destruction and life (Matthew 7.13–14). Cyprian likewise (Ep.  13.3.1) encourages Carthaginian confessors to persevere in angusto itinere laudis et gloriae. The serpent beneath the ladder derives from a different world and its appearance in Perpetua’s dream seems to have been the fruit of various influences. Perpetua’s words calcavi illi caput (6.7) clearly refer to the words of Genesis (3.15) in the African version of the Vetus Latina (2.68–9): ipsa (illa) tibi calcabit caput. The text was very popular in martyrological contexts, as the letters of Cyprian and the Passio Fructuosi demonstrate.101 These parallels prove that the serpent symbolises the Devil, the great opponent of the martyrs (§  2). This, then, should be our point of departure. The serpent’s size may well derive from Revelation,102 and the serpent itself reminds of Hermas (Vis. 4.1), where Hermas 72, albeit with insufficient attention to its place in the whole of the vision. Amat’s work is still useful, but she is too much inclined to combine all kinds of likely and unlikely interpretations. 98  For such ladders, see also L. Beirnaert, ‘Le symbolisme ascensionnel dans la liturgie et la mystique chrétiennes’, Eranos Jahrbuch 19 (1950) 41–63; L. Kretzenbacher, ‘“Himmels­lei­ ter” und “Heilige Stiege”. Bildgedanke und Kultmotiv zwischen Byzanz und dem Abendlande’, in Actes du Ier Congrès International des études balkaniques et sud-est européennes II (Sofia, 1966) 837–43; F. Graf, ‘The Bridge and the Ladder: Narrow Passages in Late Antique Visions’, in R.S. Boustan and A.Y. Reed (eds), Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions (Cambridge. 2004) 19–33. 99 See the studies by P. Dinzelbacher: Die Jenseitsbrücke im Mittelalter (Diss. Vienna, 1973); ‘Seelenbrücke und Brückenbau im mittelalterlichen England’, Numen 31 (1984) 242–87 (with H. Kleinschmidt), and ‘Il ponte come luogo sacro nella realtà e nell’immaginario’, in S. Boesch Gajano and L. Scaraffia (eds), Luoghi sacri e spazi della santità (Turin, 1990) 51–60; I.P. Culianu, Iter in silvis: saggi scelti sulla gnosi e altri studi (Messina, 1981) 129–140 (‘Pons subtilis. Storia e significato di un simbolo’). 100 Habermehl, Perpetua, 85 note  34, notes as parallel the Persian ‘Mythos von der Cinvat-Brücke’, which has turned up in the Dead Sea Scrolls, cf. M. Philonenko, ‘Le Pont de l’Abîme’, Cahiers Internationaux de Symbolisme 77–79 (1994) 181–6; F. García Martínez, Qumranica Minora, 2  vols (Leiden, 2007) 2.230. For the Persian bridge, see A. Tafazzoli, ‘Cinwad Puhl’, in E. Yarshater (ed.), Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol.  5 (Costa Mesa, 1992) 594 f. 101 Cyprian, Ep.  39.2.2: calcatus serpens et obtritus et victus est, 58.9.1: cum serpens calcari a nobis et obteri coeperit; Acta Fructuosi 7.2: diaboli caput calcaverunt; Prudentius, Perist. 14.112–3: haec calcat Agnes ac pede proterit stans et draconis calce premens caput, cf. A.-M. Palmer, Prudentius on the Martyrs (Oxford, 1989) 252. For these texts and the iconography of the motif, see also Lact. Mort. Pers. 5; F.J. Dölger, Antike und Christentum 3 (Münster, 1932) 177–88, 283–4; K.M. Dunbabin, ‘Inbide calco te … Trampling upon the Envious’, in Tesserae. Festschrift für Josef Engemann = JAC Erg. 19 (Münster, 1991) 26–35. 102  R. Petraglio, ‘Des influences de l’Apocalypse dans la Passio Perpetuae 11–13’, in R. Petraglio et al. (eds), L’Apocalypse de Jean. Traditions exégétiques et iconographiques. IIIe -XIIIe siècles (Geneva, 1979) 15–29; A.P. Orbán, ‘The Afterlife in the Visions of the Passio SS. Perpetuae et Felicitatis’, in A.A.R. Bastiaensen et al. (eds), Fructus Centesimus. Mélanges offerts

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also meets an enormous snake-like monster that he can pass by unharmed. It seems important to observe that both Hermas and Revelation were popular in the group of Perpetua.103 Apparently, the charged atmosphere of the time was reflected in the popularity of those books in which both persecution and direct contact with God via visions played an important role. Perpetua saw that Saturus preceded her on the ladder and encouraged her to follow him. Clearly, there was a close relationship with her teacher, since Perpetua in turn accompanied Saturus in his vision (11.4, 12.7). Cyprian’s letters show that it was considered a special honour among the Christians to be the first of a group of martyrs.104 Perpetua will have naturally assumed that her teacher, too, would lead the way for their group, even though he had not yet been arrested (4.5). After her ascent, Perpetua did not return to earth: the ladder was a one-way ‘stairway to Paradise’, as was the case in the vision of Marian; Saturus’ vision also shows that he evidently expected to ascend straight to heaven after his martyrdom (11.2). And indeed, this view of an immediate ascent to heaven was widely shared by martyrs and sustained them in their final moments. To give two more examples: Polycarp, when tied to the stake, prayed: ‘May I be received this day among them (the martyrs) before your face as a rich and acceptable sacrifice’ (Polycarp 14.2), and in AD 180 Nartzalus, one of the martyrs from the small North-African town of Scillium, said to the proconsul Saturninus: ‘Today we are martyrs in heaven. Thanks be to God’ (Passio Scill. 15).105 In the case of Marian, we have a slightly different view, which was also common, namely that the martyr would ascend immediately and sit on the judgment tribunal with Christ.106 The first part of her martyrdom, then, clearly reflects ideas and realities of Christian martyrdom: the struggle against the Devil, the imminent torture and the immediate ascent to heaven. Yet martyrdom was not Perpetua’s only preoccupation. Her vision continues with a second part that focuses on God as the Good Shepherd. Having arrived à G.J.M. Bartelink (Steenbrugge and Dordrecht, 1989) 269–77; T.J. Heffernan, ‘History becomes Heilsgeschichte: the Principle of the Paradigm in the Early Christian Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis’, in U. Goebel and D. Lee (eds), Interpreting Texts from the Middle Ages (Lewiston, 1994) 119–38; Habermehl, Perpetua, 91–93; A. Merkt, ‘Gewaltverarbeitung und Konfliktbewältigung im Medium des Visionsberichtes: Die Passio Perpetuae und die Apokalypse des Johannes’, in J. Verheyden et al. (eds), Ancient Christian Interpretations of “Violent Texts” in the Apocalypse (Göttingen, 2011) 63–93. 103 For Hermas, see Habermehl, Perpetua, 93–96. 104 Cyprian, Ep.  6 .4, 28.1.1–2, 39.2.1, 77.2.2, 78.1.2. 105  For more examples, see J.N. Bremmer, The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife (London and New York, 2002) 58; add Cyprian, Ep.  31.3, 58.3.1 and Ad Fort. praef. 4, 13. 106 Hermas, Vis. 3.1.9; Tertullian, Ad martyras 2.4; Hippolytus, Commentary on Daniel 2.37.4; Cyprian, Ep.  6 .2.1, 12.2.1, 15.3, 31.3, Ad Fort. 13; Eusebius, HE 6.42.5; K. Berger, Die Auferstehung des Propheten und die Erhöhung des Menschensohnes (Göttingen, 1976) 374 note  489.

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at the top of the ladder, Perpetua saw ‘an immense garden’. This picture of heaven is also found in other African visions. Saturus entered ‘a great open space, which looked like a park, with roses as high as trees and all kinds of flowers. The trees were as high as cypresses and their leaves were constantly falling’ (11.5– 6),107 and Montanus also arrived at a campum immensum (11.2). This size matches the presence of many people in heaven: Perpetua sees ‘many thousands of people’ in the garden (4.8), and Saturus ‘many of our brethren’ (13.8). The idea frequently recurs in the early Christian epitaphs where the dead are said to have joined the beati, iusti, electi and sancti.108 In the garden there was a ‘white-haired man (hominem canum), sitting in shepherd’s garb, tall, milking sheep’.109 For the white hair, Bastiaensen (ad loc.) refers to Revelation 1.14 where the voice that spoke to John is said to belong to a man whose ‘head and his hairs were white like wool’, but argues that canus does not mean ‘old’ in Perpetua. This is unlikely. Christ (like the Son of man: 1.13) is clearly described as an old man in this verse in Revelation, and Saturus’ description of God as quasi hominem canum, niveos habentem capillos et vultu iuvenili (12.3) also points to an aged man, whose youthful face shows that at the same time he also represents Christ, as will be the case in Perpetua’s vision. Yet the old man in Revelation is not depicted as a shepherd. As in all three cases we have to do with a vision, it seems better to see this aged figure as deriving from a topos in visions: the ‘Offenbarungsmittler’ is regularly described as an old man or old woman.110 When Perpetua entered heaven, God/Christ greeeted her with the words: ‘It is good that you have come, my child (teknon)’. Although a greeting was a standard element of visions and regularly attested in Hermas,111 the tone of this greeting is surprisingly affectionate. As an insightful study has noted, speakers other than parents who use teknon ‘are usually in some sense in loco parentis for the addressees: tutors, old nurses, friends of their parents etc. The interaction in which the address is embedded is almost always a friendly one’. Moreover, ‘when used by people other than parents it is generally addressed to adults’.112 The analysis fits our text well, since the address is one more confirmation of the close relationship between Perpetua and Christ/God. The Greek form is some107  The constant falling (cadebant) of the leaves is puzzling and seemingly without parallel. F. Dolbeau, RÉAug 37 (1987) 315 proposes candebant; note also the discussion by V. Saxer, Bible et hagiographie (Bern, 1986) 92–4. 108  G. Sanders, Licht en duisternis in de Christelijke grafschriften, 2  vols (Brussels, 1965) 2.661–8. 109  For God/Christ as Good Shepherd, see J. Engeman, ‘Hirt’, in RAC 15 (1991) 577–607. 110 Berger, Auferstehung, 413 note   589; U. Körtner and M. Leutzsch, Papiasfragmente. Hirt des Hermas (Darmstadt, 1998) 385 (by Leutzsch). 111 Hermas, Vis. 1.2.2, 4.2.2, 5.1; E. Peterson, Frühkirche, Judentum und Gnosis (Freiburg, 1959) 257–58 (with many more examples). 112  E. Dickey, Greek Forms of Address: from Herodotus to Lucian (Oxford, 1996) 68 f.

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what surprising, but Perpetua herself could speak Greek and one of her own brothers had a Greek name, Dinocrates (below), as did several Christians in her environment, such as Saturus and Aspasius.113 It could well have been a word picked up from Greek-speaking Christians . The close relationship between Perpetua and Christ, to which teknon is one more testimony, was not unusual amongst martyrs. In fact, several passages demonstrate a close bond between the early martyrs and their Saviour. For example, when the Roman governor asked Polycarp to curse Christ, he answered: ‘For eighty-six years I have been his slave (cf. below) and he has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme against my king and saviour?’ (Polycarp 9.3); Carpus cried out when the fire was set beneath his cross ‘Lord Jesus Christ, you know that we suffer this for your name’s sake (Carpus [Latin version] 5), and Maximillian has ‘the sign of Christ’ and is therefore unable to accept ‘the seal of the world’ (Maximilian 2.4). These and similar examples demonstrate that a personal relationship with Christ was an important factor in the lives of the early Christians.114 As Perpetua relates, Christ gave her a mouthful of the cheese he was milking, which she took with cupped hands and ate. As has regularly been seen, the scene seems to refer to the post-baptismal rites. After baptism, the newly initiated received a mixture of milk and honey.115 Was this partly solid, partly fluid mixture perhaps translated into (fresh) cheese in the vision? We cannot be completely sure,116 but the cupped hands clearly point to the Eucharist that immediately followed upon the mixture of milk and honey.117 Now in Carthage the glass chalice of the Eucharist was ornamented with a picture of God/Christ as the Good Shepherd.118 It seems therefore likely that the prominence of the Good Shepherd in the ‘Eucharistic’ part of Perpetua’s vision was ‘triggered’ by this picture. After receiving the Eucharist the faithful customarily responded with ‘Amen’.119 This is also how Perpetua’s vision ends, even though she herself did 113  Den Boeft and Bremmer, ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae II’, 391–2; Bastiaensen, ‘Heeft Perpetua haar dagboek in het Latijn of in het Grieks geschreven?’; Shaw, ‘Passion of Perpetua’, 12 is too sceptical in this respect and neglects 13.4: coepit Perpetua Graece cum illis loqui. 114  For a fuller discussion, see this volume, Chapter  1.1. 115 Tertullian, De corona 3.3 (lactis et mellis concordiam praegustamus), Adversus Marcionem 1.14.3, Scorpiace 1.12; Hippolytus, Traditio apostolica 21; still useful, H. Usener, Kleine Schriften IV (Leipzig and Berlin, 1910) 398–417 (‘Milch und Honig’). 116  E. Zocca, ‘Un passo controverso della Passio Perpetuae, IV.9: “de caseo quod mulgebat dedit mihi quasi bucellam”,’ SMSR 50 (1984) 147–54 is no help either. 117 For the (cupped) hands, see Tertullian, De idololatria 7: manus admovere corpori Domini; Cyprian, Ep.  58.9.2, De lapsis 15; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catecheses mystagogicae 5.21; Chrysostomus, Hom. 47 (PG 63, 898); Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Scritti agiografici, 1.236 note  3. 118 Tertullian, De pudicitia 7.1, 10.12: pastor, quem in calice depingis; V. Buchheit, ‘Tertullian und die Anfänge der christlichen Kunst’, Römische Quartalschrift 69 (1974) 133–42; Amat, Songes, 120. 119 Justin, I Apol. 65; Tertullian, De spectaculis 25; Hippolytus, Traditio apostolica 21; Eusebius, HE 7.9.4; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catecheses mystagogicae 5.21; Ambrosius, De sacramen-

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not join in. The importance of the Eucharist in the vision as a whole appears from the fact that when Perpetua woke up, she still felt the taste of something sweet in her mouth, a memory of the sweetness of the milk and cheese.120 When we now look back at the first vision, it seems safe to say that it had a retrospective and prospective function. In Perpetua’s own interpretation, the message of the vision was all too clear: ‘we realised that there would be a martyrdom and we stopped having hope in this life’ (4.10). However, just as important, if not more, was the memory of her first communion. Why would that have been the case and when did that first communion take place? The last question is perhaps easier to answer. In her diary Perpetua mentions that her group was baptised during the few days before she was transferred to a proper prison (3.5). We are not told who performed the ritual, but in normal circumstances it was the bishop who baptised catechumens. According to Tertullian (De baptismo 17) presbyters and deacons were also permitted to do so, albeit not without the bishop’s permission; even laymen (Tertullian did not allow women to baptise)121 could do it in necessitatibus. As the benedicti diaconi Tertius and Pomponius visited the prisoners regularly (3.7), just as deacons visited prisoners in Cyprian’s time,122 it seems not unreasonable to suppose that one of them had baptised the young catechumens. We may suspect that it was probably Pomponius, since he plays a role in Perpetua’s fourth vision (§  4.3). It was only after their baptism that newly initiated received the Eucharist.123 Perpetua’s first Eucharist, then, will have taken place only a few days before her first vision, and its reflection in her vision should therefore not surprise us.

4.2 Perpetua and her brother Dinocrates After Hilarianus had condemned Perpetua to death, she continued: Some days later when we were all at prayer, suddenly my voice let slip a word and I said aloud ‘Dinocrates’. And I was surprised, since he had never entered my mind until that moment, and I felt pained when I recalled his fate. And I immediately recognised that I was worthy and even obliged to pray for him. And I much prayed for him and sighed deeply to the Lord. Without delay I had a dream that very night. I saw Dinocrates leaving a dark place, where there were quite a few other persons. He was very hot and thirsty, dirty looking and pale. And on his face was the wound he had when he died. This Dinocrates had been my brother according to the flesh, who at the tis 4.25; Augustine, Sermo 227 (PL 38.1099–1101); Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Scritti agiografici, 1.236 note  4. 120  For their sweetness, see perhaps Celsus, Med. 4.16.1.8: Dulcia omnia inimica sunt, item lac et caseus. 121 Tertullian, De baptismo 17, De virginibus velandis 9, De praescriptione haereticorum 41. 122 Cyprian, Ep.  15.1.2, De lapsis 26, De bono patientiae 14; note also the subdeacon in Montanus and Lucius 9.2. 123 Justin, 1Apol. 65.1; Hippolytus, Traditio apostolica 22; Cyprian, Ep.  63.8.

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age of seven had died of cancer of the face in such a horrible manner that his death had been a source of loathing to everyone. For him, then, I had prayed. And between me and him there was a great distance so that we both could not reach each other. Next there was in that place where Dinocrates was a basin full of water with a rim higher than the child’s height. And Dinocrates stretched himself in order to drink. I felt pained that although the basin contained water, yet Dinocrates could not drink because of the height of the rim. And I woke up and I recognised that my brother was suffering, but I was confident that I could help him in his trouble (7.1–9).

Perpetua prayed for her brother every day until her group was transferred to the military prison. She prayed ‘with tears and sighs’ that her prayer would be granted. As soon as she was transferred and kept in chains (in nervo) in her new prison, she had another vision: I saw that place that I had seen before and Dinocrates with a clean body, well dressed and healthy. And where the wound was, I saw a scar; and the basin that I had seen before now had its rim lowered to the level of the boy’s waist. And water incessantly flowed from it. And above the rim there was a golden cup (fiala) full of water. And Dinocrates drew close and drank from it, yet that dish did not run short. And when he was satisfied he began to play with the water, as children do, full of happiness. And I woke up. Then I realised that he was liberated from his penalty (8).

Neither Habermehl nor Miller presents a detailed analysis of these two visions,124 although the latter takes seriously psychoanalytic suggestions that the refreshed Dinocrates ‘represents Perpetua’s coming to terms with inner conflict that had threatened her resolve’.125 Yet no such conflict is anywhere attested in her diary. Habermehl has some good remarks on the theological background of the visions, but is too inclined to a psychological interpretation in which he even considers seeing the distance between Dinocrates and Perpetua as symbolic of her father. Moreover, he sees the happy result as a reflection of Perpetua’s salvation from ‘der irdischen Drangsal’. The interpretation by Amat is more satisfactory, since she pays attention to the individual motifs of the visions. However, she is too much inclined to see Dinocrates’ abode as a kind of purgatory and, as Trumbower does,126 neglects the later visions inspired by Perpetua. As none of these interpretations is fully satisfactory or detailed enough, we will take a fresh look at the visions. The first vision takes place a few days after Perpetua had heard that she would have to die for her faith – a sentence that made the future martyrs hilares (§  3). 124 Habermehl,

Perpetua, 78–84; Miller, Dreams, 158–61.

125 Miller, Dreams 161 note  63, following M.L. von Franz, The Passion of Perpetua (Irving,

1979; originally published in German in 1951); E.R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety (Cambridge, 1965) 51 and Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages, 12. 126 Amat, Songes, 128–31; J. Trumbower, Rescue for the Dead. The Posthumous Salvation of Non-Christians in Early Christianity (New York, 2001) 76–90, 134–6 (Augustine on Dinocrates). For mistaken attempts to see in the Dinocrates’ episode a kind of pre-purgatory, see Bremmer, Rise and Fall, 65 f.

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This is the context in which we should consider the two visions. Perpetua is now certain that her death is imminent and in this situation it is plausible that she should think of her dead brother. She realised immediately that she was now entitled to pray for him: it would seem that he had died without being baptised.127 The belief that martyrs and confessores could intercede for the deceased was indeed widespread.128 It becomes visible first in the famous Letter of the congregations of Lyons and Vienne, but it was also well established in Carthage, as Tertullian and Cyprian abundantly attest.129 The special interest of our passage is that Perpetua interceded for somebody who had not died as a Christian. Such deaths may have been not uncommon in the first centuries and will have caused much concern in families that came to Christianity later. An interesting parallel of intercession for the non-Christian dead is Thecla’s prayer for the late daughter Falconilla of Queen Tryphaena on the latter’s request (APTheclae 29).130 Now Tertullian tells us that the Acts of Paul were read in Carthage by Christian women who, inspired by this ‘novel’, had requested the right to baptise and to instruct catechumens (De baptismo 17.5, written between AD 198 and 206);131 Perpetua was perhaps sufficiently fluent in Greek (§  4.1) to have read these Acts, even if she had not already heard about Thecla from other women. Can it be that Perpetua had modelled herself on this remarkably independent, Christian, young woman? Influence from the ‘novel’ on Perpetua’s behaviour cannot be proved but is not impossible. Such intercessions for deceased pagans seem to have been not uncommon. We may also note that Cyprian (Ep.  21) mentions a certain Celerinus who writes to the confessor Lucianus for intercession on behalf of his sister who died after she had lapsed.132 There has been a lot of debate about the place where Dinocrates is. It is certainly not purgatory and it cannot be hell either, since the brother is still in the 127 

So also Amat, Songes, 129. T.J. Kraus, ‘Fürbitte für die Toten im frühen Christentum: “Ich werde … den gewähren, den sie aus der Strafe erbitten”’, in H. Klein et al. (eds), Das Gebet im Neuen Testament (Tübingen, 2009) 355–96; F.J. Dölger, ‘Antike Parallelen zum leidenden Dinocrates in der Passio Perpetuae’, Antike und Christentum 2 (1930) 1–40 at 16 unconvincingly connects this belief with pagan eschatology. 129 Tertullian, Ad martyras 1.6, De pudicitia 22, Scorpiace 10.8; Cyprian, Ep.  15.1.2, 21.2.1 and 3.2, 27.1.1; Eusebius, HE 5.1.45, 5.2.5, 5.18.6–7, 6.5.6; E. Dassmann, Sündenvergebung durch Taufe, Busse und Martyrerfürbitte in den Zeugnissen frühchristlicher Frömmigkeit und Kunst (Münster, 1973) 153–82. 130  For a detailed discussion, see Trumbower, Rescue for the Dead, 56–75; this volume, Chapter  10.2. Unfortunately, Dassmann, Sündenvergebung, 165 mistakes Tryphaena for Falconilla and insufficiently distinguishes between early and late texts. For another early example, note Eus. HE 6.5.6. 131 Tertullian, De baptismo 17.5. For this passage, see W. Rordorf, Lex orandi. Lex credendi (Neuchâtel and Fribourg, 1993) 475–84; A. Hilhorst, ‘Tertullian on the Acts of Paul’, in J.N. Bremmer (ed.), The Apocryphal Acts of Paul (Kampen, 1996) 150–63. 132  For Celerinus and his sisters, see Y. Duval, ‘Celerinus et les siens d’après la correspondance de Cyprien’, RÉAug 47 (2001) 33–62 at 52–9. 128 

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same place after his healing. Yet there is a certain suggestion that he dwells in a kind of hell, since the great distance between him and Perpetua almost certainly derives from the Lucan episode about the rich man and the beggar Lazarus (16.24–6), where the rich man is in an extremely hot underworld; Tertullian also quotes this passage in connection with the underworld.133 However, hell did not yet play the same prominent role in the mental world of the early Christians as it did in medieval times.134 Given this lack of prominence and the absence of an authoritative description, it is understandable that Perpetua fills in the details of Dinocrates’ ‘hell’ with aspects from her own prison (dark, crowded, hot and dirty): one more indication of the impact the shocking conditions of the prison must have made on this elite young woman. As she mentions herself, she had never experienced ‘such darkness’ (3.5); the heat and crowd had been stifling (3.6), and the martyr Guddenis, who died in Carthage during the same persecution, but on 27 June, was carceris etiam squalore diutissime afflicta;135 the heat, darkness and crowdedness of the Carthage prison are also mentioned by Tertullian and in the letters of Cyprian.136 Dinocrates’ fate may have depended on ancient beliefs, as prematurely deceased children were thought to receive a separate place in the underworld.137 This is the more likely, since Dinocrates appears to Perpetua exactly as he was at the moment of his death: a belief that is already attested in Homer and evidently had survived into Perpetua’s time.138 Moreover, pallor was the typical condition of shades in Latin literature, as is abundantly attested in Lucretius, Vergil and Apuleius.139 On the other hand, an analysis of nearly fifty-five thousand funerary stones has demonstrated that the early Christians were much more likely than their pagan contemporaries to erect monuments to children.140 Perpetua’s vision, then, does not fully fit either the old beliefs or the new faith. Apparently, we have here the case of a newly converted Christian trying to connect her new faith with received pagan eschatological notions. 133 Tertullian,

De anima 9.8, De idololatria 13.4. See, with bibliography, Bremmer, Rise and Fall, 63–4; add G.P. Luttikhuizen, ‘De bijbelse en apocriefe voorgeschiedenis van de middeleeuwse hel’, Groniek 25 (1992) 11–19. 135 Quentin, Martyrologes, 174; Montanus and Lucius 17.1: carceris sordibus. 136 Tertullian, Apologeticum 44.3; Cyprian, Ep.  2 2.2.1. 137  Dölger, ‘Antike Parallelen’, 31–7; L.F. Pizzolato, Morir giovani. Il pensiero antico di fronte allo scandalo della morte prematura (Milan, 1996); S.I. Johnston, Restless Dead (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1999) passim. 138  Norden and Horsfall on Verg. Aen. 6.446, 450, 494–5; Dölger, ‘Antike Parallelen’, 28– 31. 139  Lucretius 1.454–5, 5.627–8, 7.129–30; Veig. Aen. 4.26 with Pease ad loc.; Apuleius, Met. 8.8, 10.10. 140  B. Shaw, ‘The Cultural Meaning of Death: Age and Gender in the Roman Family’, in D. Kertzer and R. Saller (eds), The Family in Italy (New Haven and London, 1991) 66–90. For Roman views, see also H. Sigismund Nielsen, ‘Interpreting Epithets in Roman Epitaphs’, in Rawson and Weaver, The Roman Family, 169–204 at 198–202. 134 

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Next Perpetua saw her brother besides a piscina from which he could not drink because of its height. It is only in the third vision, after she saw her brother completely recovered and well-dressed, that the rim of the basin was lowered and that he could drink from a fiala that never ran dry. These visions are not so easy to explain, but they seem to contain two different themes: the role of the basin and the golden fiala. Regarding the first motif, we note that access to the basin is initially denied, but subsequently the basin is, rather surprisingly, lowered and incessantly produces water;141 however, Dinocrates does not drink from it. Now there is only one object that combines a relatively low basin with a never ending stream of water: the early Christian baptistery, which was actually called a piscina.142 As Klauser noted, in the West early baptismal fonts were no more than 60 to 70 centimetres high, and the frequent usage of the word fons points to the Christian preference for ‘living water’.143 Apparently, baptism had been unavailable to Perpetua’s brother during his life time. Given the attitude of Perpetua’s father, this could hardly have been otherwise. One should probably not think of a posthumous baptism, but nevertheless Dinocrates’ proximity to the font seems to be an important signifier of his belated salvation.144 The second motif is the golden fiala. The text does not provide any clue to its meaning, and we are only partially helped by the fact that it influenced two other African visions during the persecution of Valerian. In the case of the aforementioned vision of Marian in Marianus, the future martyr escorted the judge to his palace. In the centre of the area they crossed, there was a ‘hollow that abounded in fertilizing streams and the pure water of a crystal spring’. At the edge of the spring there was a fiala. Cyprian picked it up, filled it from the spring and drank from it. Then he filled it again and gave it to Marian, who gladly drank, said ‘Thank God’ and woke up from the sound of his own words (6.11–15). In Montanus and Lucius, a mother, Quartillosia, whose husband and son had just been martyred and who herself also soon would be a martyr, saw in a vision her martyred son coming to her prison. ‘He sat down at the rim of the wa141  Unlike Amat in her edition, I read: et aqua de ea trahebat sine cessatione instead of a­ quam…trahebat (8.2), following Bastiaensen (ad loc.) and Habermehl, Perpetua, 79 note  20. It would be strange if Dinocrates would have drunk twice in quick succession, especially if he had drunk so much the first time. The corruption has to be explained from the unusual intransitive meaning of trahebat (Bastiaensen ad loc.). 142  A. Blaise, Dictionnaire latin-français des auteurs chrétiens (Turnhout, 1962 2) s.v. 143 Th. Klauser, Gesammelte Arbeiten zur Liturgiegeschichte, Kirchengeschichte und christlichen Archäologie, ed. E. Dassmann = JAC Erg. 3 (Münster, 1974) 177–84 (19391); A. Nestori, ‘L’aqua nel fonte battesimale’, in Studi in memoria di Giuseppe Bovini, 2  vols (Ravenna, 1989) 2.419–27; S. Ristow, Frühchristliche Baptisterien = JAC Erg. 27 (Münster, 1998) 50–2. 144  For the baptismal interpretation, see also E. Corsini, ‘Proposte per una lettura della “Passio Perpetuae”’, in Forma futuri. Studi in onore del Cardinale Michele Pellegrino (Turin, 1975) 481–541 at 502–4.

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ter-trough and said: “God has seen your pain and tribulation”. And after him there entered a young man of remarkable size who carried two cups (fialas) full with milk in his hands’. He gave everybody to drink from these cups, but they never were empty. Hereafter, the window suddenly became bright and heaven became visible. Then the young man put down his two cups and said: ‘Look, you are satisfied and there is more: still a third cup will be left over for you’. And then he left (8). It would be wrong to expect that the two later visions simply replicated Perpetua’s visions.145 Although they clearly have been influenced by her, they have each appropriated her visions in their own ways.146 Yet they may help us to find a meaning in these texts which appear at first sight rather enigmatic.147 In Montanus and Lucius, the young man (an angel?) hands out cups of milk. This reminds of the milk of the Eucharist and thus of Perpetua’s first vision. This interpretation is supported by the fact that on the day after the vision the future martyrs received alimentum indeficiens instead of their daily ration of food from Lucian,148 a future bishop of Carthage.149 Given his importance, it is understandable that he did not come himself. Instead, Lucian had this food, clearly the Eucharist, delivered by the subdeacon Herennianus and the catechumen Januarius, velut per duas fialas, a clear reference to the two cups in Quartillosia’s vision (9.2). On the other hand, the young man’s promise that there is still a third cup left also seems to point forward to the impending martyrdom. In the case of Marianus’ vision the connection is much less clear. The text interprets the vision itself as a revelation by the divina dignatio in order to confirm his hope of salvation (ad fiduciam spei salutaris: 6.5) and Marianus’ vision is immediately followed by a report of a vision of James which is also interpreted as a manifestation of the divina dignatio that the martyr’s crown would be his (7.1). In other words, the context suggests a link between the cup and martyrdom.150 Now in a discussion of the penitent, Cyprian rhetorically asks: ‘How can we make them fit for the cup of martyrdom (ad martyrii poculum), if we do not first allow them the right of communion and admit them to drink, in the 145  Contra: Franchi de’ Cavalieri, La Passio ss. Mariani et Iacobi and Studi agiografici, 1.199–290. 146  V. Lomanto, ‘Rapporto fra la “Passio Perpetuae” e “Passiones” africane’, in Forma futuri, 566–86, who at 575–9 discusses the parallels between Perpetua and Montanus. 147  The often quoted interpretation of M. Meslin, ‘Vases sacrés et boissons d’éternité dans les visions des martyrs africains’, in J. Fontaine and Ch. Kannengiesser (eds), Epektasis. Mélanges … Daniélou (Paris, 1972) 139–53 neglects this context and is marred by a Jungian approach. 148  For the expression alimentum indeficiens, see also P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Note agio­ grafiche (Rome, 1909) 25–28. 149  For his succession, see Montanus and Lucius 23.4; Optatus, Contra Parmenianum donatistam 1.19. 150  See also Mark 10.38–9.

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Church, the cup of the Lord?’151 Clearly, in the thought of Cyprian there was a close connection between martyrdom and Eucharist,152 a connection perhaps inspired by the cup of Jesus’ last Supper and Gethsemane (Matthew 26.27, 42; Mark 14.23, 36; Luke 22.20, 42). Given the presence of Cyprian in Marianus’ and Montanus’ visions,153 it seems safe to indeed interpret the cup in their visions as a symbol of martyrdom and salvation, but also of the Eucharist – at least in the case of Montanus. When we return to Perpetua we must be careful not to let our reading of her vision be influenced by Cyprian’s theological arguments. Perpetua was not a systematic theologian like the Carthaginian bishop. Yet in her first vision there also is a close connection between the Eucharist and her impending martyrdom. As baptism and Eucharist were closely connected (§  4.1), it seems not impossible that Perpetua had projected her own preoccupations on to her little brother, and that the fiala in her vision points to Eucharist and salvation, even though this is not explicitly spelled out. Her thoughts of her brother, then, were not just passing thoughts of a deceased sibling, but thoughts also suffused with her own preoccupations and determined by her impending martyrdom.

4.3 The fight against the Egyptian The day before her death Perpetua had her last vision: Pomponius the deacon arrived at the gate of the prison and knocked urgently. And I went out to him and opened it for him. He was dressed in an unbelted white tunic, wearing elaborate sandals. And he said to me: ‘Perpetua, we expect you: come!’ And he took my hand and we walked over rough and winding paths. With some effort we reached the amphitheatre, out of breath. And he led me into the centre of the arena and said to me: ‘Do not be afraid. I am here with you and share your toil’. And he left. And I saw an enormous crowd looking in amazement. And as I knew that I was condemned to fight with wild beasts, I wondered why the beasts had not been let loose on me. And out against me came an Egyptian, of vicious appearance, with his seconds, to fight with me. There also came some handsome young men, my seconds and supporters. And I was stripped naked and became male. And my seconds began to rub me with oil, as they do for a contest. And on the other side I saw that Egyptian rolling himself in the dust. And a man of marvellous stature came forward, such that he rose above the vault of the amphitheatre. He was dressed in an unbelted tunic having purple between two stripes in the middle of his chest, with patterned sandals made of gold and silver. And like an organiser of games he carried a wand and a green branch laden with golden apples.

151 Cyprian, Ep.   57.2.2; the expression poculum martyrii also occurs in Ep.  37.2.2. Elsewhere he speaks of poculum salutare (Ep.  28.1.2) and calix salutis (Ep.  76.4.2); see also the parallels collected by Franchi, Scritti agiografici, 2.244. 152  For this connection, which is also stressed in Ep.  58.9.2, see M. Pellegrino, Ricerche patristiche, 2  vols (Turin, 1982) 1.525–40 (‘Eucaristia e martirio in San Cipriano’, 19591). 153  Cyprian is mentioned in Marianus 6.9, 14 and Montanus and Lucius 11.2, 13.1, 21.3.

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And he asked for silence and said: ‘This Egyptian, if he defeats her, will kill her with the sword, but if she defeats him, she will receive that branch’. And he withdrew. And we drew close to one another and let our fists fly. He wanted to get hold of my feet, but I kicked him in the face with my heels. And I was lifted up into the air and started to kick him as if I was not touching ground. But when I saw there was a lull, I locked my hands by linking my fingers together and thus I caught hold of his head. And he fell on his face and I stepped on his head. The crowd began to shout and my assistants to sing psalms. And I went up to the organiser and accepted the branch. And he kissed me and said to me: ‘Daughter, peace be with you’. And I went triumphantly to the Gate of Life. And I awoke. And I understood that I would not fight against wild beasts but the Devil, yet I knew that I would be victorious (10).

This is an intriguing vision, but the main themes are perhaps easier to decode than in Perpetua’s earlier visions. This is in particular due to Louis Robert who in a fascinating study argued that the vision reflects a recent performance of the Pythian Games in Carthage, probably in the winter of AD 202–203.154 This would not be surprising. Christians often depicted their martyrdom as an athletic contest and the martyrs as God’s athletes. In this respect Perpetua follows the conventions of her time.155 Although I accept Robert’s main argument, there are two problems with his analysis. First, Robert accepts the Greek text as the original of Perpetua’s diary, since it is so much more accurate in its agonistic details. However, there are a number of arguments against the priority of the Greek text (§  2) and we cannot accept all features of the Greek translation as being present in the original text. Moreover, Robert reads the vision as an accurate report by an expert on Greek games instead of as the vision of a young woman who may have heard or seen the spectacle, but who can hardly be considered an authority on the Pythian Games. Our point of departure must be the Latin text and we must be prepared to accept that Perpetua can be wrong in details or terminology. Secondly, Robert’s concentration on the traditional aspects of the Games means that he somewhat underestimates the Christian content of her vision. As Perpetua’s three earlier visions are suffused with Christian images and thoughts, we must be willing to expect these in this vision too. So, keeping these caveats in mind, let us now look at the details. Perpetua starts by relating that she was fetched by Pomponius, one of the deacons who had visited her regularly in prison (3.7) and who perhaps had even baptised her (§  4.1); he wore elegant sandals (multiplices galliculas)156 as well as an unbelted white tunica, and his words, ‘We expect you, come!’, suggest a certain impatience. Pomponius guided Perpetua over difficult terrain to the amphitheatre; the route is not easy and they are out of breath by the time they arrive. The route seems to be analogous to the dangerous staircase in her first vision: 154 

For the date, see Den Boeft and Bremmer, ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae II’, 391. Bible et hagiographie, 212–14. 156  For the explanation, see the excellent discussion by Franchi, Scritti agiografici, 1.66–69. 155 Saxer,

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the road to heaven is never easy.157 The amphiteatre was the place in which she would become a martyr the following day and therefore, naturally, played a role in her vision. Some scholars, focussing on the phrase munere castrensi (7.9), have thought that this amphiteatre was adjacent to the military camp, but none of our texts mentions a separate amphiteatre.158 Moreover, the presence of Hilarianus (18.8) and the expensive animals, such as the leopard and the bear (19.3–4), in her final contest strongly suggest the city amphiteatre, which was largely dismantled in the Middle Ages but must have been an impressive building after various reconstructions in the second century AD.159 Having arrived at the amphitheatre, Pomponius led Perpetua into the middle of the arena and left her after some encouraging words. His promise that he would be toiling with her – conlaboro tecum is an exclusively Christian term160 – likens him, to a certain extent, to Christ or God himself, and this similarity is strengthened by the fact that he wears the same shoes and beltless tunica as the agônothetês (below).161 Louis Robert has argued that Pomponius’ role reflects that of the eisagôgos/-eus, the (often rather young) and splendidly dressed dignitary who accompanied the participants of games to the place of contest.162 His observations immediately illustrate the problems with his approach. It is true that the colour white of Pomponius’ tunica was normal for Greek and Roman festivals,163 as it was for people of distinction in the Christian tradition, especially those in heaven, be they human (12.1) or angels (4.8).164 However, the lack of a belt is rather surprising since, as Horace had already noted, discincta tunica fugiendum est (S.  1.2.132). Franchi considers the absence of a belt an ethnographic detail, as in literature Africans are often described as not wearing belts.165 Yet it is unlikely that Perpetua would have mentioned the detail, if this was still customary. The reverse rather seems to be the case. His clothing is distinctive and singles Pom-

157 Amat, Songes, 77 note  181 compares the rough road in Hermas, Vis. 1.1.3. For the image, see L. Kretzenbacher, Bilder und Legenden (Klagenfurt, 1971) 16–42 (‘Der schwierige Weg nach oben’); P. Courcelle, Connais-toi toi-même de Socrate à Saint Bernard, 3  vols (Paris, 1974–75) 3.637–45. 158  See also Franchi, Scritti agiografici, 1.79–80. 159  For the amphitheatre, see D.L. Bomgardner, The Story of the Roman Amphitheatre (London and New York, 2000) 128–46; J. Patrick, ‘On the Lost Circus of Aelia Capitolina’, SCI 21 (2002) 173–88 at 188. 160  C. Mohrmann, Études sur le latin des chrétiens, 4  vols (Rome, 1961–77) 2.238–39, 3.61; Bastiaensen ad loc. 161  Thus, persuasively, Corsini, ‘Proposte per una lettura’, 505; Amat, Passion, 223 162  Robert, ‘Une vision’, 274 f. 163  Robert, ‘Une vision’, 273 f. 164  For many examples, see Körtner and Leutzsch, Papiasfragmente, 386 note  71 and 480 note  202 (by Leutzsch). 165 Franchi, Scritti agiografici, 1.64 compares Verg. Aen. 8.724 with Servius ad loc.; Liv. 35.11; Sil. Ital. 2.56, 3.235–6; Aus. Grat. act. 14.

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ponius out from normal pagan festive clothing.166 The angel in James’ vision in Marianus (7.3) is likewise dressed in an unbelted tunica, just like people praying in early Christian iconography.167 As a deacon, Pomponius would also have been older than the average eisagôgos/-eus, who, moreover, would not have encouraged the participants in this way. In other words, this scene in the vision is a combination of Perpetua’s prison experience (the prominence of Pomponius), memories of a recent staging of the Pythian Games, and her Christian faith. To select only one factor would be to misinterpret her vision. In the arena Perpetua looks round for the wild animals, to which she had been condemned by Hilarianus (6.6).168 Then, abruptly, an Egyptian, ‘of horrible appearance’ (foedus specie), appears with his assistants. Assistants also appear for Perpetua – naturally ‘attractive ones’ (decori). Louis Robert has asked whether the Egyptian would have been a wrestler or a pancratiast.169 The latter possibility is clearly the more likely one, since Perpetua had to be victorious in the most dangerous fight imaginable, just as she could ascend to heaven only via a very dangerous ladder.170 It would have been out of character to settle for less. Given that martyrdom was often seen as a battle against the Devil (§  3), it is not surprising that Perpetua understood that her real opponent in the contest would be the Devil himself (contra diabolum pugnaturam esse: 10.14). In principle, there would have been nothing strange in an Egyptian as Perpetua’s opponent, since Egyptians were the athletes par excellence of the Roman Empire.171 However, as the Devil was frequently represented as black, the choice of an Egyptian may also have been dictated by the fact that Egyptians were not uncommonly of a dark countenance, even if of course not all Egyptians were pitch-black.172 Both opponents now prepared for their fight. Perpetua’s clothes were stripped off and she changed into a man. The significance of this motif is not immediately clear,173 but it may well have had something to do with her sense of chastity, ta.

166 

Contra: Robert, ‘Une vision’, 274, who does not comment on the problem of the discinc-

167 Franchi,

Scritti agiografici, 1.65 note  4. the damnatio ad bestias on African mosaics and lamps, see J.W. Salomonson, Voluptatem spectandi non perdat sed mutet. Observations sur l’iconographie du martyre en Afrique romaine (Amsterdam, 1979) 42–50; M. Blanchard-Lemée et al., Mosaics of Roman Africa, tr. K.D. Whitehead (London, 1996) 215–7; A. van den Hoek and J. Hermann, Jr., Pottery, Pavements, and Paradise (Leiden, 2013) 94–101 (with very interesting illustrations). 169  L. Robert, A travers l’Asie Mineure (Paris, 1980) 430. 170 Eus. MP 11.19 compares the martyr Porphyrius also with a pancratiast; L. Robert, Hellenica 2 (1946) 140 f. For the pankration, see G. Doblhofer and P. Mauritsch, Pankration: Texte, Übersetzungen, Kommentar (Vienna, 1996). 171 Robert, A travers l’Asie Mineure, 429–30; ‘Une vision’, 272–3, and Opera Minora Selecta VI (Amsterdam, 1989) 372 f. 172  For the Devil and the (black) colour of the Egyptians, see this volume, Chapter  9, notes 28–29. 173  For an excellent discussion, see C. Williams, ‘Perpetua’s Gender. A Latinist Reads the Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis’, in Bremmer and Formisano, Perpetua’s Passions, 54–77. For 168  For

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which she also displayed in the arena where she immediately covered her thighs after being tossed in the air by a heifer (20.4).174 Her assistants then rubbed her down with oil, ‘as is customary during a contest’. Perpetua’s own explanation indicates that we need not look for a connection with baptismal unctions, just as nothing in the text points to a ‘mutation spirituelle’ in the case of her transsexual experience.175 It is not to be overlooked, though, that normally athletes were both rubbed down and sprinkled with dust,176 whereas here only the former is said of Perpetua and the latter of the Egyptian. The selective mention was perhaps dictated by the memory of Genesis (3.14), where God told the snake ‘upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life’, but in practical terms the absence of dusting made it also more difficult for the Egyptian to get a hold on Perpetua. When both opponents were ready, there appeared a splendidly dressed and imposing figure whom Louis Robert has brilliantly ‘decoded’ as a reflection of the agônothetês, the person who gives the games, of the Pythian Games. The purple of his tunic,177 his costly shoes, his wand, and the green branch with the golden apples178 – all perfectly fit this figure who must have made a lasting impression upon Perpetua.179 He announced that, if defeated, Perpetua would be slain with the sword. This end naturally does not fit the Pythian Games which did not feature executions. On the other hand, such an execution would be perfectly normal in a gladiatorial contest. Admittedly, Robert has fiercely opposed suggestions by earlier students that Perpetua’s vision reflected a gladiatorial combat.180 Yet it is clear that such combats were on Perpetua’s mind too, since she also compared the wand of the agônothetês with that of the lanista, the arbiearlier explanations (none convincing), see G. Gillette, ‘Augustine and the Significance of Perpetua’s Words: “And I was a Man”’, Augustinian Studies 32 (2001) 115–25. 174  For the motif, see R. Braun, ‘“Honeste cadere”. Un topos d’hagiographie antique’, Bulletin du centre de Romanistique et de Latinité tardive 1 (1983) 1–12. For the literary background, see also this volume, Chapter  23. 175  Contra Amat, Passion, 225. 176 Ovid, Met. 9.35; Seneca, Ep.  57.1, 88.18; Statius, Theb. 6.847–8; Galen, Gymn. 37; Lucian, Anach. 1–2, De gymn. 31; Tertullian, De pallio 4. 177  Robert, ‘Une vision’, 258–9; M. Wörrle, Stadt und Fest im kaiserzeitlichen Kleinasien (Munich, 1988) 192–3; C.P. Jones, ‘Processional Colors’, in B. Bergmann and C. Kondoleon (eds), The Art of Ancient Spectacle (Washington and Yale, 1999) 247–57, with interesting observations on the juxtaposition of colours in the clothes of ancient authorities. 178  For the green branch, see J. Meischner, ‘Bildtradition antiker Wettkampfrequisiten’, Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 110 (1995) 447–66 at 455 ff. For the golden apples, see Robert, ‘Une vision’, 266–71; Nollé, Side im Altertum, 2.447 f. It is therefore arbitrary to interpret the apples as those of the Hesperides, as symbols of Aphrodite or as quinces, contra Dodds, Pagan and Christian, 52; Miller, Dreams, 182–3; A. Rousselle, ‘Image et texte: aller et retour’, in S. Boesch Gajano (ed.), Santità, culti, agiografia (Rome, 1997) 107–27 at 116–9. 179  Robert, ‘Une vision’, 258–72. 180  Robert, ‘Une vision’, 255 f.

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ter of the gladiatorial combats.181 Further on, at the end of her vision, she left the amphitheatre through the Porta Sanivivaria, the gate for victorious gladiators, whereas meritorious dead ones were carried out through the Porta Libitinensis.182 Evidently, in this respect her vision combined elements of regularly recurring gladiatorial combats with that of the exceptional event of the Pythian Games.183 Robert also neglects to discuss another feature of the agônothetês, namely his supernatural height. This height recurs in Marianus (7.3), where James sees in a vision a very tall (inenarrabili et satis ampla magnitudine) young man; such a height is a typical topos in pagan and Christian visions and epiphanies of a supernatural figure.184 The youth is dressed in a shining white beltless tunica and produces two purple belts, one for Marianus and one for himself. The man is interpreted as Christ (7.6), and the purple belts probably refer to the future blood of the martyrs.185 Given the dependence of Marianus on Perpetua, it seems reasonable to conclude that Marianus combined here the distinctive features of Pomponius (the white beltless tunica) and the agônothetês (the height). This interpretation also indicates that near-contemporaries, like modern scholars, saw Christ behind both these figures in Perpetua.186 It is Christ who will comfort her, support her and award her the prize for her final fight. Modern readers may have their thoughts about the comparison, but the interpretation of Christ or God as the agônothetês who hands out the prize to the martyr was highly popular in the sport-saturated society of the Roman Empire, not least in Carthage itself as Tertullian’s words to future martyrs, bonum agonem subituri estis in quo agonothetes Deus vivus est, amply illustrate.187 The fight itself clearly indicates that Perpetua was familiar with gladiatorial displays and gymnastic games, perhaps even with the pankration.188 The box181 

Robert, ‘Une vision’, 262–3 with fig. 8 on p.  244 (lanista with wand). Kyle, Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome (London and New York, 1998) 156; Bomgardner, The Story, 137 (on the likely location of these gates in the Carthaginian amphitheatre). 183  Contra: J Aronen, ‘Pythia Carthaginis o immagini cristiane nella visione di Perpetua?’, L’Africa romana 6.2 (1989) 643–48, who overstates the case against the influence from the Pythian Games. 184  See the many parallels collected by Körtner and Leutzsch, Papiasfragmente, 479–80, note  194 and 486, note  299 (by Leutzsch). In general: H. Cancik, ‘Grösse und Kolossalität als religiöse und aesthetische Kategorien. Versuch einer Begriffsbestimmung am Beispiel von Statius, Silvae I 1: Ecus maximus Domitiani Imperator’, Visible Religion 7 (1990) 51–68, repr. in his Verse und Sachen (Würzburg, 2003) 224–48. 185  Cf. Cyprian, Ep.  10.52: (ecclesia) nunc facta est in martyrum cruore purpurea and De op. et eleemos. 26: in persecutione purpuream (coronam) pro passione geminabit. 186  See especially Corsini, ‘Proposte per una lettura’, 505–07; Robert, ‘Une vision’, 265 f. 187 Tertullian, Ad martyras. 3.3; Hippolytus, De antichristo 46; Clement of Alexandria, Protr. 10.96.3, Quis dives 3, Strom. 7.3; Origen, Exhortatio ad martyrium 23; Eus. Dem. evang. 10.8.72; Acta Philippi, Mart. 38. 188  For athletic events in North Africa, see M. Khanoussi, ‘Spectaculum pugilum et gym182 D.

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ing, the prominence of the heels, the attempts at getting hold of the opponent’s feet and the joining of the fingers - all aspects can be paralleled from descriptions of other fights.189 Would she have often accompanied her father to the amphiteatre?190 After her victory, Perpetua stepped on the Egyptian’s head. The gesture refers the reader back to her first vision (§  4.1) and, as if this was still necessary, confirms once again that the opponent was really the Devil himself. After the fight, the pagan spectators started to shout, whereas Perpetua’s assistants sang psalms. Perpetua does not tell us the content of the public’s shouting, but her readers will undoubtedly have thought of acclamations, such as ‘victoria’.191 Then she accepted the prize with a kiss (osculatus est me) and the words ‘Daughter, peace be with you’. Roman grammarians distinguished between several kinds of kisses. The osculum was a kiss of friendship and affection.192 Christ’s kiss thus sealed the affection between Him and the future martyr. Having received the kiss, Perpetua triumphantly walked to the Gate of Life. The walk fits the gladiatorial symbolism, but is also symbolic of Perpetua’s own feelings. She now is certain that she will be strong enough to face the final contest when the ‘life everlasting’ awaits her. The walk is also the natural end to her vision and her diary. With the day of her martyrdom so close and the outcome clear, there was no more need or possibility for further notes.

nasium’, CRAI 1988, 543–61 and ‘Les spectacles de jeux athlétiques et de pugilat dans l’Afrique romaine’, Römische Mitteilungen 98 (1991) 315–22. 189 Cicero, Sull. 71; Ovid, Met. 9.37, 42–5, 59–61; Quintilian 2.8.13; Lucian, De gymn. 2, 9–10, 31, 36; Tertullian, De spectaculis 18, Scorpiace 6.3–5. 190  For women watching gladiatorial games, see Ovid, Ars Am. 1.163–70; Calpurnius Si­ culus, Ecl. 7.27; Suetonius, Div. Aug. 44; M. Herrmann, ‘Zur Frau als Zuschauerin bei Wettkämpfen in römischer Zeit’, Nikephoros 5 (1992) 85–102. 191  For the shout, see Van den Hoek and Hermann, Jr., Pottery, Pavements, and Paradise, 69–76. For acclamations, see B. Baldwin, Studies on Late Roman and Byzantine History, Literature and Language (Amsterdam, 1984) 33–44; Ch. Roueché, ‘Acclamations in the later Roman Empire’, JRS 74 (1984) 181–99; D. Potter, ‘Performance, Power, and Justice in the High Empire’, in W.J. Slater (ed.), Roman Theater and Society (Ann Arbor, 1996) 129–59; G. Aldrete, Gestures and Acclamations in Ancient Rome (Baltimore, 1999); C. Hugoniot, ‘Les acclamations dans la vie municipale tardive et la critique augustinienne des violences lors des spectacles africains’, in H. Inglebert (ed.), Idéologies et valeurs civiques dans le Monde romain. Hommage à Claude Lepelley (Paris, 2002) 179–88. 192  P. Moreau, ‘Osculum, basium, suavium’, Rev. Philol. 52 (1978) 87–97; P. Flury, ‘Osculum und osculari. Beobachtungen zum Vocabular des Kusses im Lateinischen’, in S. Krämer and M. Bernhard (eds), Scire litteras. Forschungen zum mittelalterlichen Geistesleben (Munich, 1988) 149–57.

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5. Conclusion It is time to come to a close. Our observations certainly have not exhausted the visions of Perpetua, but we may have come a bit nearer in understanding the mental world of this proud young woman. By analysing her visions we could see how the ideas of this Christian martyr gradually evolved during her prisonhood. At first, she was still much impressed by her first Eucharist and took her martyrdom relatively lightly: she just stepped on the head of the snake. After a while she realised that her impending state enabled her to intervene on behalf of her brother and, finally, on the eve of her death, she became absolutely certain that she would be a spiritual victor in her definitive contest. Naturally, one can quibble with my results, but at the very least I hope to have demonstrated the profound influence of Christian practices and representations on Perpetua’s dream world. At the same time, we cannot be but impressed by her deeply felt convictions. The eventual victory of Christianity is easier to understand when we realise the stature of martyrs such as Perpetua and catechetes like Saturus. Christian literature has all too long been neglected by classicists and ancient historians, due to the unfortunate opinions of leading lights in England and, especially, in Germany at the turn of the twentieth century. Our observations have indicated that in this field there is still much to be done. One century later, it is time to make a new beginning.193

193  Versions of this paper were given at Jena in May 2001 and at the University of Canterbury (New Zealand) in March 2002. I have greatly profited from both occasions as well as from comments and information by Walter Ameling, Kathleen Coleman, Stephen Harrison, Ton Hilhorst, Peter van Minnen and Ruurd Nauta. Last but not least, I would like to thank Alison Holcroft for her meticulous editing of my text.

Chapter 23

Felicitas: The Martyrdom of a Young African Woman Of all the protagonists of the Passio, it is on Perpetua that attention is usually focused, as is understandable: both in the confrontations with her father and in her visions she emerges as an outspoken personality, whose fate continues to fascinate modern readers.1 On the other hand, her fellow martyr Felicitas has hardly received any interest from modern scholars, 2 and that is why I want to concentrate my contribution on her. What kind of woman was she, what moved her and in what way did she face up to her martyrdom? Let us start at the beginning. After his carefully argued introduction,3 the editor of the Passio proceeds in a very sober style with: ‘Arrest was made in the town of Thuburbo Minus of the young (adolescentes) catechumens (catechumeni) Revocatus and Felicity, conserva eius, and of Saturninus and Secundulus. Among them was also Vibia Perpetua, who was well born, well educated, honorably married’ (2.1).4 The report, then, starts in mediis rebus. Apparently, as happens more often in martyrs’ Acts, the editor did not think it important or necessary to tell us why and when the persecution had taken place, its causes or even who had denounced the Christians. Yet he records an interesting detail about the arrest: it evidently took place in Thuburbo Minus, modern Tebourba, a Roman colonia about 45 kilometers west of Carthage, which, had been founded in 35 BC for the veterans of the eighth legion.5 That does not necesssarily mean that all martyrs came from this place. The Acts of the Abitinian Martyrs (7) mentions that the martyr Victoria travelled from Carthage to Abitina, which was a good bit further away from Carthage than Thuburbo Minus, 6 and as the references to ministry in the 1  This contribution is based on my ‘Het martelaarschap van Perpetua en Felicitas’, Hermeneus 78 (2006) 128–37. 2  The exception is J. Amat, Passion de Perpétue et de Félicité suivi des Actes (Paris, 1996) 34–36. 3  See J. den Boeft, ‘The Editor’s Prime Objective: Haec in Aedificationem Ecclesiae Legere’, in J.N. Bremmer and M. Formisano (eds), Perpetua’s Passions (Oxford, 2012) 169–79. 4  I quote the new translation by J. Farrell and C. Williams, in Bremmer and Formisano, Perpetua’s Passions, 14–23. For a detailed analysis of this passage, see this volume, Chapter  25 on c. 2.1–2. 5  For the town, see C. Lepelley, Les Cités de l’Afrique romaine au bas-empire, 2  vols (Paris, 1981) 2.205 f. 6  For the text of these Acts, see P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Note agiografiche 8 (Vatican City, 1935) 1–71, transl. M.A. Tilley, Donatist Martyr Stories (Liverpool, 1996), 27–49 and H.R. Seeliger and W. Wischmeyer, Märtyrerliteratur (Berlin and Boston, 2015) 307–59; F. Dolbeau,

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Passio all seem to refer to the Carthaginian ministry,7 some of these martyrs may well have come from Carthage itself. Moreover, despite its brevity, the beginning tells us at least three things about Felicitas, ‘Happiness’, which was a fairly common name of Roman women both free and slave, and which was rather popular in Africa.8 First, she was young, just like the other the martyrs, and their youth is also noted by the Acta (I.1.1: iuvenes). Their teacher Saturus was clearly not present at the time of the arrest, as he handed himself over at a later stage (Passio 4.5),9 but in the Acta (I.4.5) he is also called iuvenis and thus not very old. Apparently, Christianity had some success among the youths of the Empire.10 This may well explain why the persecutions under Septimius Severus, the ruling emperor, seem to have targeted catechumens and their instructors.11  Second, the group of martyrs hardly consisted of socially prominent figures. In fact, the characterisation of Perpetua contrasts almost painfully with the others in this respect.12 But what does eius conserva mean that is said of Felicitas? The Greek translation calls Revocatus and Felicitas syndouloi and thus makes them slaves in the same house, whereas the Acta (I.1.1), calls her soror eius (II.1.1 even has: Felicitas et soror eius), which makes her a sister of Revocatus; its mention of two brothers among the arrested, Saturus and Saturninus (I.1.1), suggests that the author wanted to present the group as close-knit as possible. The late Toon Bastiaensen (1926–2009), however, has taken a different direction. In

‘La ‘Passion’ des martyrs d’Abitina: remarques sur l’établissement du texte’, AB 121 (2003) 273–96; see also A. Dearn, ‘The Abitinian Martyrs and the Outbreak of the Donatist Schism’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 55 (2004) 1–18. 7  W. Tabbernee, ‘Perpetua, Montanism, and Christian Ministry in Carthage c.203 C.E.’, Perspectives in Religious Studies 32 (2005) 421–42. 8  Felicitas: H. Solin, ‘Spes’, in J. Vaahtera and R. Vainio (eds), Utriusque linguae peritus: studia in honorem Toivo Viljamaa (Turku, 1997) 1–8 at 3–4 and Analecta Epigraphica 1970– 1997 (Rome, 1998) 281. Popular: I. Kajanto, The Latin Cognomina (Helsinki, 1965) 18. 9  For such voluntary martyrs, see C. Butterweck, “Martyriumssucht” in der Alten Kirche? Studien zur Darstellung und Deutung frühchristlicher Martyrien (Tübingen, 1995); A.R. Birley, ‘Die “freiwilligen” Märtyrer. Zum Problem der Selbst-Auslieferer’, in R. von Haehling (ed.), Rom und das himmlische Jerusalem (Darmstadt, 2000) 97–123 = (‘strongly revised’) ‘Voluntary Martyrs in the Early Church: Heroes or Heretics?’, Cristianesimo nella Storia 27 (2006) 99–127; J.-L. Voisin, ‘Prosopographie des morts volontaires chrétiens (en particulier chez Eusèbe de Césarée)’, in M.-F. Baslez and F. Prévot (eds), Prosopographie et histoire religieuse (Paris, 2005) 351–62; G.E.M. de Ste. Croix, Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy, eds. M. Whitby and J. Streeter (Oxford, 2006) 153–200; D. Hofmann, Suizid in der Spätantike (Stuttgart, 2007) 119–24; C. Moss, ‘The Discourse of Voluntary Martyrdom: Ancient and Modern’, Church History 81 (2012) 531–51; P. Middleton, ‘Early Christian Voluntary Martyrdom: A Statement for the Defence’, JThS 64 (2013) 556–73. 10  See this volume, Chapter  2.3. 11  See this volume, Chapters 23.3 and 25 on c. 2.1–2. 12  W. Ameling, ‘Femina Liberaliter Instituta – Some Thoughts on a Martyr’s Liberal Education’, in Bremmer and Formisano, Perpetua’s Passions, 78–102.

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his excellent commentary on the Passio,13 he points out that Tertullian regularly calls Christian spouses conservus and conserva, ‘fellow slave’, in Christ. For example, he refers to Tertullian’s Ad uxorem in which the latter addresses his wife as dilectissima mihi in Domino conserva (I.1.1). However, he omits to stress that Tertullian adds in Domino, and the Christian meaning of conserva is crystal clear in the context also elsewhere in the treatise (II.8.5). That is not the case in our passage. Moreover, it is hard to see what the expression ‘fellow slave in Christ’ would add, as all the catechumens were ‘slaves of Christ’. Revocatus’ name, like others taken from participles ending in –atus, was typical of slaves, freedmen and soldiers.14 Conserva, then, most likely refers to her being a fellow slave of Revocatus:15 apparently, the editor wanted to stress that both Revocatus and Felicitas were slaves, unlike Perpetua and the other catechumens.16 Last but not least, Felicitas was a catechumen, and this is also confirmed by the fact that the group is only baptised in prison (Passio 3.5). Unfortunately, we know relatively little about the African catechumenate,17 but Perpetua’s dreams already presuppose a certain knowledge of Christianity, which means that Felicitas was a fairly recent rather than a fresh convert. However, the editor supplies no more information about the other catechumens but straightaway continued with extensive quotations from Perpetua’s diary: we may safely conclude that he was not particularly interested in Felicitas. It is rather different in the Acta, which do contain a proper report of the interrogation of the group of Felicitas. According to Brent Shaw, in an often quoted article, these minutes had been made up by its author, but he offers no arguments to support his suggestion and there is good reason to reject it.18 Modern scholars distinguish two versions of the Acta, which Van Beek calls A and B, Amat I and II, and it is only since Van Beek’s edition that these versions are commonly referred to as Acta.19 From these versions, II (= van Beek B) is more 13 

A.A.R. Bastiaensen et al., Atti e Passioni dei martiri (Milano, 1987) 412–52 at 415. R. Syme, ‘“Donatus” and the Like’, Historia 28 (1978) 588–603 = Syme, Roman Papers III, ed. A.R. Birley (Oxford, 1984) 105–19. 15  Thesaurus Linguae Latinae IV.422 explains that the primary meaning of conserva is serva eiusdem familiae. 16  D. Praet, ‘“Meliore cupiditate detentus”: Christian Self-definition and the Rejection of Marriage in the Early Acts of the Martyrs’, Euphrosyne 31 (2003) 457–73 at 465 f. 17 For the African catechumenate, see M. Dujarier, Le parrainage des adultes aux trois premiers siècles de l’Église (Paris, 1962) 217–46; T.M. Finn, Early Christian Baptism and the Catecumenate: Italy, North Africa, and Egypt (Collegeville, 1992) 111–71; A. Stewart-Sykes, ‘Catechumenate and Contra-Culture: the social process of catechumenate in third-century Africa and its development’, St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 47 (2003) 289–306 18  B. Shaw, ‘The Passion of Perpetua’, Past & Present 139 (1993) 3–45, reprinted in R. Osborne (ed.), Studies in Ancient Greek and Roman Society (Cambridge, 2004) 286–325 (with a ‘Postscript 2003’) at 33–36 = 312–14. 19  For a good discussion and text, see C.I.M.I. van Beek, Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis I (Nijmegen, 1936) 104*-44*, 55–73; Amat, Passion de Perpétue et de Félicité, 265– 303. I quote the Acta from Amat’s edition. 14 

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laconic and therefore sometimes thought to be older, but its more abbreviated and hagiographic form hardly warrants that conclusion.20 Van Beek did not have a very high opinion of the value of the Acta, unlike some earlier scholars,21 and that is probably why in recent times these versions have not received the attention they deserve. An important reason for their neglect was undoubtedly the fact that until the year 2007 all references to Perpetua and Felicitas in sermons attributed to Augustine and Quodvultdeus referred to the Passio, not the Acta, which was seen as a sign that the Acta were hardly earlier than the fifth century.22 In that year, however, it was announced that in Erfurt a twelfth-century manuscript was discovered with a corpus of sermons ascribed to Augustine, amongst which there was a fuller version of the already known Sermon 282 on Perpetua and Felicitas.23 In this sermon we twice find an expression from version II (= B van Beek) of the Acta which does not occur in the rest of the classical Latin literature that we know.24 This makes it almost certain that Augustine knew a version of the Acta.25 In that case, the Acta may well owe their continued existence to the late fourth-century Councils of Hippo (AD 393) and Carthage (AD 397), which decided that it was permitted to read the passions of the martyrs, when their anniversaries were celebrated.26 This renewed interest in the passions was probably caused by the struggle against the Donatistst who had their own martyrs.27 20  Van Beek, Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis, 105*: videri potest antiquior, persuasively rejected by Amat, Passion de Perpétue et de Félicité, 271. 21  Compare, for example, P. Monceaux, Histoire littéraire de l’Afrique Chrétienne depuis les origines jusqu’a l’invasion Arabe I (Paris, 1901) 78–82; A. Harnack, Geschichte der alt­ christlichen Literatur bis Eusebius II.2 (Leipzig, 1904) 321–24; H. Delehaye, Les passions des martyrs et les genres littéraires (Brussels 1921, 19662) 69–71. 22 Amat, Passion de Perpétue et de Félicité, 271; see also F. Dolbeau, Augustin et la prédication en Afrique (Paris, 2005) 341, 345. 23  I. Schiller et al., ‘Sechs neue Augustinuspredigten. Teil 1 mit Edition dreier Sermones’, Wiener Studien 121 (2008) 227–84 at 251–64 (Sermo 282 auct. edited by C. Weidmann). 24  Sermo 282 auct. 6.2: in uteri onere = Acta (II) 9.2: post onus uteri coronam martyrii perceptura; Sermo 282 auct. 6.3. virilis virtus = Acta (II) 9.2: virili virtuti. Admittedly, virtus virilis also occurs in Paulinus of Nola, Carmen 26.159. As Paulinus was a correspondent of Augustine, can he have derived the expression from this sermon? 25  Thus already Monceaux, Histoire littéraire de l’Afrique I, 78 note  2 , 82 (although not always with persuasive arguments). 26  Concilium Hipponense: CCSL 149, 21.44–6; cf. 46.207–8 and Reg. Eccl. Carth. Exc. canon 46 = CCSL 149, 186.135–6 Munier, cf. H. Urner, Die ausserbiblische Lesung im christlichen Gottesdienst (Göttingen, 1952) 25–42; B. de Gaiffier, ‘La lecture des Passions des martyrs à Rome avant le IXe siècle’, AB 82 (1969) 63–78; L. Grig, Making Martyrs in Late Antiquity (London, 2004) 34–58. Augustine even advises to read in church the proceedings of a process against the Donatists (Ep.  139.1, 134.4) and of the famous Conference with the Donatists of AD 411 (Ep.  28*.2), although not from the official lectern of the lector. 27  J.-L. Maier, Le Dossier du Donatisme, 2  vols (Berlin, 1987–89); add F. Dolbeau, Sanctorum societas, 2  vols (Brussels, 2005) 1.131–45 (‘La “Passio sancti Donati” (BHL 2303 b)’, 19921), overlooked by Tilley, Donatist Martyr Stories.

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However, there were evidently not that many interesting non-Donatist texts to be read during those occasions, as Augustine comments in a sermon on Stephen, who became the Christian martyr par excellence in Late Antiquity:28 ‘Whereas concerning the other martyrs we can hardly find reports that we could read on their feast-days, his (Stephen’s) passion is in a canonical book’ (Sermo 315.1). Given the dearth of reliable documents, it cannot be surprising that the passion of Perpetua and her fellow martyrs received renewed attention in that period and was frequently alluded to in sermons on the occasion of the anniversary of their martyrdom.29 On the other hand, the interrogation of the Acta closely resembles that of other Acta martyrum such as, for example, that of the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs; if it was a much later product, it most likely would have been much more embellished. As the present text of the Passio is the version of an editor who was mainly interested in visions and the actual martyrdom, he omitted the interrogation. That is why at this point his text strongly looks like an abbreviation of an already existing longer text. With all necessary reservations, I would therefore suggest that the present form of the Acta goes back to a date from shortly after AD 260, since they, like the Greek translation, locate the martyrdom during the consulate of Valerian and Gallienus (1), and the persecutions under Valerian seem to have stimulated an extraordinary interest in the Passio Perpetuae. Both the contemporary Passion of Montanus and Lucius and the Passion of Marianus and James display its strong influence,30 and the Vita Cypriani of Pontius even clearly polemicises against it.31 At that time, transcripts of the official processes, the acta, were still available in North Africa, as is demonstrated by a letter of his fellow bishops to Cyprian: ‘As a good and true teacher you preceded us in declaring in the records of the official proceedings of the proconsul (apud acta proconsulis) what we, your pupils, treading in your footsteps ought to say before the governor’ (Cypr. Ep.  77.2.1).32 A more recently discovered letter of Augustine shows that he too could still read original transcripts, which he calls gesta forensia or publica gesta. In fact, he clearly preferred these 28 

On Stephen as the protomartyr, see this volume, Chapter  22 note  36. See the enumeration by Van Beek, Passio, 149*-63*; add Dolbeau, Augustin et la prédication en Afrique, 337–54, 630–1 (‘Un sermon inédit d’origine africaine pour la fête des Saintes Perpétue et Félicité’, 19951); also C. Lambot, ‘Les sermons de saint Augustin pour les fêtes des martyrs’, AB 67 (1949), 249–66, repr. in RB 79 (1969) 82–97; K.B. Steinhauser, ‘Augustine’s reading of the Passio sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis’, SP 32 (1997) 244–9; D. Elm von der Osten, ‘“Perpetua Felicitas”: Die Predigten des Augustinus zur Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis (s. 280–282)’, in T. Fuhrer (ed.), Die christlich-philosophischen Diskurse der Spätantike: Texte, Personen, Institutionen (Stuttgart, 2008) 275–98. 30  For the verbal echoes of Perpetua in Marianus, see P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, La Passio SS. Mariani et Iacobi (Rome, 1900) 13 note  1. 31  See this volume, Chapter  2 2 note  33. 32  See also this volume, Chapter  2 2.1. 29 

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unadorned protocols above the so-called ‘epic passions’.33 His observations on the martyrdom of Cyprian in the same letter show that he quoted from the most recent version of the latter’s martyrdom, whereas there were also older, shorter versions circulating.34 There is thus no reason to doubt that Augustine could have read both the Passio and the Acta. The author of the Acta, however, was not so much interested in visions and therefore provided a much more sober account of the interrogation and the actual martyrdom, which is, as we will see, more credible that that of the Passio. On the other hand, it may well be that the editor of the Acta also had an ideological axe to grind and may have downplayed the role of Perpetua as not befitting a modest Christian woman.35 His account lacks the drama of the Passio and therefore has always been less popular in modern times than in the Middle Ages. The Acta relate that the women were interrogated separately from the men. Shaw considers this one of the ‘notable inventions’ of the author,36 but Perpetua and Felicitas were also treated separately during their execution (Passio 20), and the official sentence of the Acta Scillitanorum (14, 16) first mentions the men and then the women. Given the little information we have, there is no reason to suppose that the author of the Acta invented the interrogation of Felicitas, which he describes as follows: He (the proconsul)37 said to Felicitas: ‘What is your name?’. She answered: ‘Felicitas’. The proconsul said: ‘Do you have a husband?’ Felicitas answered: ‘I have one whom I now despise’. The proconsul said: ‘Where is he?’ Felicitas answered: ‘He is not here. The proconsul said: ‘What is his social status?’ Felicitas answered: ‘Plebeian’. The proconsul said: ‘Are your parents still alive?’ Felicitas answered: ‘No, but Revocatus is my brother. I cannot really have better parents than those (her fellow martyrs) here’. The proconsul said: ‘Have pity on your self, girl (puella), and sacrifice so that you will stay alive. Especially since I see that you are expecting a child’. Felicitas answered: ‘I am a Christian, and I have to despise this all because of God’. The proconsul said: ‘Take thought for yourself (consule tibi), as I feel sorry for you’. Felicitas answered: ‘Do what you want. You will not be able to persuade me’ (Acta I.5.2–8). 33 Aug. Ep*. 29.1, 2, ed. J. Divjak et al., Lettres 1*- 29* (Paris, 1987) 414–17, to be read with the commentary by Y. Duval, ibidem, 573–80; C. Lepelley, ‘Les réticences de saint Augustin face aux legendes hagiographiques d’après la letter Divjak 29*’, in P. Rousseau and M. Papoutsakis (eds), Transformations of Late Antiquity. Essays for Peter Brown (Farnham and Burlington, 2009) 146–58. The passage had already been noted by G.E.M.de Ste. Croix, ‘A worm’s-eye view of the Greeks and Romans and how they spoke: martyr-acts, fables, parables and other texts’, Latin Teaching 27.4 (1984) 16–30 at 21 f. 34  The new letter supports the analysis of R. Reitzenstein, ‘Die Nachrichten über den Tod Cyprians’, SB Heidelberger Ak. Wiss., Philos.-hist. Kl. 14 (1913) 46–66. 35  Thus P. Kitzler, ‘Passio Perpetuae and Acta Perpetuae: Between Tradition and Innovation’, Listy filologické 130 (2007) 1–19. 36  Shaw, ‘The Passion of Perpetua’, 34 = 312. 37  For the name of the pro-consul Minicius (wrongly spelled Minucius by Van Beek and T.J. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity [Oxford, 2012] 50–52, and Minutius by Amat) Opimianus see T.D. Barnes, Tertullian (Oxford, 19852) 267; this volume, Chapter  22.3.

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The dialogue is recorded in a business-like style, as was usual for the Roman authorities.38 Unfortunately, it does not inform us about the exact nature of Felicitas’ marriage. Her husband did not have a high status as plebeian, but he was a free man, whereas Felicitas apparently was a slave girl. The proconsul calls Felicitas a puella, which suggests a fairly young age. Perhaps she had married only recently and was pregnant with her first child. But she had clearly left her husband who, we may assume, had not followed her in her religious choice. Such a break between brothers and sisters, husband and wife or parents and children, as in the case of Perpetua (Passio 6, 9), must have occurred repeatedly and cannot have contributed to Christianity’s popularity.39 Felicitas’ response that her fellow Christians were the best parents imaginable shows that she really felt at home in her new religious community. We will never be able to understand the rise of Christianity if we do not take into account such intense feelings, as we never hear of them in members of other contemporary pagan cults and religions. The interrogation also shows that the proconsul was rather reluctant to have Felicitas executed. That is why he asks her to sacrifice. Our text does not specify the object of this sacrifice, but Saturus is asked to sacrifice to ‘the gods’ (Acta I.4.1). This was the normal requirement, but sometimes, as a lesser alternative, the authorities proposed the martyrs to sacrifice on behalf of the emperor(s) rather than sacrificing to the gods. That also seems to have been the case in the Passio, where the procurator Hilarianus requests Perpetua to sacrifice pro salute imperatorum (6.4) in a clear effort to persuade her to defect from the Christians.40 On the whole, though, emperor worship was ‘a factor of almost no independent importance in the persecution of the Christians’.41 Contrary to representations from later Christian and modern times, Roman authorities often 38  For the form of these interrogations, see G. Lanata, Gli atti dei martiri come documenti processuali (Milan, 1973); G.A. Bisbee, Pre-Decian Acts of Martyrs and Commentarii (Philadelphia, 1988); S. Ronchey, ‘Les procès-verbaux des martyres chrétiens dans les Acta martyrum et leur fortune’, MÉFRA 112 (2000) 723–52; T.D. Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography and Roman History (Tübingen, 2010) 54–66. 39  For this aspect of early Christianity, see Matthew 12.46–50; Mark 3.31.35; Luke 8.19–21; this volume, Chapter  2.3. 40  The passage has to be added to those collected by S. Price, Rituals and Power (Cambridge, 1984) 220–22. For Hilarianus, see X. Dupuis, ‘Hagiographie antique et histoire: l’exemple de la Passion de Lucius et de Montanus’, RÉAug 49 (2003) 253–65 at 262–63; Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography, 304 f. 41  De Ste. Croix, Christian Persecution, 112. For persecutions, the imperial cult and the obligation to sacrifice to the gods, see F. Millar, Rome, the Greek World and the East II (Chapel Hill and London, 2004) 298–312 (19731); Birley, ‘Die “freiwilligen” Märtyrer’, 103, 121–23: a very useful list of passages with sacrifices to the gods and/or emperors; add Acta Phileae, rec. graeca 1 Pietersma (gods); P. van Minnen, ‘The Earliest Account of a Martyrdom in Coptic’, AB 113 (1995) 13–38 at 30–31 (a martyrdom of AD 305: gods); P. Canart and R. Pintaudi, ‘Il martirio di san Pansofio’, Analecta Papyrologica 16–17 (2004–05 [2007]) 189–245 at 198 (purportedly under Decius: sacrifice to Jupiter).

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tried to persuade the martyrs to renounce their faith and regularly gave them some time to reconsider their position.42 We may note that the expression consule tibi does not occur in any other Latin text except for the Acta Cypriani (32.3 Bastiaensen), where the proconsul also reacts to Cyprian’s refusal to sacrifice with consule tibi. Given that he polemicised against the Passio (above), one may wonder if its author did not also know our Acta or the actual court proceedings.43 As so often, though, the magistrate’s efforts were in vain, and Felicitas sealed her fate with the standard confession Ego Christiana sum, which probably popularised the name ‘Christians’ as followers of Christ.44 Even the proconsul’s sympathetic remark about her pregnancy could not make Felicitas change her mind. That is why he condemned her and her fellow martyrs to be thrown to the beasts. He then sent the martyrs back to their prison, but only after Felicitas and Perpetua had been beaten in the face (Acta I.7.1). The subsequent development of Felicitas’ pregnancy is related in the Passio, which shows the extent to which Felicitas was prepared to suffer for her faith: And as for Felicity, the Lord’s grace touched her, too, in this way. When she was in her eighth month (for she was pregnant when she was arrested), as the day of the spectacle approached she was very anxious that it might be put off because of her condition (since it is illegal for pregnant women to be made part of a punitive spectacle) and that she would pour out her holy and innocent blood at a later time together with other, real criminals. And her fellow martyrs, too, became sad at the prospect of abandoning so good an ally to be (so to speak) a solitary fellow-traveler along the same road of hope. And so with a single unified lament they poured out a prayer to the Lord three days before the event. Immediately after the prayer she was beset by pains, and when she began to suffer as she labored to give birth, as was natural in a delivery during the eighth month, one of the prison guards said, ‘If this is how you act now, what will you do when you are thrown to the beasts that you didn’t care about when you decided not to sacrifice?’ And she answered, ‘Now I am the one suffering what I suffer, but then another inside me will suffer for me, since I will also be suffering for him’. And she delivered a girl, which one of the sisters raised for her (educavit) as her own daughter (15).

Not only the Egyptians and Athenians, but also the Romans had prohibited the execution of pregnant women.45 Yet everything points into the direction of the whole group of martyrs, Felicitas included, being determined to die together for their faith and that is why they prayed together for a speedy birth. At the same 42  See the examples in J. den Boeft and J.N. Bremmer, ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae’, VigChris 35 (1981) 43–56 at 47–9; add Passio Felicis 18: recogita tecum. 43  The expression also occurs in the Passio Irenaei 4.9, ed. Dolbeau, Sanctorum Societas, 1.131–68, but Dolbeau (151) notes its literary indebtedness to earlier Acta Martyrum. 44  See this volume, Chapter  1.3. 45  Dig. 1.18.1, 48.19.3, cf. J. Quasten, ‘Mutter und Kind in der Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis’, Historisches Jahrbuch 72 (1953) 50–5; C. Jones, ‘Women, Death, and the Law during the Christian Persecutions’, in D. Wood (ed.), Martyrs and Martyrologies (Oxford, 1993) 23–34 at 26.

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time, her fellow martyrs did not want Felicitas to die with normal criminals: her blood was ‘too holy and innocent’ for such a death. We see here a glimpse of Christian solidarity and assertiveness, the latter of which assumes nearly unacceptable dimensions in the Passio. Being a pregnant woman, Felicitas was of course highly vulnerable to premature death. Such a death must have been so common that Tertullian exhorts women: ‘Seek not to die in bridal beds, or in miscarriages, or from gentle fevers, but die in martyrdom that he may be glorified who has suffered for you’.46 In an interesting discussion of the motifs of birth and the maternal body, Judith Perkins has drawn attention to their prominence in the Passio and Tertullian, which she relates to the contemporary debates around Christ’s real flesh and his real birth. She even suggests that this prominence makes the description of Perpetua and Felicitas rather questionable. As Felicitas, compared to Perpetua, ‘is the less developed character, her representation is more likely to result from the exigencies of the narrative’s message’.47 This surely goes much too far, as there is no indication in the Passio or the Acta that the physical aspects of the two young women are in any way connected to discussions about Christ’s human body. The prayer of the group was answered statim, ‘immediately’ (Passio 15.5). Although Felicitas’ pregnancy was already in an advanced state, such a quick answer also was a fixed part of the description of miracles in antiquity:48 both suddenness and speed ‘characterize a supernatural event as contrary to expectation’.49 For example, when in the New Testament a leper asks Jesus to heal him from his illness, Jesus touches him and he is ‘immediately’ cleansed (Matthew 8.3). And when Jesus says to a lame man: ‘Arise, take your bed and go home’, the man ‘immediately’ rose up (Luke 5.25). In this case the miracle must have been impressive, too, for later readers, as Hippocrates had already ‘published’ a treatise about eight-month infants, Peri oktamênôn. Evidently, in gynaecological circles there was a debate if those children would survive or not.50 Also in the case of Felicitas the birth clearly was not without complications.

46 Tert. Fug. 9.4: Nolite in lectulis nec in aborsibus et febribus mollibus optare exire, sed in martyriis, uti glorificetur, qui est passus pro vobis. 47  J. Perkins, ‘The Rhetoric of the Maternal Body in the Passion of Perpetua’, in T. Penner and C. Vander Stichele (eds), Mapping Gender in Ancient Religious Discourses (Leiden, 2007) 313–32 at 331. 48  O. Weinreich, Antike Heilungswunder (Giessen, 1909) 197–8; D. Daube, The Sudden in the Scriptures (Leiden, 1964); P.W. van der Horst and G. Mussies, Studies on the Hellenistic Background of the New Testament (Utrecht, 1990) 145 f. 49  A. Henrichs, ‘The Timing of Supernatural Events in the Cologne Mani Codex’, in L. Cirillo (ed.), Codex Manichaicus Coloniensis (Cosenza, 1986) 183–204 at 202, with several examples from the Cologne Mani Codex. 50  P.W. van der Horst, Essays on the Jewish World of Early Christianity (Freiburg and Göttingen, 1990) 233–47 (‘Seven Months’ Children in Jewish and Christian Literature from Antiquity’, 19781).

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Apparently, Felicitas’ suffering had drawn the attention of one of the prison guards. Roman prisons were divided into two compartments. The first was the so-called carcer inferior, which was dark, hot and populated, as is still the case with many third-world prisons. Perpetua, whose life-style will not have included prison experience, even says that that she had never seen tales tenebras, ‘such a dark place’, and she ‘was terrified by it’ (Passio 3.5: et expavi). Only after the guards had been bribed,51 were the martyrs allowed to spend every day a few hours in the better part of the prison (3.7: in meliorem locum carceris). The inner part was locked with an iron door, the cataracta, which was guarded by the cataractarii,52 who in turn apparently left the dirty work to assistants. Felicitas’ answer to one of those that she would not suffer herself is very interesting, since it shows that the martyrs interpreted their suffering in a specific manner and thus made it tolerable. Their thought that God or Jesus would suffer in them or for them is already to be found in the Martyrdom of Polycarp, whose author writes about the martyrs that they showed ‘to all of us that in that hour of their torment the witnesses of Christ were not present in the flesh, or rather that the Lord was there present conversing with them’ (2.2).53 The thought may even already be present in Paul who writes that he carries the cross of Christ in him (1 Cor 1) and that his sufferings cause Christ to dwell in him (2 Cor 12). The early Christians had clearly such a close tie with God that its intimate nature is hard to imagine for most of us today, Christian or not. With such a great faith, a difficult birth is not an insurmountable obstacle. Her daughter, as the author tells us, was educated by a sister of the congregation (15.7). We note here an early example of the Christian custom of calling one another ‘brother’ and ‘sister’; another early example we find in Tertullian (an. 9.4). This custom is nowadays so familiar in Christian churches around the world that we could nearly forget that pagan contemporaries found it an odd habit: both Lucian and the pagan opponent in Minucius Felix pay attention to it.54 The Latin educavit clearly shows that the editor composed his account a few years after the actual events.55 His composition will have been written within a decade after Perpetua’s and Felicitas’ execution.

51  This was just as normal in antiquity as it often is today, cf. J.-U. Krause, Gefängnisse im Römischen Reich (Stuttgart, 1996) 305–8; this volume, Chapter  10.1. 52  The obscure cataractarii are also mentioned in Passio Montani et Lucii 17.1, ed. Dolbeau, Sanctorum societas, 1.83–129, cf. P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Scritti agiografici, 2  vols (Vatican City, 1962) 1.212–16. 53  Cf. G. Buschmann, Das Martyrium des Polykarp (Göttingen, 1998) 97–8 and B. Dehandschutter, Polycarpiana, ed. J. Leemans (Leuven, 2007) 99–100 for this idea. 54 Lucian, De morte Peregrini, 13; Minucius Felix 9.2; this volume, Chapter  2.3. 55  For this and other examples, persuasively, T. Heffernan, ‘Philology and authorship in the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis’, Traditio 50 (1995) 315–25, but note also the objections by F. Dolbeau, RÉAug 42 (1996) 312–3.

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When the day of the execution had arrived, the martyrs joyfully marched to the amphitheatre,56 the men leading but followed by Perpetua and Felicitas. It is interesting to observe regarding the female martyrs that the Passio notes sequebatur Perpetua (18.2), whereas the Acta has sequebatur et Felicitas (I.9.2). This ‘correction’ of the Passio by the author of the Acta is in line with his tendency to minimise the role of Perpetua, whose visions, as we already noted, he gives little attention compared to the Passio. Brent Shaw explains the reduction of Per­ petua’s role as an attempt to reduce the role of the women in the Church,57 but the omitting of Perpetua’s visions of her brother Dinocrates and the reduction of the other visions by the author of the Acta also suggests that he had qualms about the prophetic claims of Pepretua. As the Passio notes, Felicitas was ‘glad that she had safely given birth so that she could fight the beasts, from blood to blood, from midwife to gladiator (retiarius), ready to be washed after birth in a second baptism’ (18.3). The epigrammatic style of the editor strongly suggests that he was an avid reader of Tertullian, who was a master in aphorisms.58 Although the blood-drenched clothes from birth are sometimes mentioned (Horace, Epodes 17.50–2), this seems to be one of the very few passages, if any, in which the washing of Roman women after birth is alluded to.59 Felicitas is pictured as going straight from the midwife, the obstetrix who normally was present at a Roman childbirth,60 to the retiarius, the lowest rank among the gladiators, who would be expected to give the coup de grâce to those martyrs that had survived the animals: so every reader could imagine what her fate would be.61 But Felicitas’ death is also interpreted in a theological manner, although the editor is perhaps less clear here than desirable. He does not mean that Felicitas’ washing is her second baptism, since that would make her being baptised thrice, but it was a widespread belief that martyrdom constituted a second baptism, and that is the belief to which the editor 56 For the amphitheatre, see D.L. Bomgardner, The Story of the Roman Amphitheatre (London and New York, 2000) 128–46; J. Patrick, ‘On the Lost Circus of Aelia Capitolina’, Scripta Classica Israelica 21 (2002) 173–88 at 188. 57 Shaw, Passion of Perpetua, 36 = 314. 58  For the closeness of the editor and Perpetua to Tertullian, see Ameling, ‘Femina Liberaliter Instituta’ and Den Boeft, ‘The Editor’s Prime Objective’. 59  For the scarcity of data, see G. Binder, ‘Geburt II’, in RAC 9 (1976) 43–171. 60 The obstetrix is often mentioned in Roman texts from Plautus onwards, cf. Plautus, Capt. 629, Cistell. 139; Terence, Ad. 353, 618, An. 299, 513; Horace, Epodes 17.49 etc. 61  For the retiarius, see H. Wollmann, ‘Retiarius. Darstellungen auf römischen Tonlampen’, Römische Mitteilungen 32 (1917) 147–68; L. Robert, Hellenica 3 (1946) 151–62 and ‘Une vision de Perpétue martyre à Carthage en 203’, CRAI 1982, 228–76 at 243–6, reprinted in his Opera minora selecta V (Amsterdam, 1989) 791–839; G. Ville, La Gladiature en Occident des origines à la mort de Domitien (Rome, 1981) 424–5; M. Carter, ‘A “doctor secutorum” and the “retiarius” Draukos from Corinth’, ZPE 126 (1999) 262–68; S. Feuser, ‘Secutor gegen Retiarius. Zu einem Tischfuss mit Gladiatorenkampf aus Bulgarien’, in H. Schwarzer and H.-H. Nieswandt (eds), “Man kann es sich nicht prächtig genug vorstellen!” Festschrift für Dieter Salzmann, 2  vols (Münster, 2016) 1.255–62.

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alludes in this passage. 62 In this way we see her martyrdom through a Christian prism and not as the popular entertainment it must have been for many a Carthaginian. In the arena they tried to force the male martyrs to don the outfit of the priests of Saturn, and the women that of the priestesses of the two Cereres.63 As Kathleen Coleman has demonstrated in a classic article, it had become more and more customary in Roman times to dress up criminals as mythological figures, such as ‘Orpheus’ or ‘Daedalus’, for their executions.64 These criminals were sometimes even gorgeously costumed. Plutarch (Moralia 554b) relates: But there are some people, no different from little children, who see criminals in the arena, dressed often in tunics of golden fabric with purple mantles, wearing crowns and doing the Pyrrhic dance, and, struck with awe and astonishment, the spectators suppose that they are supremely happy, until the moment when, before their eyes, the criminals are stabbed and flogged, and that gaudy and sumptuous garb bursts into flames (tr. Coleman).

As the priests of Saturnus and the two Cereres were dressed in red and white, respectively, in ‘gaudily striking outfits’,65 our martyrs would also have been presented to the public in striking costumes. But after a strong protest by Perpetua against this pagan outfit, the military tribune in charge cancelled the dressing up (Passio 18.4–6). According to the editor, the Devil then prepared ‘a very wild cow’, which, as he notes, ‘was un­ usual’. The many African mosaics make that we are well acquainted with the animals that normally performed in the arena, but cows do not appear there, whereas bulls do.66 Perpetua and Felicitas were stripped naked, like Thecla, and their near nudity fitted the Roman custom of stripping their criminals in order to humiliate them. 67 They were then dressed in nets so that the cow could get hold of them more easily: the martyr Blandina from Lyon was also tossed in a

62  See especially Tertullian, De baptismo, 1.16.1; Cyprian, Ad Fortunatum, 4, cf. W. Bähnk, Von der Notwendigkeit des Leidens. Die Theologie des Martyriums bei Tertullian (Göttingen, 2001) 209–20. 63  Passio 18.4. Against all modern editions, the plural Cereres, instead of the singular Cereris, should be received into the text, see this volume, Chapter  25.2. 64  K. Coleman, ‘Fatal Charades: Roman executions staged as mythological enactments’, JRS 80 (1990) 44–73; see also her M. Valerii Martialis Liber Spectaculorum (Oxford, 2006), index s.v. mythological enactments. 65  For the outfits, see Tertullian, De testimonio animae 2.7, De pallio 4.10; M. Leglay, Saturne Africain (Paris, 1966) 370–1 (archaeological evidence); Coleman, ‘Fatal Charades’, 66 (quote). 66  K. Dunbabin, The Mosaics of Roman North Africa (Oxford, 1978) 65–87. 67  Acts of Paul and Thecla 22, 33–4, cf. Coleman, ‘Fatal Charades’, 46–7; D. Potter, ‘Martyrdom as Spectacle’, in R. Scodel (ed.), Theater and Society in the Classical World (Ann Arbor, 1993) 53–88 at 65; A. van den Hoek and J. Hermann, Jr., Pottery, Pavements, and Paradise (Leiden, 2013) 83–84.

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net, and several representations show condemned criminals thrown into the air with their hands tied behind their backs. 68 This spectacle was too much for the public and ‘the crowd was horrified, when they saw that one was a delicate young woman and the other fresh from childbirth with breasts dripping from milk’ (Passio 20.2). That is why they were led away and brought back in free falling clothes. After Perpetua had been tossed by the cow, she fell on her side. She then pulled her clothes straight so that she could cover her thigh and asked for a pin to fasten her disheveled hair. Having restored her appearance, she ‘got up and when she saw Felicitas crushed to the ground, she went to her, gave her a hand and lifted her up. And both stood side by side, and having conquered the cruelty of the people they were recalled to the Gate of Life’ (Passio 20.6). That is the last we hear of Felicitas in the Passio. As in a Western she walked out of the picture through the Gate by which the victorious gladiators left the arena. 69 At first sight the scene is impressive. The problem, though, is that there is a clear literary example. In his Hecuba, Euripides lets the Trojan princess Poly­ xena do her utmost to conceal her female shame when she falls to the ground as she is killed by Pyrrhus: ‘concealing for male eyes what had to be concealed’ (568–70). The motif clearly appealed to Ovid, as in his Metamorphoses (13.479– 80) he lets Polyxena cover her thighs when she is sacrificed by the Greeks, and in his Fasti (2.833–4) Lucretia makes the same gesture. Pliny also knew the motif, since in his Letters (4.11.9) Cornelia, a Vestal virgin condemned to death by Domitian, declaims the same Euripidean verses. In the Greek Anthology (16.150), there is a poem by the early second-century poet of epigrams, Pollianus, on a statue of Polyxena by Polyclitus, who apparently had sculpted her in the same position. Even Clement of Alexandria quotes the same Euripidean verses in his Stromata (2.144.1). The scene, then, was well known and undoubtedly familiar to our editor, who had clearly enjoyed a good literary education.70 It is not surprising, therefore, that the historical reality of this scene has recently been called into doubt.71 Rightly so. The unusual presence of the cow, the imitatio of Polyxena, whose gesture is even trumped by letting Perpetua ask for 68 

Mart. Lugd. 56 (Blandina), cf. L. Robert, Hellenica 8 (Paris, 1950) 58 f. Kyle, Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome (London and New York, 1998) 156; Bomgardner, The Story of the Roman Amphitheatre, 137 (on the likely location of the gate in the Carthaginian amphitheatre). 70  R. Braun, ‘“Honeste cadere”. Un topos d’hagiographie antique’, Bulletin du Centre de Romanistique et de Latinité Tardive (Nice) 1 (1983) 1–12; note also G. Schwarz, ‘Achill und Polyxena in der römischen Kaiserzeit’, Römische Mitteilungen 99 (1992) 265–99; J. Mossman, Wild Justice. A Study of Euripides’ Hecuba (Oxford, 1995) 247–51; P. Linant de Bellefonds, ‘Polyxene’, in LIMC, Suppl. 1 (Düsseldorf, 2009) 430–32; C.J.P. Friesen, ‘Dying like a Woman: Euripides’ Polyxena as Exemplum between Philo and Clement of Alexandria’, GRBS 56 (2016) 623–45. 71  P. Habermehl, Perpetua und der Ägypter oder Bilder des Bösen im frühen afrikanischen Christentum (Berlin, 20042) 226 note  69, who does not elaborate his doubts. 69 D.

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a pin to fasten her hair and the fact that, like Polyxena in the Hecuba (567), Perpetua too shows herself very brave towards her executioner but once again trumps Polyxena even in death by guiding the hand of the nervous gladiator to her throat (Passio 21.9) – does all this not suggest a literary invention by the editor? In his description the editor is probably influenced by two tendencies of his own time. First, the literature of the imperial era – Roman, Greek and Jewish – was much interested in physical suffering and the power to endure it.72 We also see this tendency in the Christian novels, such as the Acts of Paul and Thecla, and in Tertullian, who dedicated special treatises to martyrdom and patientia. It seems evident that the Passio’s editor wanted to impress both the pagan and Christian readers of his composition with his detailed description of the brave endurance of their suffering by both the male and female martyrs. At the same time, the modern reader cannot fail to note that the editor is rather keen on describing the tortures and their erotic aspects. That too was characteristic of contemporary culture. Since the second century, Greek and Roman art and literature, the novel in particular, display increasing fascination with cruelty and sex.73 Our editor combines these ‘aesthetics of horror’ with what the Dutch call ‘emo(tional)porno(graphy)’ to stimulate the interest of the readers, and he has skilfully woven all these aspects of endurance, sex and cruelties into his composition. This impression of literary elaboration, if not straightforward fiction, is strongly supported by the Acta, which are much more ‘matter of fact’ in the description of the execution of the martyrs and therefore also more credible. According to them, the martyrs were led naked into the arena with their hands tied behind their backs (see above). Perpetua and her teacher Saturus were devoured by lions (Acta I.9.3), whose inclination to savage behaviour is well known,74 Saturninus was mauled by bears and subsequently finished off with a sword, and Revocatus and Felicitas, who were also mentioned together at the arrest (Passio 2.1; Acta I.1.1), were killed by leopards (Acta I 9.3–4). All three animals are familiar from African mosaics and African Red Slip Ware pottery,75 and the detail of the bear is undoubtedly authentic: on an African mosaic, bears 72  See the important studies of J. Perkins, The Suffering Self (Londen and New York, 1995) and B. Shaw, ‘Body/Power/Identity: Passions of the Martyrs’, JECS 4 (1996) 269–312; add C. Spicq, Notes de lexicographie néo-testamentaire. Supplément (Göttingen, 1982) 658–65; this volume, Chapter  22.3. 73  S. Goldhill, Foucault’s Virginity (Cambridge, 1995) 1–45; R. von den Hoff, ‘Horror and Amazement: Colossal mythological statue groups and the new rhetoric of images in late second and early third century Rome’, in B. Borg (ed.), Paideia: The World of the Second Sophistic (Berlin and New York, 2004) 105–29; D. Frankfurter, ‘Martyrology and the Prurient Gaze’, JECS 17 (2009) 215–45. 74 Coleman, Liber Spectaculorum, 87, 163. 75  Van den Hoek and Hermann, Jr., Pottery, Pavements, and Paradise, 65–106 (with many illustrations).

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have the telling names of Crudelis, ‘Cruel’, and Omicida, ‘Murderer’.76 In the Passio (19.4) Saturus says that he hates the bear and hopes for a bite by a leopard. Undoubtedly, he knew the behaviour of these animals, since they regularly performed in the Roman arena,77 and he had seen or heard that leopards do not play with their victims like bears do. Unfortunately, we do not hear anything about Felicitas’ funeral, but later Christians had not forgotten her. According to the late fifth-century bishop Victor of Vita (Historia persecutionis 1.3.9), she was buried together with Perpetua in the basilica maiorum of Carthago, where indeed an inscription has been found with her name and those of her fellow martyrs.78 It is not handed down, though, if this was the place of her original burial.79 It is time to come to a close. As I hope to have shown, the Passio and Acta throw a unique light on young Christian women in North Africa. One of these, Felicitas, we have discussed in detail. It is striking that she seems to have been a much more modest person than Perpetua who plays such a prominent role in the whole process. Yet her brief life shows how within a small group of people with a strong conviction a situation can arise that they no longer attach much value to their own lives. In the end, though, it remains hard to understand het specific choice, as we know too little about her personal life. As so often with persons from the ancient world, their inner lives remain an enigma to us.80

76 Dunbabin, The Mosaics of Roman North Africa, 73; Coleman, Liber Spectaculorum, 87–89; M. Bettini, Voci. Antropologia sonora del mondo antico (Turin, 2008) 84–88. 77 Dunbabin, The Mosaics of Roman North Africa, 116–7. For all animals, see also Coleman, Liber Spectaculorum, index s.v. 78  For this and other inscriptions with (possibly) Felicitas’ name, see W. Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions and Testimonia (Macon, 1997) 105–17. 79  For the early Christian burials, see A.M. Yasin, ‘Funerary Monuments and Collective Identity: From Roman Family to Christian Community’, Art Bulletin 87 (2005) 433–57; É. Rebillard, The Care of the Dead in Late Antiquity (Ithaca and London, 2009). 80  I am most grateful to Jan den Boeft and Ton Hilhorst for comments, corrections and information. Candida Moss kindly and insightfully corrected my English.

Chapter 24

The Motivation of Martyrs: Perpetua and the Palestinians There is hardly a week going by that we do not hear of suicide bombers in the Middle East. Evidently, there are plenty of people who are willing to die for their cause. Such a bomber is considered a ‘witness’, shahîd, a literal Arabic translation from the Greek word martyr. There ‘can be little doubt that this concept – and this word – was absorbed directly from Greek during those early centuries of Islam when Christian churches still flourished in Palestine and Greek was still spoken’.1 In this chapter, I will examine the motivation of some Christian martyrs, who voluntarily died for their faith in the amphitheatre of Carthage on 7 March 203. Within a decade after their executions (§  1), an unknown editor assembled both the report of the prison vision of Saturus, the leader of the group, and the prison diary of the young woman Perpetua into one document, the Passio sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis (henceforth: Perpetua). In the process he slightly edited these writings, added an introduction and gave an account of their deaths.2 The text has come down to us in a Greek and Latin version.3 The standard editions of Perpetua do not rate the Greek version very highly.4 Yet in some passages it clearly offers better readings than our most important Latin manuscript, the eleventh-century Codex Casinensis 204 MM.5 Although the Greek 1  G.W. Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome (Cambridge, 1995) 20. For the early history of the Muslim views, see A.J. Wensinck, The Oriental Doctrine of Martyrs, Mededelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie, Afdeling Letterkunde, 53, Serie A, 6 (Amsterdam, 1921) 147–74; E. Kohlberg, Medieval Muslim Views of Martyrdom, ibidem, NR 60 (1997) 281–307; T. Seidensticker, ‘Martyrdom in Islam’, Awraq. Estudios sobre el mundo árabe e islámico contemporáneo 19 (1998) 63–77 and ‘Die Transformation des christlichen Märtyrerbegriffs im Islam’, in W. Ameling (ed.), Märtyrer und Märtyrerakten (Stuttgart, 2002) 137–48; M. Hess, ‘Mehr als Worte sagen: Etymologische Betrachtungen zum Märtyrerbegriff des Islams’, Orientalia Suecana 55 (2006) 41–57. 2  For a full bibliography of the Passio, see this volume, Chapter  2 2, Introduction. 3  It is a pity that our text has not been taken into account in his discussion of Greek in North Africa by J.N. Adams, Bilingualism and the Latin Language (Cambridge, 2003) 220– 21. 4  C.I.M.I. van Beek, Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis I (Nijmegen, 1936); J. Amat, Passion de Perpétue et de Félicité suivi des Actes (Paris, 1996); T.J. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity (Oxford, 2012); M. Formisano, La Passione di Perpetua e di Felicita (Milano, 20152). 5  See the important review of Amat’s edition by C. Mazzucco, Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa 36 (2000) 157–67.

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version was transmitted in only one tenth- or eleventh-century manuscript, the Codex Hierosolymitanus 1, it evidently goes back to a Latin Vorlage from before Late Antiquity. In other words, it may well be that both the Latin and the Greek version go back to a manuscript(s) with a better text than we possess now. 6 It is my aim to present and analyse the two chapters (Perpetua 17–18) that report the penultimate day of the Christian martyrs (§  1) and the preparations before their actual execution (§  2), as they provide some insight into the motivation of these Christians for bearing their terrible fate. Given Hans Kippenberg’s interest in ‘criminal religion’ it may be appropriate to briefly compare the Christian martyrs from Carthage with the Palestinian suicide bombers (§  3).7 Admittedly, he and Kocku von Stuckrad discuss Muslim suicide bombers in their introduction into Religionswissenschaft, but they do not really go beyond Lebanon in the 1980s. 8 I have chosen to focus on the Palestinians, as they are so much in the news today.9 At the same time, we should also realise that suicide bombers have to be contextualised in place and time. Modern studies often lump Iranians, Lebanese, Saudis and Palestinians together,10 but a closer look shows considerable differences between them. The Shiite Iranians organised mass ‘suicides’ of boy soldiers in the war against Iraq in the 1980s.11 From the early 1980s the Iranians also influenced the Shiite Lebanese, who were the first to introduce the video, to use women and to organise individual suicide bombers on a systematic basis, but their attacks had virtually come to a halt in the middle of the 1990s.12 In numbers the Saudis are by far the least represented, but they are the most prominent ‘bombers’ through their spectacular suicide attack, the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. Their case is really in need of a special investigation, as they did not suffer from Israel or from an arch-enemy like Iraq. Saudis also constituted by far the largest contingent of the Muslims that came to 6  For the text, see also my observations in this volume, Chapters 22.1 and 26. Glen Bowersock’s comment (per email of 5–1-2003): ‘I note near the end (of my ‘Perpetua’) that you admit that the Greek translator made substantial contributions of his own in the matter of sports vocabulary. How many translators do that kind of thing?’ also suggests to me that our Latin tradition seems to go back to a better text than we have now. 7  This chapter originally appeared in a Festschrift for Hans Kippenberg, my predecessor in Groningen. 8  H. Kippenberg and K. von Stuckrad, Einführung in die Religionswissenschaft (Munich, 2003) 175–83. 9  That is, at the time of the original version of this chapter, which was written in 2003. 10  See, for example, C. Reuter, Mein Leben ist eine Waffe. Selbstmordattentäter – Psychogramm eines Phänomens (Munich, 2002); F. Khosrokavar, Les nouveaux martyrs d’Allah (Paris, 2002). 11  W. Schmucker, ‘Iranische Märtyrertestamente’, Die Welt des Islams 27, 4 (1987) 185–249; I. Brown, Khomeini’s Forgotten Sons. The Story of Iran’s Boy Soldiers (London, 1990); F. Khosrokhavar, ‘Le martyre révolutionnaire en Iran’, Social Compass 43 (1996) 83–100 and Les nouveaux martyrs d’Allah, 115–73; Reuter, Mein Leben ist eine Waffe, 58–87. 12 Khosrokavar, Les nouveaux martyrs d’Allah, 228–31; Reuter, Mein Leben ist eine Waffe, 88–134.

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Afghanistan in order to support the Taliban, and more than ninety-seven percent of educated Saudis supported Al-Qaida after 9/11.13 Consequently, they clearly constitute a special case, which probably cannot be separated from the extremely heavy stress on an orthodox, if not reactionary, form of Islam in their education.14 At the same time, many of the World Trade attackers came via Europe, examples of the trans-national neo-umma (a ‘virtual Islam’?) that internet and television have been fashioning in the last decades.15 This leaves us, finally, with the Palestinians to whom we will come back in our third section. But let us now turn first to the Christian martyrs.

1.  The penultimate day In the previous chapters of Perpetua the editor reported about Perpetua and Saturus on the basis of their own writings, but he also provided a detailed account of their fellow martyr Felicitas’ giving birth in prison to a girl (15). Unfortunately, both the basis for his report and the conversation between Perpetua and the tribune in charge of the prisoners (16) remain unclear. Yet his account of the martyrs’ execution gives the impression that he may have been an eye-witness, and he may well have been one of those Christians who regularly came to visit his fellow brothers and sisters in prison (3.8, 9.1), and even had dinner with them (16). So what does he tell us of their penultimate day? Even on the penultimate day they directed remarks to the crowd with the same steadfastness (viz. as Perpetua: 16.1), when they had that last dinner that is called ‘the free dinner’ (as far as they were concerned they did not celebrate the ‘free dinner’ but the agape): threatening them with God’s judgment, stressing the successful outcome (felicitatem) of their martyrdom and ridiculing the curiosity (curiositatem) of the onlookers. Saturus said: (2) ‘Is tomorrow not enough for you? Why are you so eager to see what you dislike? Friends today, but enemies tomorrow! But take careful note of our faces so that you will recognize us on that (already mentioned) day’. Thus all departed from there, speechless with admiration, and many of them began to believe. (17)

The martyrs, then, celebrated their penultimate day with a special meal, the cena libera. Given their performance on their final day in the company of bestiarii, the gladiators who fought against wild beasts, the custom of this ‘free meal’

13  See Khosrokavar, Les nouveaux martyrs d’Allah, 274–5; E. Sciolino, New York Times, 27 January 2002, A8, respectively. 14  M. Prokop, ‘Saudi Arabia: The politics of education’, Orient 42 (2002) 559–82 and ‘Education in Saudi-Arabia – The Challenge of Reforming the System and Adapting the Message’, International Affairs 79 (2003) 77–90: E. Abdella Doumato, ‘Manning the Barricades: Islam according to Saudi Arabia’s School Texts’, The Middle East Journal 57 (2003) 230–47. 15  See the perceptive observations of Khosrokavar, Les nouveaux martyrs d’Allah, 233– 327.

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may well have come from the world of these gladiators.16 Amat (ad loc.) suggests that the qualification liber hints at the Roman god Liber/Bacchus, but there is no reason to follow her, since Liber played no role of any importance in the world of the gladiators.17 According to Tertullian (Apol. 42.5), gladiators consumed their food in public, and it seems that this custom had also been introduced for the condemned, as evidently everybody was free to come and look at them. However, we should probably not imagine this meal as the height of culinary expertise, since Tertullian (De spectaculis 12.6) also mentions that it consisted of puls, a kind of porridge that once had been the main staple food of the ancient Romans. The editor contrasts this meal with the simplicity of the agape, or dilectio, as Tertullian (Apol. 39.16) translates it – a simplicity that is also stressed by him when discussing pagan meals. The agape was a special meal that enhanced early Christian sociability, but that was already on the way out in Perpetua’s time. Tertullian mentions that the Christians invited the poor to join this meal, and this custom may have contributed to the presence of a crowd.18 However, the presence of the onlookers was clearly not appreciated by the future martyrs, who warned them of the coming Judgment.19 The theme returns several times in the chapters 17.2 and 18.7–8 (§  3), and it demonstrates their confidence in the successful outcome of their martyrdom; in this particular context, the choice of the term felicitas can hardly be separated from the presence of Felicitas amongst them.20 In other words, they were certain that they would not lapse at the very last minute. Whereas the theme of the Last Judgment is hardly surprising, we may be puzzled by the martyrs’ ridiculing of the onlookers’ curiositas. Musurillo translates the term with ‘curiosity’, Chiarini with ‘vana curiosità’ and Amat with ‘curiosité’. Yet, surely, to reproach the onlookers with being ‘nosy’ after having threatened them with the Last Judgment is a bit of a letdown. We will therefore look in a different direction. The word curiositas was perhaps invented by Cicero (Ad Atticum 2.12.2), but it probably was the African Apuleius who re-intro16  Petronius 26.7; Plutarch, Mor. 1099B; Apuleius, Met. 4.13; Tertullian, Apol. 42.5; Cyprian, Ep.  31.1.2 with G.W. Clarke ad loc. 17  But see this volume, Chapter  25 on c. 17. 18  For the custom in the time of Perpetua, see Tertullian, Ad martyras 2, De oratione 28, De baptismo 9.4, De ieiuniis 17; E. Dekkers, Tertullianus en de geschiedenis der liturgie (Brussels and Amsterdam, 1947) 48; H. Pétré, Caritas (Louvain, 1948) 64–5; W.-D. Hauschild, ‘Agapen I’, in TRE 1 (Berlin and New York, 1977) 748–53. 19  For the theme, see M.L. Ricci, ‘Topica pagana e topica cristiana negli Acta martyrum’, Atti dell’Academia Toscana di scienze e Lettere, La Columbaria 28 (1963–64) 35–122 at 89 ff.; this volume, Chaptere 2.5. 20  For such word-play, see C. Mohrmann, Études sur le Latin des Chrétiens I (Rome, 19612) 293–96; G.J.M. Bartelink, ‘Sur les allusions aux noms propres chez les auteurs grecs chrétiens’, VigChris 15 (1961) 32–39; J. den Boeft and J.N. Bremmer, ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae IV’, VigChris 45 (1991) 105–22 at 114 f.

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duced the word into Latin in his Metamorphoses, which he wrote only a few decades before the turn of the third century.21 In his work, curiosity repeatedly occurs as a quality of a crowd that flocks to see a spectacle.22 However, this meaning hardly fits the context and we note therefore that the Greek periergia for the Latin curiositas points to a philosophic background. It is in this context that Tertullian repeatedly stresses the stupida curiositas of the philosophers (Ad Nationes 2.4.19) and opposes the Christian simplicitas veritatis to the curiositas of the heretics (Adversus Marcionem 2.21.2). Curiositas leads to meddling in astrology and magic (De idololatria 9.1) and is even used by Tertullian as a synonym of superstitio (De praescriptione haereticorum 40). In short, the good Christian should abandon omnem libidinem curiositatis (De praescriptione 14.2). It is, I suggest, in this direction that the reproach of curiositas by the future martyrs went. The onlookers had not made the right religious choice and they should abandon their pagan practices.23 To these general reproaches, Saturus added several other remarks that once again illustrate the ironic, if not sarcastic, temper that he had also displayed in his vision (13.3). His expression hodie amici, cras inimici is a variation on the opposition hodie/cras that was popular among the Romans and that we can also find in Tertullian.24 He closed his tirade with the exhortation to carefully note their faces so that they would recognise them in die illo. Undoubtedly, he meant that they would recognise them on the day of the Last Judgment when the martyrs would be on the right side, whereas their visitors were doomed to go to hell. His words reflect the Christian belief that on that fateful day the martyrs would be members of the heavenly court that would judge the judges that had condemned them – a thought that must have given some satisfaction to the martyrs.25 In her translation, Chiarini refers to 2 Timothy 4.8 for the expression, but the Vulgata has in illa die, which is slightly different. In that text the expression 21  See my discussion in ‘The Novel and the Apocryphal Acts: Place, Time and Readership’, in H. Hofmann and M. Zimmerman (eds), Groningen Colloquia on the Novel IX (Groningen, 1998) 157–180 at 170 f. 22 Apuleius, Met. 3.2, 4.16.28–9, 10.19. For a good discussion and exhaustive bibliography, see B.L. Hijmans Jr. et al., Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses IX (Groningen, 1995) 362– 79. 23  For Tertullian and curiositas see A. Labhardt, ‘Curiositas. Notes sur l’histoire d’un mot et d’une notion’, Museum Helveticum 17 (1960) 213–24 (good on the Greek background); J.-C. Fredouille, Tertullien et la conversion de la culture antique (Paris, 1972) 411–42; L.F. Pizzolato, ‘Tertulliano e la dialettica’, in Paradoxos politeia. Studi patristici in onore di Giuseppe Lazzati (Milano, 1979) 145–77 at 154 note  56 (bibliography); note also R. Horka, ‘Curiositas ductrix: Die negative und positive Beziehung des hl. Augustinus zur Neugierde’, SP 70 (2013) 601–09 (with good bibliography). 24  Cf. Cicero, Letters to Atticus, 13.30.1; Horace, Epist. 1.16.33; Ovid, Remedia Amoris 93; Martial 11.65.6; Tertullian, De praescriptione haereticorum 41; this volume, Chapter  25 on c. 17. 25 Tertullian, Ad martyras 2.4: Iudex exspectatur, sed vos estis de iudicibus ipsis iudicaturi; Hippolytus, In Danielem 2.37.

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means ‘that famous day’, whereas in our passage the anaphoric position of ille (in die illo) seems to refer back to what the group already said about the iudicium Dei (17.1), when they must have also spoken about the events to be expected on the Day of Judgment. Both the words of Saturus and, presumably, the behaviour of the group left the spectators, in the words of the editor, adtoniti, literally ‘thunderstruck’.26 It is a very strong expression, and it is therefore understandable that, again according to the editor, ‘many of them came to believe’. Bastiaensen (ad loc.) considers this ‘una pia esagerazione’ or ‘un motivo topico’. There is undoubtedly a truth in his scepticism, as the editor derived these words from the New Testament where the same expression is used three times (John 11.45, 12.42; Acts 4.4). Yet we should be careful with a judgment derived from our own time. Whoever looks at the growth of the Christian Church in the first three centuries must wonder for what reasons pagans decided to abandon their own beliefs and to join the Christian community.27 As Tertullian himself already observed, semen est sanguis Christianorum (Apol. 50.13). The editor may well have exaggerated, but it was precisely this kind of Christian behaviour that must have greatly contributed to the growth of the Church.

2.  The preparations for the execution Perpetua had already told us that the martyrs would fight on their final day in a munere castrensi (7.9). The expression munus castrense is unique and perhaps even an idiosyncratic coinage by Perpetua herself. The castra implies a military camp, and Perpetua seems to have been so intimidated by her stay among the soldiers that she suspected she was to be executed in the amphitheatre of the military camp that perhaps was situated near modern Bordj Djehid.28 Instead the execution took place in the impressive amphitheatre on the west side of the city.29 The munus meant a day of gladiatorial games and fights against animals, the so-called venationes.30 Originally, the two events had been separate, but at least since Hadrian they had become combined.31 26 

See also this volume, Chapter  25 on c. 17. For the rise of Christianity and conversions, see J.N. Bremmer, The Rise of Christianity through the Eyes of Gibbon, Harnack and Rodney Stark (Groningen, 20102) 50–51, 64–65; this volume, Chapter 12. 28  W. Elliger, ‘Karthago’, in RAC 19 (2001) 229–84 at 254 and the map on p.  231–2. For such military amphitheatres see G. Ville, La gladiature en Occident des origines à la mort de Domitien (Rome, 1981) 214. 29 D.L. Bomgardner, The Story of the Roman Amphitheatre (London and New York, 2000) 128–46; Elliger, ‘Karthago’, 238. 30  A. Hönle, ‘Munus, munera III’, in Der neue Pauly 8 (2000) 486–94. 31  M. Buonocore, ‘Munera e venationes adrianei nel 119 d. C.’, Latomus 44 (1985) 173–77. Such venationes were especially suited for and popular in Africa, cf. A. van den Hoek and 27 

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Apparently, Perpetua had also provided the date of their final day: natale tunc Getae Caesaris, the birthday of Caesar Geta, the second son of the ruling emperor Septimius Severus, which was probably 7 March 203. However, the sentence is informative in two other aspects as well. First, the word tunc must have been inserted by the editor and thus demonstrates that he did not copy out Perpetua’s diary literally but at least edited her words to some extent.32 And secondly, this tunc provides us with the terminus ante quem of the composition of Perpetua, since it implies that the editor composed his report before the death of Geta, who was murdered by his brother Caracalla on 26 December 211. As traces of Geta’s existence were assiduously removed after his death,33 and the clausulae point to the beginning of the third century, we may safely date Per­ petua to the years before Geta’s murder.34 So what happened on this final day? The day of their victory dawned, and they proceeded from their prison to the amphitheatre as if it was to heaven: joyful, gracefully looking, trembling, if at all, with joy rather than fear. (2) Perpetua followed with calm face and step, as a lady (matrona) of Christ, as a favourite of God, forcing everybody to lower their gaze through the vigour of her eyes. (3) Similarly, Felicitas, glad that she had survived giving birth so that she could fight the beasts, from blood to blood, from midwife to gladiator (retiarius), ready to be washed after birth, in a second christening. (4) And when they had been led through the gate and forced to put on outfits – the men into that of the priests of Saturnus, but the women into that of the consecrated maidens of the Cereres (Cererum) – that noble woman Perpetua 35 has steadfastly offered resistance right until the end, (5) for she said: ‘That is why we came to this of our own free will, so that our freedom would not be compromised. That is why we surrendered our life, that we would do no such thing. We agreed that with you.’ (6) Injustice acknowledged justice: the military tribune gave in. As they were, so they would simply be brought into the arena. (7) Perpetua began to sing a song of victory: she was already treading on the head of the Egyptian. Revocatus, Saturninus and Saturus threatened the onlooking crowd. (8) Then when they came within sight of Hilarianus, they said to Hilarianus while gesturing with their hands and heads: ‘You us, but God you!’ J. Hermann, Jr., Pottery, Pavements, and Paradise (Leiden, 2013) 407–09; M. Mackensen, ‘Die Tierhetze (venatio) des Spielgebers Rufius Festus auf spätantiken nordafrikanischen Sigil­lata­ platten mit Reliefdekor’, Kölner Jahrbuch 47 (2014) 237–60. 32  For such examples, see T.J. Heffernan, ‘Philology and authorship in the Passio Sancta­ rum Perpetuae et Felicitatis’, Traditio 50 (1995) 315–25, to be read with the comments by F. Dolbeau, RÉAug 42 (1996) 312 f. 33 For Geta’s birth, death and damnatio memoriae, see T. Barnes, Tertullian (Oxford, 19852) 263–65; A. Mastino, ‘L’erasione del nome di Geta dalle iscrizioni nel quadro della propaganda politica alla corte di Caracalla’, Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’Università di Cagliari N.S.  2 (1978–79) 47–81; H. Heinen, ‘Herrscherkult im römischen Ägypten und damnatio memoriae Getas: Überlegungen zum Berliner Severertondo und zu Papyrus Oxyrhynchus XII 1449’, Römische Mitteilungen 98 (1991) 263–98; F. Krüpe, Die Damnatio memoriae: über die Vernichtung von Erinnerung. Eine Fallstudie zu Publius Septimius Geta (198–211 n. Chr.) (Gutenberg, 2011). 34  See also Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, 60–78. 35  With the Greek text and E, I follow Bastiaensen in accepting the name of Perpetua into the text: another example where the Greek text is to be preferred above that of A.

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At this the exasperated crowd demanded that they be scourged by a line of venatores. And they certainly congratulated themselves that they had obtained even a share in the Lord’s sufferings. (18) (9)

The day started early. In antiquity, shows normally had to end before dusk, and thus started at a time that would be unthinkable for modern entertainment. In Roman games, the damnati ad bestias performed in the morning, whereas in the afternoon the gladiatorial games proper took place; similarly, in the apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla (30), Thecla was fetched at dawn for the combat with the animals.36 The editor notes how glad the martyrs were and he even stresses the expression on their faces.37 Musurillo translates vultu decori with ‘with calm faces’, Chiarini with ‘pieni di dignità’ and Amat with ‘le visage serein’. The last version approaches the Latin probably best, as decorus means ‘handsome, comely’ but also ‘conferring honour, noble’. In any case, Chiarini is wrong not to point to the face. The editor probably wanted to stress that the faces of the future martyrs in no way betrayed any anxiety but, on the contrary, demonstrated their nobility. However united they may have been, the group still displayed a certain hierarchy in their marching order, as sequebatur Perpetua (‘Perpetua followed’).38 Musurillo translates these words with ‘Perpetua went along’, but this misjudges the meaning of the text. Although not stated explicitly, the male martyrs apparently went in front, whereas Perpetua and Felicitas followed them. Given the exceptional nature of her diary, Perpetua naturally has become the focus of most modern investigations into the martyrdom, and we perhaps expect that the ancient Christians also saw it that way. Yet the case is not that simple. When relating their arrest, the editor gave their names in the following order: Revocatus and Felicitas, Saturninus and Secundulus, and, only finally, Perpetua (2.1); both enumerations of the group by the abbreviated Acta (1.1) also mention the female martyrs after the male ones. And when the editor reports the start of their actual execution, he first relates the sufferings of Saturninus, Revocatus and Saturus (in that order: 19) before coming to Perpetua and Felicitas (20). Finally, the editor first relates the death of Saturus and his group (21.1–8) and closes with the one of Perpetua (21.9). It is not surprising, then, that the early fifth-century African Liber genealogus has the order Saturus, Saturninus, Revocatus, Felicitas and Bibia Perpetua, and a Late Antique Carthaginian inscrip-

36 Ville, Gladiature, 393–4; K. Coleman, ‘Fatal Charades: Roman executions staged as mythological enactments’, JRS 80 (1990) 44–73 at 55. 37  For the hilaritas of martyrs, see this volume, Chapter  2 2.3. 38  For the public performance of female martyrs, see also the observations by E. Prinzivalli, ‘La martire cristiana fra dimensione pubblica e privata: momenti di una conflittualità’, Rudiae 12 (2000) 155–70.

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tion Saturus, Saturninus, Rebocatus and Secundulus in line 2 and 3, with Felicitas and Perpetua only in line 4.39 The same order is also apparent in the titles of the manuscripts of Perpetua.40 Although most of them miss the beginning and/or the title, the Codex Einsidlensis 250 (c. XII) has the title Passio sanctorum Revocati Saturni Perpetuae et Felicitatis and a lost codex Laureshamensis carries the title Passio sancti Sa­ turnini et sancti Saturis, Felicitatis et Perpetuae. Among the abbreviated Acta of group I, the Bruxellensis 9119 (c. XII) carries the title Passio ss. Saturi sociorumque eius, whereas from the abbreviated Acta of group II, the elder manuscripts, such as the Monacensis 4554 (c. VIII–IX), the Monacensis 22240 (c. XII) and the Parisiensis 5593 (c. XI), carry the title Pasio ss. martyrum Saturi, Saturnini, Revocati, Perpetuae et Felicitatis. The names of the female martyrs perhaps appeared in front in a list of martyrs on a late sixth-century Carthaginian mosaic, but if so, only –tas has survived of their names; it is the names of Saturus and Saturninus at the end that suggests the restoration of the female martyrs here.41 Otherwise, it is the Greek manuscript that mentions only Perpetua by name in the title, just as some later versions of the abbreviated Acta have Perpetua and Felicitas as the protagonists of the martyrdom.42 The ‘marching order’ of the martyrs, then, reflected the importance attached to men and women in the ancient African Church. Yet despite this order, the editor clearly pays much more attention to the two female martyrs than to the male ones, with the exception of Saturus. Evidently, the behaviour of Perpetua and Felicitas impressed him to such an extent that in this respect he was able to rise above the gender prejudices of his milieu and time. The description of Perpetua is not totally clear in our textual tradition. Musurillo, Bastiaensen and Amat print Van Beek’s lucido vultu et placido incessu, and it is true that Latin often combines vultus and incessus in a description.43 Yet I have been unable to find the combination lucidus vultus, whereas placidus ingressus can at least be paralleled with placidus gradus.44 That is why I prefer to 39 T. Mommsen, Monumenta Germaniae Historicae, Auctores Antiquissimi 9 (Berlin, 1892) 195; CIL 8, suppl. 4.25038 = ICKarth 2.1 = W. Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions and Testimonia (Macon, 1997) 105–10, cf. F. Dolbeau, RÉAug 48 (2002) 367–8, who convincingly refutes the interpretation of line 4 as felicitas perpetua by J. Divjak and W. Wischmeyer, ‘Perpetua felicitate oder Perpetua und Felicitas? Zu ICKarth 2, 1’, Wiener Studien 114 (2001) 613–27. Dolbeau also notes the priority of the male martyrs and my collection of passages builds on his. 40  For the manuscripts, see Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua, 375–430. 41  For text and discussion, see Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, 112–3, who also suggests that their names appeared at front in a sixth-century mural ‘on the wall of a baptistery in the district of Sayda (Sainte-Monique)’ (115–6). 42  For information on the manuscripts and the groups of abbreviated Acta, see Amat, Passion, 84–90, 272–76. 43 Cicero, Leg. agr. 2.13, Pro Sestio 17; Ovid, Met. 11.636; Seneca, Ep.  114.22. 44  Phaedrus 2.7.6; Pliny, Pan. 30.4; Apuleius, Met. 11.12.

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read with the manuscripts B, C and E placido vultu et pedum incessu, as the latter expression was also used by Cyprian (De habitu virginum 13). At the same time, we are struck by the exaltation of Perpetua: matrona Christi and Dei delicata are no mean terms,45 and it is perhaps not chance that the Greek version lacks the latter. Perpetua’s self-confidence is also given expression by the editor, when he notices that the crowd lowered its gaze through the vigor of her eyes, whereas contemporary upper-class women normally lowered their gaze when meeting that of a male.46 As Perpetua’s battle in the arena demonstrated (below), she did not conform to customary female behaviour.47 In this case, she exhibited more manly behaviour than most males would have done in a similar situation. Felicitas too receives similar attention from the editor. In the same epigrammatic style that we already encountered, she is pictured as going straight from midwife, the obstetrix that normally was present at a Roman birth,48 to retiarius, the lowest rank among the gladiators, who would be expected to give the coup de grâce to those martyrs that had survived the animals.49 Although the blood-drenched clothes from a birth are sometimes mentioned (Horace, Epodes 17.50–2), this seems to be one of the very few passages, if any, where the washing of Roman women after birth is alluded to.50 Unfortunately, the editor is perhaps less clear here than desirable. He does not mean that Felicitas’ washing is her 45  Musurillo translates matrona with ‘wife’, but in Apuleius it can also mean ‘lady of good reputation’, cf. Hijmans Jr., Apuleius Madaurensis, Metamorphoses Book IX, 206. This meaning of matrona comes too short in P. Grimal, ‘Matrona (les lois, les moeurs et le langage)’, in R. Braun (ed.), Hommage à Jean Granarolo = Annales de la Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines de Nice 50 (1985) 195–203. 46  Chariton 2.5; Xenophon of Ephesus 6.6, 8.4. Valerius Maximus 8.10.1 ext. stresses the vigor of Demosthenes’ eyes: acerrimum vigorem oculorum. 47  For an interesting analysis of this detail within the wider context of martyrdom, see K. Waldner, ‘“Was wir also gehört und berührt haben, verkünden wir auch euch…”. Zur narrativen Technik der Körperdarstellung im Martyrium Polycarpi und der Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis’, in B. Feichtinger and H. Seng (eds), Die Christen und der Körper. Aspekte der Körperlichkeit in der Spätantike (Munich and Leipzig 2004) 29–74; note also the illuminating discussion by H.O. Maier, ‘Early Christian Martyrology, Imperial Thirdspace and Mimicry: Taking the Spatial Turn to the Arena’, in S. Rau et al. (eds), Space Time of the Imperial, Spatio Temporality/ RaumZeitlichkeit 1 (Berlin, 2016) 354–84. 48 The obstetrix is often mentioned in Roman texts from Plautus onwards, cf. Plautus, Capt. 629, Cistell. 139; Terence, Ad. 353, 618, Andria 299, 513; Horace, Epodes 17.49 etc. 49  For the retiarius, see H. Wollmann, ‘Retiarius. Darstellungen auf römischen Ton­lam­ pen’, Römische Mitteilungen 32 (1917) 147–68; L. Robert, Hellenica 3 (1946) 151–62 and ‘Une vision de Perpétue martyre à Carthage en 203’, CRAI 1982, 228–76 at 243–6, reprinted in his Opera minora selecta V (Amsterdam, 1989) 791–839; Ville, Gladiature, 424–25; M. Carter, ‘A doctor secutorum and the retiarius Draukos from Corinth’, ZPE 126 (1999) 262–68 and ‘(Un)dressed to Kill: Viewing the Retiarius’, in J. Edmondson and A. Keith (eds), Roman Dress and the Fabrics of Roman Culture (Toronto, 2008) 113–35; S. Feuser, ‘Secutor gegen Retiarius. Zu einem Tischfuss mit Gladiatorenkampf aus Bulgarien’, in H. Schwarzer and H.-H. Nieswandt (eds), “Man kann es sich nicht prächtig genug vorstellen!” Festschrift für Dieter Salzmann, 2  vols (Münster, 2016) 1.255–62. 50  For the scarcity of data, see G. Binder, ‘Geburt II’, in RAC 9 (1976) 43–171.

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second baptism, since that would make her being baptised thrice. However, it was a widespread belief that martyrdom constituted a second baptism, and that is the belief that the editor alludes to in this passage.51 When they had passed through the gate of the amphitheatre, the men were forced to doff the outfit of the priests of Saturn, and the women that of the maidens of the two Cereres. All recent editors print Cereris, but our oldest manuscript codex Casinensis 204 MM has the plural Cererum. This must have been the original reading, as the Africans often mentioned Ceres in the plural.52 However, within the frame of Roman culture the plural was so unusual that the expression must have soon become normalized by the scribes into the singular. But why did the Romans dress the future martyrs in the attire of the priests of Saturn and the Cereres? Recent discussions of this aspect of our passage concentrate wholly on Saturnus and leave out the Cereres altogether. In the most detailed modern analysis of the human sacrifices to Kronos and Saturnus, Versnel states: ‘According to custom the convicts who were to die in a venatio were made up and dressed like priests of Saturnus, that is to say: they were “devoted” to the god. Thus the law was bypassed and Saturn – in this case the Punic variant – received his human sacrifices.’53 Marcel Leglay (1920–1992), in his authoritative study of the African Saturnus, took yet a slightly different direction.54 Following his compatriot Charles Picard (1883–1965), he interpreted this human sacrifice as a public form of the molchomor or morchomor, the well-known North-African vicarious sacrifice of Punic origin of a lamb instead of a child to Saturn.55 Both authors, though, agree in seeing in the Christian martyrdom the continuation, directly or indirectly, of ancient practices of human sacrifice. Is that correct? It is certainly true that the Carthaginian Saturnus/Kronos was once connected with human sacrifice.56 Yet in this case, it seems impossible to speak of con51  See especially Tert. De baptismo, cf. W. Bähnk, Von der Notwendigkeit des Leidens. Die Theologie des Martyriums bei Tertullian (Göttingen, 2001) 209–20. 52  Cf. P.-A. Février, ‘Le culte des Cereres en Afrique’, Bull. Soc. Antiq. France 1975, 39–43; G. Pugliese Carratelli, ‘Cereres’, La parola del passato 36 (1981) 367–82; J. Gascou, ‘Les sacerdotes Cererum de Carthage’, Antiqités. Africaines 23 (1987) 95–128; A. Drine, ‘Cérès, les “Cereres” et les “sacerdotes magnae” en Afrique: quelques témoignages épigraphiques et littéraires (Tertullien)’, in Y. le Bohec (ed.), L’Afrique, la Gaule, la Religion à l’époque romain. Mélanges Marcel le Glay (Brussels, 1994) 174–84; D. Fishwick, ‘On the Origins of Africa proconsularis. 3, The Era of the Cereres again’, Antiquités Africaines 32 (1996) 13–36. 53  H.S. Versnel, Transition and Reversal in Myth and Ritual (Leiden, 1993) 90–227 at 215. 54  M. Leglay, Saturne Africain (Paris, 1966) 332–41 at 340; somewhat confusingly, the author later called himself Marcel le Glay. 55  The standard formula is: … agnum pro vikario anima pro anima, vita pro vita, sanguine pro sanguine, libens animo reddit, cf. J.-G. Février, ‘Molchomor’, Revue d’Histoire des Religions 144 (1953) 8–18 and ‘Le rite de substitution dans les textes de N’Gaous’, Journal Asiatique 1962, 1–10; S. Brown, Late Carthaginian Child Sacrifice and Sacrifical Monuments (Sheffield, 1991) 29–32. 56  In addition to Versnel, see my ‘Myth and Ritual in Greek Human Sacrifice: Lykaon,

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tinuity of one kind or another. First, human sacrifice to Saturn had long been abolished and had not been practised for several centuries.57 Secondly, human sacrifice to Saturnus consisted of the burning of children and not of adults.58 Thirdly and perhaps most decisively, these interpretations completely ignore the role of the Cereres. I conclude therefore that this line of interpretation is not really helpful in understanding the Carthaginian procedure. Kathleen Coleman has demonstrated, in a classic article,59 that in Roman times it had become more and more customary to dress up criminals as mythological figures, such as ‘Orpheus’ or ‘Daedalus’, for their executions. Contrary to what we might expect from the reports of modern executions, these criminals were sometimes even gorgeously costumed. Plutarch (Moralia 554b) relates: ‘But there are some people, no different from little children, who see criminals in the arena, dressed often in tunics of golden fabric with purple mantles, wearing crowns and doing the Pyrrhic dance, and, struck with awe and astonishment, the spectators suppose that they are supremely happy, until the moment when, before their eyes, the criminals are stabbed and flogged, and that gaudy and sumptuous garb bursts into flames’ (tr. Coleman). As the priests of Saturnus and Ceres were dressed in red and white, respectively, in ‘gaudily striking outfits’, 60 our martyrs were also presented to the public in striking costumes. Apparently, these gods had been chosen less for their religious functions than for the costumes of their priests. It is in line with his previous picture of Perpetua that the editor now lets her represent the group of martyrs in refusing this pagan garb. Evidently, there had been some ‘negotiations’ beforehand between the military and the martyrs; in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses (10.34.3), the military also played an important role in the organisation of the games. The martyrs must have agreed to participate in the munus without obstruction, and the tribune must have agreed to respect their Christian faith. The editor’s comment in introducing him,61 Agnovit iniPolyxena and the case of the Rhodian criminal’, in J.N. Bremmer (ed.), The Strange World of Human Sacrifice (Leuven, 2007) 55–79 at 56–59. 57  Against Birley, ‘Persecutors and Martyrs’, 58 note   27, I cannot believe that in Africa human sacrifice of children could have continued until the middle of the second century AD. 58 Kleitarchos FGrH 137 F 9; Diod. Sic. 5.66.5, 13.86.3; 20.14.6; Curt. Ruf. 4.3.23; Plut. Mor. 171C, 552A, 942C; Tert. Apol. 9.2; Porph. Abst. 2.27. For these much debated sacrifices, see Brown, Late Carthaginian Child Sacrifice; K. Koch, ‘Molek astral’, in A. Lange et al. (eds), Mythos im Alten Testament und seiner Umwelt (Berlin and New York, 1999) 29–50; C. Grottanelli, ‘Ideologie del sacrificio umano: Roma e Cartagine’, Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 1 (1999) 41–59; F. Ruggiero, ‘La testimonianza di Tertulliano, Apologeticum 9, 2–4 sul sacrificio del bambini nell’ambito del culto di Saturno’, ASE 18 (2001) 307–33; J. Lightfoot, Lucian, On the Syrian Goddess (Oxford, 2003) 523–28. 59  Coleman, ‘Fatal Charades’. 60  For the outfits, see Tertullian, De testimonio animae 2.7, De pallio 4.10; Leglay, Saturne Africain, 370–71 (archeological evidence); Coleman, ‘Fatal Charades’, 66 (quotation). 61  Birley, ‘Persecutors and Martyrs’, 62, note  98, notes that no tribune is known from the time of Severus.

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ustitia iustitia, betrays the same epigrammatic style that we already encountered before. He may have been influenced by Tertullian whom he probably knew well. 62 The reactions of the martyrs were perhaps not what the tribune had expected. For once, Perpetua is now mentioned first. She started to sing a psalm which the editor explains by reference to her fourth vision, where she mentioned that she stepped upon the head of her Egyptian opponent (10.11), a reference to the words calcavi illi caput (6.7) in her first vision. 63 Behind these words is Genesis (3.15) in the African version of the Vetus Latina (2.68–9): ipsa (illa) tibi calcabit caput. This text was very popular in martyrological contexts, as the letters of Cyprian and the Passio Fructuosi demonstrate, and clearly well-known in the circle of Perpetua. 64 However, it is probably a sign of the gender relations in the African Church that the males did not sing a psalm, but began to threaten the onlooking crowd. Presumably, they once again threatened with the Last Judgment, just as they threatened the Roman governor Hilarianus in a similar manner. 65 We are not informed exactly where the governor was sitting, but it is likely that his tribunal was at the end of a minor axis of the amphitheatre, which would provide the best position for watching the games.66 The noise and the distance would have drowned the martyrs’ words, so that they had to use motions and gestures (gestu et nutu) to be understood.67 Roman governors did not like to be mocked, and the stern Hilarianus, who had already ordered that Perpetua’s father be beaten (6.5), was probably only too glad to satisfy the crowd’s wish to have the martyrs flogged by the venatores for their insolence. 68 Such a flogging was not unusual, 69 but it is typical of their great love of Christ, which is frequently attested to in the

62  For the editor’s proximity to Tertullian, see W. Ameling, ‘Femina Liberaliter Instituta – Some Thoughts on a Martyr’s Liberal Education’ and J. den Boeft, ‘The Editor’s Prime Objective: Haec in Aedificationem Ecclesiae Legere’, in J.N. Bremmer and M. Formisano (eds), Perpetua’s Passions (Oxford, 2012) 78–102, 169–79, respectively. 63  For Perpetua’s visions, see this volume, Chapter  2 2.4. 64 Cyprian, Ep.   39.2.2: calcatus serpens et obtritus et victus est, 58.9.1: cum serpens calcari a nobis et obteri coeperit; Acta Fructuosi 7.2: diaboli caput calcaverunt; Prudentius, Perist. 14.112–3: haec calcat Agnes ac pede proterit stans et draconis calce premens caput, cf. A.-M. Palmer, Prudentius on the Martyrs (Oxford, 1989) 252. 65  For Hilarianus, see X. Dupuis, ‘Hagiographie antique et histoire: l’exemple de la Passion de Lucius et de Montanus’, RÉAug 49 (2003) 253–65 at 262–3; T. Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography and Roman History (Tübingen, 2010) 304 f. 66 D.L. Bomgardner, ‘The Carthage Amphitheatre: a reappraisal’, American Journal of Archaeology 93 (1989) 85–113 at 89 note  23. 67  For the expression, compare Apuleius, Met. 10.31: gesticulatione nutibus honestis. 68  For a representation of venatores, see Y. Dubois, ‘La venatio d’amphithéâtre: iconographie d’un décor de villa à Yvonand-Mordagne, Suisse’, Revue Archéologique 1999, 35–64. 69 Tert. Ad Nationes 1.18, Ad martyras 5.1.

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reports of martyrs’ deaths,70 that Perpetua’s group interpreted their ordeal as an imitation of the scourging of Jesus (Matthew 27.26; Mark 15.15).71 With this scourging the initial stage of their execution had come to a close. From now on the martyrs were on their own, and each would have to play his or her part in the entertainment of the Carthaginian crowd. Yet the deep faith that had sustained them in their difficult last months would not leave them. The editor of Perpetua could hardly have chosen a more inspiring example for his fellow Christians than these courageous martyrs.

3.  The motivation of martyrs  Let us now turn from a micro-analysis to some more general considerations. It is obvious that there are enormous differences between the early Christian martyrs and the modern Palestinian suicide bombers. For starters, the former were arrested and executed, while the latter kill themselves and usually murder others. The former were often also executed in their own area, whereas the Palestinians usually go to that of the Enemy. Moreover, contemporary Islamic ideologies of martyrdom have been profoundly influenced by modernity and by seeing the West as the Other.72 Yet at the same time there are some striking similarities. Let us first look at the early Christians. Christianity’s rise to power is of course well known in its main lines. Yet it is rare that we get a closer picture of the men and women that saw a new life in this religion and were even prepared to die for it. The Passio and Acta give us a unique insight in the lives of two of them. A modern reader of the fate of these martyrs may perhaps be allowed to think of contemporary female terrorists and suicide bombers. In both cases, we have women who are prepared to die for their convictions, who are praised by their communities and who are held up as examples to be followed. Let us therefore conclude with a few observations on these similarities, although never forgetting the differences. First, the very first female suicide bomber was the seventeen-year old Sana’a Mehaydli, a Christian member of the secular Syrian Social Nationalist Party, who in 1985 targeted a convoy of the Israeli army in Lebanon, killing five soldiers. The first Palestinian female suicide bomber who died and killed on 27 January 2002 was twenty-eight year old Wafa Idris, a well educated paramed70 

See this volume, Chapter  1.1. For the importance of Jesus’ suffering and death for the martyrs, see the many passages collected by G. Buschmann, Das Martyrium des Polykarp (Göttingen, 1998) 84; Bähnk, Von der Notwendigkeit des Leidens, 146–54. 72  See M. Tavakoli-Targhi, ‘Frontline Mysticism and Eastern Spirituality’, ISIM Newsletter 9 (2002) 13 and 38 (with thanks to Peter van der Veer); Khosrokavar, Les nouveaux martyrs d’Allah, 65–88. 71 

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ic.73 Yet, the six Lebanese and eleven Palestinian women who have blown themselves up until 2004 (the original date of this chapter) do not constitute the majority in this respect. Both the Tamil Tigers and Chechens have produced dozens of female suicide bombers,74 while the suicide attacks by the Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK) were even carried out by women in more than half of the cases. Furthermore, Iraq has witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of female suicide bombers in recent years, just like Nigeria with the Boko Haram.75 These data show that nationalist motivations can be just as dangerous as religious ones, if not more so.76 Moreover, they also show that every country has its own cultural and religious values, which may make it easier or more difficult for women to participate in these attacks. Chechen women, for example, are less emancipated than those of the Palestinian areas, and women have been absent from the al-Qaeda attacks until now. Just as North African Christianity was not identical with Christianities elsewhere, so we have always to be attentive to local and global circumstances. In any case, that women should play such a prominent role in these modern resistance movements is not totally surprising. A 1991 study on female terrorists is entitled Shoot the Women First.77 Because of their inferior or less powerful position in society, women terrorists have often been very forceful personalities,78 and the same process seems to have been at work in the group around Perpetua. Second, many martyrs went to their death voluntarily, like Saturus in Per­ petua (4.5). Rodney Stark has entitled his illuminating analysis of Christian martyrs: ‘The Martyrs: Sacrifice as Rational Choice’.79 And indeed, to some 73  B. Victor, Army of Roses: Inside the World of Palestinian Women Suicide Bombers (London, 2004); M. Bloom, ‘Female Suicide Bombers: A Global Trend’, Daedalus 136 (2007) 94– 102; D. Naaman, ‘Brides of Palestine/Angels of Death: Media, Gender, and Performance in the Case of the Palestinian Female Suicide Bombers’, Signs 32 (2007) 933–55. 74  K. Holm, ‘Mini-Bin-Ladin. Radikal: Der tschetschenische Terror ist weiblich’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 19 July 2003, 36; F. Banner, Making Death Visible: Chechen Female Suicide Bombers in an Era of Globalization (Diss. Arizona State University, 2009). 75  For some diverging numbers, see R.A. Pape, Dying to Win. The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (New York, 2005) 208; Y. Schweitzer (ed.), Female Suicide Bombers: Dying for Equality (Tel Aviv, 2006) 8 = http://www.inss.org.il/uploadimages/Import/%28FILE% 291188302013.pdf (accessed on 25-7-2016); M.M. Hafez, Suicide Bombers in Iraq. The Strategy and Ideology of Martyrdom (Washington, 2007); S. Niva, ‘Behind the Surge in Iraqi Women Suicide Bombers’, Foreign Policy in Focus, August 11, 2008, at http://www.fpif.org/ fpiftxt/5455 (accessed on 25–7-2016). Boko Haram: D. Searcey, ‘Boko Haram Turns Female Captives Into Terrorists’, The New York Times, 7 April 2016. 76 For a recent survey, see S.V. Raghavan and V. Balasubramaniyan, ‘Evolving Role of Women in Terror Groups: Progression or Regression?’, Journal of International Women’s Studies 15.2 (2014) 197–211. 77  E. MacDonald, Shoot the Women First (London, 1991). 78 As could also be noticed in the case of the Rote Armee Fraktion in Germany, cf. W. Kraushaar (ed.), Die RAF und der linke Terrorismus (Hamburg, 2006); K. Pflieger, Die Rote Armee Fraktion, RAF: 14.5.1970 bis 20.4.1998 (Baden-Baden, 20072). 79  R. Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton, 1996) 163–89.

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extent at least, martyrdom can be seen as a rational decision, since most martyrs could have escaped by denying their faith or by making a sacrifice to the emperor. Yet martyrdom was not always a well-pondered, rational choice. Some people displayed their solidarity with the martyrs in an impulse and subsequently became martyred themselves;80 clearly, Rational Choice Theory does not explain everything, just as domestic violence or hate killings fall outside that theoretical framework.81 Understandably, the early Church was not too happy with the tendency towards voluntary martyrdom, as too many martyrs could be harmful to its survival and expansion, and the Martyrium Polycarpi (4.3) already polemicises against it.82 Third, modern suicide bombers are often young or younger. The attack by a 57-year old grandmother Fatma Omar A-Najar in November 2005 is the exception that confirms the rule.83 The reason probably is that young people have less invested in house and family; thus they have less to lose than older, more settled people. Moreover, they are still developing their identiy and thus more open for different choices. Admittedly, the age of early Christian martyrs is rarely given, but the Christian group of Saturus evidently consisted of young people (see above), and young Christian martyrs are well attested.84 Fourth, Stark stresses that religious convictions are the more valuable when they are ‘promoted, produced or consumed collectively’.85 And indeed, an important factor in the martyrs’ steadfastness must have been the ruling discourse within their milieu. It is especially in communities or ‘cells’ that a dynamics comes in power that no longer considers the life here on earth worthwhile in comparison with that of the everlasting life. Tracts advocating the value of martyrdom and testimonies about ‘successful’ martyrdoms, going back to the proto-martyr Stephen (Acts 7.58–60), were popular in the early Church, and martyrs were officially remembered from an early stage onwards:86 we would not have had our Passio and Acta otherwise. This discourse must have helped to sustain the faith of the believers under attack, 87 just as the many visits of Christians to their brothers and sisters in prison must have done; in fact, part of this discourse even coincided with pagan discourse of the time that also strongly 80  See, for example, Justin Martyr, 2Apol. 2.19–20; Lyons and Vienne 1.10, 49; Acta Carpi A, 42–44; Passio Eupli 1; Eus. HE 8.9.5. 81  S. Atran, ‘Genesis of Suicide Terrorism’, Science 299 (2003) 1534–39 at 1536. 82  For voluntary martyrs, see the bibliography in Chapter  23, note  9. 83  According to the database in Pape, Dying to Win, 207, the average age of the 278 suicide bombers he could identify was 22.7 years. 84  See this volume, Chapter  2.3. 85 Stark, Rise of Christianity, 172–74. 86 Delehaye, Les Passions des Martyrs, 11–59. 87 Cf. the hunger strikes of IRA-militants and their long tradition of self-sacrifice: G. Sweeney, ‘Irish Hunger Strikes and the Cult of Self-sacrifice’, Journal of Contemporary History 28 (1993) 421–37.

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advocated endurance and patience in the face of suffering.88 In the case of contemporary suicide attacks comparable processes are discernible. Suicide bombers are part of communities where ‘martyrs’ are honoured on posters, murals, web sites, and public exhibits, such as in Palestine. Or they belong to isolated cells in which a specific discourse is promoted, produced and consumed, as was the case with most suicide attacks in the Western world. After their deaths, the bombers are commemorated on the internet by means of web-pages, photos and videos. And like Augustine, imams dedicate sermons to a commemoration of their lives.89 Fifth, there also was an important compensator. This useful term, to be distinguished from this-wordly rewards, has been introduced to indicate rewards in the life to come.90 Such an ‘other-wordly’ reward is also manifest in Perpetua, as our martyrs expect to go straight to heaven after their execution.91 This expectation is manifest in the visions of Perpetua (4) and Saturus (11), but is also demonstrated by the martyrs’ reference to the Last Judgement (17.1, 18.7–8). Evidently, this was a strong belief that helped to motivate their endurance in the face of their terrible tortures and death. Mutatis mutandis, we can find a rational choice, supporting discourse and the promise of Paradise among the Palestinian martyrs, about whom we are much better informed. Investigations have shown that the great majority of the well over 200 suicide missions from 1993 until August 2002 are male,92 unmarried, early twenties, relatively well off, educated, from refugee camps and in general no more religious than the population at large,93 although since December 2001 88  See the important study of B. Shaw, ‘Body/Power/Identiy: Passions of the Martyrs’, JECS 4 (1996) 269–312; add C. Spicq, Notes de lexicographie néo-testamentaire. Supplément (Göttingen, 1982) 658–65; J. Perkins, The Suffering Self (London and New York, 1985); this volume, Chapter  22.3. 89  The importance of the community is emphasized in, among others, F. Khosrokhavar, Les Nouveaux Martyrs d’Allah (Paris, 2002); M. Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks (Philadelphia 2004) and Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century (Philadelphia, 2008); M.M. Hafez, Manufacturing Human Bombs: the Making of Palestinian Suicide Bombers (Washington, 2006); A. Moghadam, The Globalization of Martyrdom: Al ­Qaeda, Salafi Jihad, and the Diffusion of Suicide Attacks (Baltimore, 2008). 90 Stark, Rise of Christianity, 36, 168–69, 171–74. 91  For this early Christian belief, see this volume, Chapters 22.4.1 and 27. 92  Although there are now an increasing amount of females amongst them, cf. Reuter, Mein Leben ist eine Waffe, 239–40; S. Ghazali, ‘The story of Hiba, 19, a suicide bomber: Can the road-map put an end to all this?’, The Independent, 27 May 2003, 1. The gender aspects deserve a more detailed discussion, as male perpetrators often have themselves recorded on ­v ideo with a Kalashnikov, cf. A. Margalit, ‘The Suicide Bombers’, The New York Review of Books, 16 January 2003, 36–39 at 38; NRC Handelsblad 19 May 2003, 5 (photo of three suicide bombers of Hamas). 93  Margalit, ‘Suicide Bombers’; Atran, ‘Genesis of Suicide Terrorism’, 1537. Non-Palestinians, such as the 9/11 Saudis or bombers from England, seem to be more religious, cf. N. Fielding, ‘Passport to Terror’, Sunday Times 4 May 2003, News Review 5–6 on the two English Muslims who intended to bomb a Tel Aviv night club at the end of April 2003.

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these categories are no longer so clear cut.94 Yet we very soon reach the limits of understanding the bombers when we leave behind considerations that are more general. This is the main problem with the well-informed study by Khosrokhavar, who formulates the reasons behind the suicide bombing as a refusal of a world – Western and Israeli – that refuses them. Such an analysis assumes that everybody is desperate and fails to explain why not all people become suicide bombers. A more persuasive analysis has to combine (1) the general political situation, (2) the ideological discourse and (3) the personal aspects. First, the general political situation in Palestine is clear. Whatever one’s own political conviction, a decent intellectual cannot but arrive at the conclusion that the attitude of the State of Israel towards the Palestinians and their land is the main factor behind the Palestinian resistance. Solutions are of course debatable, but any honest analysis of the problem must start from this conclusion.95 Second, the twentieth century has seen the gradual development of a new discourse of martyrdom that challenged Islamic tradition. Whereas originally jihad and martyrdom had been closely associated, the Iranian philosopher Ali Shariati (1933–77) separated the two and pronounced conscious martyrdom far superior to accidental death during a jihad. The voluntary death of Imam Husain at the battle of Kerbala (AD 680) should now be the example to imitate. From a collective martyrdom in the jihad, Shariati thus individualised martyrdom. His teachings were rejected by Khomeini and the Iranian clergy, but television, translations and contacts with Shiite Iraqi and Lebanese have promulgated his views in the Arab world far beyond Iran.96 These new ideas about martyrdom constitute the ideological basis of the bombers, and Palestinian society also supports these martyrdoms by the elevation of the martyrs via portraits, photos and songs. Moreover, the perpetrators knew that their families would be supported with money from Iraq or the Saudis.97 In short, they perform their missions knowing that society at large supports them. It is part of this ideology that Paradise is promised to the martyrs. This means that the martyr will go straight to Paradise and not feel his wounds, that his sins are forgiven, that he escapes the Last Judgment and, last and sometimes least, that he will enjoy the voluptuous houris.98 This expectation of Paradise was also 94 

Margalit, ‘Suicide Bombers’, 37; Khosrokavar, Les nouveaux martyrs d’Allah, 203. stress this point, since Atran, ‘Genesis of Suicide Terrorism’, discusses the problem without mentioning the role of Israel once; similarly, Countering Suicide Terrorism (Herzliya 2001), the report of an international conference organised by the International Policy Institute for Counter Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in February 2000, analyses the problem without looking critically at Israel itself even once. 96 Khosrokavar, Les nouveaux martyrs d’Allah, 72–96. 97 Khosrokavar, Les nouveaux martyrs d’Allah, 203–4. The Anglo-American war against Saddam Hussein had an unexpected influence in this respect, too. 98 Khosrokavar, Les nouveaux martyrs d’Allah, 209–10; Reuter, Mein Leben ist eine Waffe, 259–65. 95  I

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manifest in the Iran-Iraq war in the early 1980s, when Iranian boy soldiers had iron keys to Paradise around their necks; the hijackers of the WTC-planes also carried a descripton of Paradise with them.99 It is sometimes also claimed that modern martyrs display the Farah al-Ibtissam, the ‘smiling of joy’, during their last moments. If true, this would form a striking parallel with the hilaritas of the Christian martyrs.100 However, at the moment of their death, if it was witnessed at all, the bombers look serious rather than joyful.101 Third, these new ideas and the material support are not enough in themselves to make somebody commit suicide. This is a fully personal decision, as is often stressed in the videos or testaments left behind, and this very individual choice is part of the modernity of the bombers.102 It is therefore not helpful to speak about this choice in terms of ‘indoctrination’ or ‘brainwashing’.103 Such accusations used to also be levelled against New Religious Movements, but continuing investigations have demonstrated that such qualifications have not been substantiated and are theoretically implausible.104 It is true that once the choice has been made, the future bombers are spiritually supported with readings from the Koran, but these preparations last shorter and shorter with the deteriorating political situation.105 Why the choice was made is not always clear, but the martyrs regularly say that their act is an act of revenge for the death of someone close to them. In the weekend of 17 and 18 May 2003, three young Palestinians from the same street in Hebron committed a suicide attack. All three were heavily frustrated by the Israeli violence, and one had been detained by the Israelis for six months without due process.106 Apparently, personal circumstances are often the final push to suicide martyrdom.107 99 Reuter, Mein Leben ist eine Waffe, 60–1 (who also notes that the keys were later made of plastic because of the heavy losses); D. Cook, ‘Suicide Attacks or “Martyrdom Operations” in Contemporary Jihad Literature’, Nova Religio 6 (2002) 7–44 (WTC). Paradise also seems to have played a role in the motivation of the Chechens who occupied a Moscow theatre in October 2002, since a female ‘kamikaze’ wrote down a prayer for a Russian that had shown interest in her and told him: ‘If you recite this very often, you will join us in Paradise’, cf. C. van Zwol, ‘De gijzeling in Moskou van uur tot uur’, NRC Handelsblad, Zaterdags Bijvoegsel, 2/3–11–2002. 100  See this volume, Chapter  2 2.3, 24.3, 26.2. 101  This is still claimed by Khosrokavar, Les nouveaux martyrs d’Allah, 18, but see Reuter, Mein Leben ist eine Waffe, 91 f. 102 Khosrokavar, Les nouveaux martyrs d’Allah, 205 f. 103  Contra: R. Paz, ‘The Islamic Legitimacy of Suicide Terrorism’ and B. Ganor, ‘Suicide Attacks in Israel’, in Countering Suicide Terrorism, 86–94 at 87 and 134–45 at 141, respectively. 104  See the excellent discussion by L. Dawson, Comprehending Cults. The Sociology of New Religious Movements (Toronto, 1998) 102–24. 105 Khosrokavar, Les nouveaux martyrs d’Allah, 210–1; Reuter, Mein Leben ist eine Waffe, 142–3, 201 f. 106  NRC Handelsblad 20 May 2003, 5. The same report also suggests a certain amount of peer pressure, a factor I have not seen mentioned before. 107  Margalit, ‘Suicide Bombers’; 38; Ganor, Suicide Attacks’, 140. D. Ergil, ‘Suicide Terror-

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This is as far as we can get at the present moment. Evidently, those factors that I identified as important motivators for the early Christian martyrs, discourse and the promise of the afterlife, are also important in modern times. Yet the final motivation often remains beyond our reach. Our understanding of past and present martyrs will always be ‘through a mirror darkly’.108

ism in Turkey’, in Countering Suicide Terrorism, 10–28 at 122 notes the same for female suicides of the Kurdish PKK. In the most recent case at the time of the original writing (Haifa, 4 October 2003), the suicide bomber was a young woman, Hanadi Dscharadat from Jenin, whose brother and cousin had been shot by the Israeli army on 12 June 2003, cf. Süddeutsche Zeitung 6 October 2003, 7 (‘Die Rache der Schwester’). 108  For comments and discussions, I am most grateful to Peter van Minnen, Pieter Nanninga, Rodie Risselada, Emiliano Urciuoli and, especially, Ton Hilhorst. Michelle Breaux kindly and skilfully corrected my English.

Chapter 25

Passio Perpetuae 2, 16 and 17 Boudewijn Dehandschutter (1945–2011) has displayed a lifelong interest in martyrs, but it would be all too bold to try presenting him some new insights regarding his favoured Martyrium Polycarpi.1 Instead, we may perhaps be forgiven to offer him instead a few notes on one of our own favourite Passiones, that of Perpetua and Felicitas. This moving account has drawn much attention in the last three decades.2 Yet most attention has been directed to the visions,3 much less to the beginning of Perpetua’s martyrdom (Passio 2) and the conclusion of her stay in prison (16 and 17). As has been the custom in our series of Notiunculae,4 we present a series of observations rather than a detailed systematic commentary on these chapters.

2.1–2 Apprehensi sunt adolescentes catechumeni in civitate Tuburbitana: Revocatus et Felicitas, conserva eius, Saturninus et Secundulus; inter hos et Vibia Perpetua. honeste nata, liberaliter instituta, matronaliter nupta, habens patrem et matrem et fratres duos, alterum aeque catechumenum, et filium infantem ad ubera, ‘Arrest was made in the town of Thuburbo Minus of the young catechumens Re­ voca­tus and Felicity, his fellow slave, and of Saturninus and Secundulus. Among them was also Vibia Perpetua, who was well born, well educated, honorably married, 2. and who had a father, a mother, and two brothers, one of them also a catechumen, and an infant son at her breast’.5 It is rather striking that the very beginning of the actual arrest and passion of Perpetua as well as the composition of her group has received very little attention in the copious literature on the Passio Perpetuae. 6 It is as if the forcefulness of her personality and the intrigu1 

This chapter originally appeared in a Festschrift for Boudewijn Dehandschutter. a full bibliography, see J.N. Bremmer and M. Formisano (eds), Perpetua’s Passions (Oxford, 2012) 371–76; this volume, Chapter  22, Introduction. 3  For a detailed analysis, see this volume, Chapter  2 2.4. 4  J. den Boeft and J.N. Bremmer, ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae I-V’, VigChris 35 (1981) 43–56; 36 (1982) 383–402; 39 (1985) 110–30; 45 (1991) 105–22; 49 (1995) 146–64. 5  I quote from the new translation by Joe Farrell and Craig Williams, in Bremmer and Formisano, Perpetua’s Passions, 14–23. 6  Regarding the group, though, see J. Amat, Passion de Perpétue et de Félicité suivi des 2  For

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ing character of Perpetua’s visions have completely overshadowed her fellow martyrs. Yet both the Latin and the composition of the group deserve attention, as the following may illustrate. The word order of the very first phrase apprehensi sunt adolescentes catechumeni in civitate Tuburbitana, followed by the names of those involved, deserves attention because of the first position of the predicate apprehensi sunt. Generally speaking, in Latin the predicate prefers a later or even the last position. At first sight one might be inclined to interpret this as emphasizing the act in question: ‘(they) were arrested’ or perhaps as creating the possibility of a better structured sentence, in which the predicate would not ‘have to wait’ until all the names are mentioned. The latter suggestion is somewhat nearer the truth. In fact, the opening sentence can be better explained as a specimen of what linguists call ‘presentative sentences’. In such sentences a new topic is introduced, which is, of course, the case at the beginning of a report. In several languages, among which Latin, such a new topic prefers a later, if not the last, position. In the present text, not so much the arrest, which, so to speak, belongs to the martyrological genre, but the identity of the actors in the text is the true new topic. A simple example of this structure is erant omnino itinera duo in Caesar, De bello Gallico 1.6.1, ‘in all there were two roads’. The two roads are the new topic, which is dealt with in the rest of the chapter.7 A fine example occurs at the start of Tertullian, De corona: Proxime factum est. Liberalitas praestantissimorum imperatorum expungebatur in castris, milites laureati adibant. Adhibetur quidam illic magis Dei miles, ceteris praestantior fratribus qui se duobus dominis servire praesumpserant, ‘it happened recently. The donation of the most excellent emperors was paid out in the encampment, the soldiers lined up garlanded. There was summoned a man who was rather a soldier of Christ, surpassing his (Christian) brothers, who had ventured to serve two masters’. The first sentence merely situates the event in the (recent) past by the perfect tense. The next sentence, with the predicates in the imperfect tense, briefly sketches the background of the event. Then the person who in Tertullian’s report is the new topic, is introduced in a presentative sentence, with the predicate, very aptly in the lively present tense, in the first position,8 so that this person, and more specifically his character, which will take prime place in the story, can take a Actes (Paris, 1996) 34–37; T.J. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas (Oxford, 2012) 18–21. 7  The example is borrowed from the relevant section in H. Pinkster, Latin Syntax and Semantics (London and New York, 1990) 183–84. See also S.C. Dik, The Theory of Functional Grammar. Part1: The Structure of the Clause, second revised edition edited by K. Hengeveld (Berlin and NewYork, 1997) 212–14 and 315–17; O. Spevak, ‘A propos de ‘uerbum primo loco’: essai de synthèse’, in G. Calboli (ed.), Papers on Grammar IX 2 (Rome, 2005) 731–40. Spevak prefers the term ‘future topic’ to ‘new topic’. 8  This interpretation supports the preservation of adhibetur, which does not figure in the Agobardinus.

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later position. Of course, the editor of the Passio Perpetuae was not acquainted with the systematic findings of modern functional grammar, but the brief analysis of the opening sentence of the report shows his practical mastery of his mother tongue: he knew perfectly how to begin a report. Unfortunately, nothing is said about the how, why and where of the group’s arrest. Were they rounded up one by one early in the morning as modern terrorists? It seems more likely that the group was arrested in one raid without an attempt to arrest all catechumens, as Perpetua’s catechumen brother (Passio 2.2), Saturus, the spiritual leader of the group (Passio 4.5), and Rusticus, another catechumen (Passio 20.8, 10),9 evidently were not arrested. The reason for the arrest clearly was their Christian belief and especially the fact that they were catechumens, as the persecutions under Septimius Severus seem to have targeted catechumens and their instructors.10 But where were they arrested? It is rarely noted in recent literature that all but one manuscript of the Passio lack the introductory chapter. Its ideas were perhaps theologically too explosive for many a monkish scribe and therefore omitted. One may wonder if this omission is also the cause of the omission of the city in which the arrest of Perpetua and her group took place, as its mention immediately followed upon the omitted chapter. From the recent editors neither Van Beek nor Bastiaensen nor Jacqueline Amat have accepted the reading In civitate Tuburbitana (Tyburtina in the Sangallensis 577 = 3a Van Beek = E1 Amat) minore of the Einsidlensis (= 3b Van Beek = E2 Amat), in the text, and Heffernan does not even mention it in his critical apparatus.11 Yet this reading is supported by the Greek translation, which begins our chapter with Ἐν πόλει Θου(βου)ρβιτάνων τῇ μικροτέρᾳ συνελήφθησαν νεανίσκοι κατηχούμενοι. Moreover, the second edition of the Martyrologium Flori Lugdunensis, which was written shortly after AD 837, locates the martyrdom in Mauretania, civitate Tuburbitanorum,12 which comes fairly close to the location in Acta I.1.1: apud Africam in civitate 9  Passio 20.8: a quodam tunc catechumeno, Rustico nomine. Apparently, Rusticus was no longer a catechumen at the time of the editor’s writing: one more indication that the latter wrote several years after the event, just like Passio 15.7 about the education of Felicitas’ child: puellam, quam sibi quaedam soror in filiam educavit, cf. T.J. Heffernan, ‘Philology and authorship in the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis’, Traditio 50 (1995) 315–25, but note also the objections by F. Dolbeau, RÉAug 42 (1996) 312 f. 10  P. Keresztes, ‘The Emperor Septimius Severus: a precursor of Decius’, Historia 19 (1970) 564–78 at 570; A. Alcock, ‘Persecution under Septimius Severus’, Enchoria 11 (1982) 1–5, re-edited by H.-M. Schenke, Enchoria 18 (1991) 86–88; A. Daguet-Gagey, ‘Septime Sévère, un empereur persécuteur des chrétiens?’, RÉAug 47 (2001) 3–32; add Eus. HE 6.3.1–6.4.3. 11  C.I.M.I. van Beek, Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis I (Nijmegen, 1936); A.A.R. Bastiaensen et al., Atti e Passioni dei martiri (Milan, 1987) 107–47, 412–52; Amat, Passion de Perpétue; Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas, 105. 12  H. Quentin, Les martyrologies historiques du moyen-âge (Paris, 1908) 274; Van Beek, Passio Sanctarum, 162*-63*; J. Dubois and G. Renaud, Edition pratique des martyrologies de Bède, de l’Anonyme Lyonnais et de Florus (Paris, 1976) 46 (ad 7 March).

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Turbitanorum, although Acta II.1.1 has in civitate Tuburbita.13 In fact, one cannot escape the impression that the early Middle Ages had concocted the name of a tribe from the name of the city, as Hugo de Saint-Victor (d. 1141) mentions in his Descriptio mappe mundi: In Libia sunt … Ethiopes, Tuburbitani, Trogodite.14 Even if the location of the martyrdom by the Martyrologium is probably wrong, as the martyrs seem to have died in Carthage, it is a valuable indication of the name of the city of the arrest. The Martyrologium probably had access to a tradition of the Passio rather than the Acta, as it mentions that Perpetua had to endure vaccae impetum (Passio 20.1), the cow being absent from the Acta. This combined evidence shows that we should accept the name of the city in the text, the more so as the value of the Greek translation nowadays is rated higher than at the time of Van Beek.15 His opinion clearly influenced the next generation of editors: Dolbeau has noted several cases where the Greek translation agrees with E1,2 (Van Beek = 3a,b Amat) that have been accepted by modern editors into the text.16 Although our manuscript tradition has Tuburbitana, this spelling is probably not wholly correct, as the official name of the city was colonia VIII Octavanorum Thuburbitana,17 and the spelling with Th- is also attested for Thuburbo maius,18 although the spelling Tuburbo is occasionally attested in inscriptions.19 The official name therefore confirms the Greek version, which means that, against Amat, the manuscript reading Θουρβιτάνων version should be emended with Rendel Harris (1852–1941) and Van Beek into Θου(βου)ρβιτάνων, the mistake being due to haplography. The preservation of the place name once again shows that the Greek translation goes back to a Latin text preceding our present version, just like it preserved the names of the proconsul Minicius Opimianus (Passio 6.3) and of the fellow martyr Iucundus (Passio 11.9) better than the Latin

13  We follow the (numbering of the) text of Amat, Passion de Perpétue, whose Acta I and II are Van Beek’s A and B. Note that Van Beek prints a slightly different text, which does not affect our argument. 14  P. Gautier Dalche, La ‘Descriptio mappe mundi’ de Hugues de Saint-Victor: texte inédit (Paris, 1988) 149 (= c. 17). 15  See this volume, Chapter  2 2.2. 16  F. Dolbeau, RÉAug 51 (2005) 397 compares Passio 4.3 (verruta) and 18.2 (placido incessu); A.A.R. Bastiaensen, REA 101 (1999) 576 adds the name of Perpetua in 18.4, and our place name is another example of this concordance. 17  AE 1915.37: ... col(oniae) VIII (Octavanorum) Thub(urbitanae); C. Lepelley, Les Cités de l’Afrique romaine au bas-empire, 2  vols (Paris, 1981) 2.205 f. 18 Thuburbo maius: ILTun 699, 719; AE 1912.182, 1914.57, 1915.20 and 21, 1917/18.18, 1920.45, 1969–70.633; note also Sententiae episcoporum numero LXXXVII de haereticis baptizandis (Concilium Carthaginiense sub Cypriano anno 256 habitum, ed. Diercks, 18: Sedatus a Thuburbo; Lepelley, Les Cités de l’Afrique romaine, 2.199–205. 19  AE 1914.57, 1992.1864 and 1867. For the occasional omission of ‘h’ after ‘t’ in inscriptions see the examples in H. Solin, Analecta Epigraphica 1970–1997 (Rome, 1998) 474.

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versions of the Passio and Acta.20 It moreover shows that at this point the Acta also goes back to a better tradition than most manuscripts of the Passio. Having looked at the how, why and where, let us now move on to the composition of the group. They were, we are told, still relatively young: adolescentes. Arthur Darby Nock (1902–1963) once wrote a fine article on ‘Conversion and Adolescence’, in which he reviewed the ancient evidence.21 Although he sometimes touched upon Christianity, he clearly had not collected the relevant material. Yet there is some evidence that Christianity attracted the young, and the group around Perpetua is important testimony to this attraction.22 The group existed of catechumeni. Unfortunately, our knowledge about the African catechumenate is rather sketchy, 23 and the text does not inform us about the stage of their Christian training. Normally the catechumenate was concluded with baptism and the first Eucharist. Perpetua’s group was indeed christened in prison (3.5), but their baptism will have been brought forward because of their impending martyrdom, and hardly because of the normal conclusion of their instruction. Although we should not expect that the catechumenate was organised everywhere along the same lines – there must have been regional differences – we may nevertheless take a look at Egypt where the papyri have given us some very interesting indications, which we do not find in the literary tradition.24 We encounter there ‘Anos, a catechumen in Genesis’ (P.Oxy. 36.2785), but also ‘Leo, a catechumen in the beginning of the gospel’, who is distinguished from the ‘catechumens of the congregation’ (PSI 9.1041). Apparently, the catechumens ‘in Genesis’ and ‘in the beginning of the gospel’ represented successive stages in the instruction. Now Egeria reports that at Jerusalem the bishop started his instruction of the catechumens with reading Genesis and subsequently studied the whole of the Bible.25 We may perhaps assume that the same situation prevailed in Africa. However, there are also strong indications that in the earlier Church the gospels were not yet read to the catechumens.26 As the references to the above catechu-

20 

Minicius Opimianus: this volume, Chapter  22.3. Iucundus: this volume, Chapter  26.1. Nock, Essays on Religion and the Ancient World, 2  vols, ed. Z. Stewart (Oxford, 1972) 1.468–80. 22  For the Christian evidence, see this volume, Chapter  2.3. 23  Cf. M. Dujarier, Le parrainage des adultes aux trois premiers siècles de l’Église (Paris, 1962) 217–46; T.M. Finn, Early Christian Baptism and the Catechumenate: Italy, North Africa, and Egypt (Collegeville, 1992) 111–71; A. Stewart-Sykes, ‘Catechumenate and Contra-Culture: the social process of catechumenate in third-century Africa and its development’, St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 47 (2003) 289–306 24 A. Luijendijk, Greetings in the Lord. Early Christians and the Oxyrhynchus Papyri (Cambridge MA, 2008) 115–18. 25  Peregrinatio Egeriae 46.2. 26  P. Bradshaw, ‘The Gospel and the Catechumenate in the Third Century’, JThS 50 (1999) 143–52. 21  A.D.

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mens date from ‘the mid- to latter-half of the third century’,27 we may perhaps suspect that the catechumens of Oxyrhynchus were only allowed to read the beginning of the gospel(s). In which stage of the catechumenate do we have to locate the group of Per­ petua and were they already allowed to read the gospels? The question is easier to pose than to answer. A recent review of the biblical quotations in the Passio concludes: ‘there is no direct quotation of either Old or New Testament, and not all of the cited parallels are convincing. Perpetua knew the stories, knew the images going with the stories, but not necessarily the books themselves. There is no positive evidence to prove that Perpetua herself read many of the books that were to be incorporated into the Latin New Testament – let alone that she read them in Greek. It is perfectly possible that her knowledge of Biblical books originated in her hearing the lections during the services and the instructions during her catechumenate’.28 If we look at the quotations adduced in the course of time by editors and commentators, it is clear that Perpetua knew Genesis, as her treading upon the head of the snake (Passio 4.4, 7) seems clearly inspired by Genesis 3.15. On the other hand, the gospels are underrepresented and the claimed quotations and allusions to them hardly striking. In fact, quotations of the New Testament are hardly demonstrable at all in Perpetua’s part of the Passio.29 This seems to fit the observation of Bradshaw that ‘the biblical readings prescribed for Lenten catechetical assemblies even in the fourth century tend not only to be drawn from the Old Testament rather than the New but also to give considerable emphasis to those books from which moral lessons might be drawn’.30 As we might have expected, then, Perpetua and her group will hardly have been beginning catechumens, but the exact stage of their Christian formation cannot be established. Finally, Tabbernee has noted that ‘the social status of Perpetua’s companions is not certain’, but this is all too sceptical.31 The problem of the social composition of the group is highly interesting in itself and may even teach us something about the reasons for the success of early Christianity. Unfortunately, half of 27 Luijendijk,

Greetings in the Lord, 94. W. Ameling, ‘Femina liberaliter instituta – Some Thoughts on a Martyr’s Liberal Education’, in Bremmer and Formisano, Perpetua’s Passions, 78–102. 29  W.V. Harris, Dreams and Experience in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge MA, 2009) 112 reasonably argues that the term ‘diary’ is not justified by the nature of her text or claimed by Perpetua herself. On the other hand, Harris misinterprets Augustine’s remarks on Dinocrates (112 note  93) and Perpetua’s authorship (112: see in both cases our note below on c. 2.3), and his suggestion (112 note  95) that the detail of the improvement of Perpetua’s prison condition ‘may have been added precisely in order to lend plausibility’ to her narrative is far-fetched. Moreover, the fact that Perpetua’s dreams are ‘in general straightforward tales of Christian commitment’ (113) can hardly be considered an argument against their authenticity, given the situation in which they took place. 30  Bradshaw, ‘The Gospel and the Catechumenate’, 151 f. 31  W. Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions and Testimonia (Macon, 1997) 111. 28 

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the martyrs involved hardly receive any attention in the Passio so that we grope in the dark regarding their personality and status. Yet attention to their names can help us somewhat. Let us start with Revocatus and Felicitas. Names taken from participles ending in -atus were preponderant in Africa and typical for slaves, freedmen and soldiers.32 Revocatus’ low social status is confirmed by the fact that Felicitas is called his conserva, although ‘Happiness’ is a fairly common name of Roman women both free and slave.33 The Greek translation calls them syndouloi, which shows that the translator also thought of them as slaves and not of Felicitas as a ‘fellow slave’ in Christ.34 The fact that Felicitas’ husband was plebeius (Acta I.5.5) also suggests a low social status. Amat calls Revocatus ‘sans doute’ a brother of Felicitas,35 presumably because the Acta (I/II.1.1) call Feli­ citas soror eius. Yet unlike the Passio, Acta I.1.1 also calls Saturus et Saturninus duo fratres, which rather suggests that its author wanted to stress the closeness of the group. Perhaps he was also inspired by the fact that one brother of Perpetua was a catechumen too (Passio 2.2). The next two martyrs mentioned are Saturninus and Secundulus, of whom Amat notes: ‘les patronymes Saturninus et Secundulus sont l’un et l’autre fort communs en Afrique’,36 but this is only half true. Saturninus’ name is indeed widespread in Africa, whereas the Saturnilus of the Greek translation is rare in Latin inscriptions but often mentioned in the Greek world. In itself, the name Saturninus does not necessarily indicate a low status: it even occurred in the ordo senatorius during the Republic.37 But the fact that Saturninus was ordered to be whipped, like Revocatus, (Acta I/II.7.1), and was later burned alive (Passio 11.9) shows his low social status.38 The name of Secundulus, on the other hand, is very rare. The Epigraphische Datenbank Heidelberg supplies only one example (AE 1995.1775), although there are many women called Secundula. That is perhaps why the Greek translation calls him Secundus, a much more frequently occurring name. Given the rarity of the name and the paucity of data it is hard to say anything definite about Secundulus, but we are perhaps not too far wrong when we suspect in him also somebody of the lower classes. 32  R. Syme, ‘“Donatus” and the Like’, Historia 28 (1978) 588–603 = Syme, Roman Papers III, ed. A.R. Birley (Oxford, 1984) 1105–19. For the name Revocatus, see I. Kajanto, The Latin Cognomina (Helsinki, 1965) 135, 356 (notes its popularity among Christians: was the name perhaps taken after his conversion?); add H. Solin, Arctos 39 (2005) 176. 33  H. Solin, ‘Spes’, in J. Vaahtera and R. Vainio (eds), Utriusque linguae peritus: studia in honorem Toivo Viljamaa (Turku, 1997) 1–8 at 3–4 and Analecta Epigraphica, 281. 34  Contra: Bastiaensen ad loc. It is hard to see why the editor would want to single out the Christianity of Felicitas as against that of the others. 35 Amat, Passion de Perpétue, 36. 36 Amat, Passion de Perpétue, 36. 37 Solin, Analecta Epigraphica, 229 f. 38  Dig. 48.19.9; P. Garnsey, Social Status and Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1970) 126; R. Bauman, Crime and Punishment in Ancient Rome (London and New York, 1996) 67, 129.

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In the list we miss the names of Saturus and Rusticus. Saturus gave himself up somewhat later (Passio 4.5). In the list of the Acta his name has replaced that of Secundulus, perhaps because the latter had already died in prison. Saturus seems to have been belonged to a somewhat higher social level, as he probably could speak Greek (Passio 13.4–5). This expertise was highly valued in Africa,39 and must have been limited to the higher classes. Fridh has even argued that Saturus originally wrote his vision in Greek, but this is debatable.40 In any case, his literacy, close association with Perpetua and reproach of Bishop Optatus in his vision all strongly suggest a not too low status. Rusticus, qui ei (Perpetua) adhaerebat (Passio 20.8), a strong expression, need not necessarily have been a ‘domestico’ of Perpetua, as Bastiaensen (ad loc.) suggests. We simply don’t know. His name, too, does not help us, as in Rome Rusticus was a name of both senators and slaves.41 Finally, looking again at the list of future martyrs, it is clear that the editor has put Perpetua at the end as the climax of his enumeration. In fact, the elaborate characterisation of her social status nearly painfully contrasts with the soberness of the previous names. We are probably so impressed by Perpetua that we do not realise how her prominent position results in a list that must have struck several ancient readers as unusual. All other ancient and medieval enumerations of the group of Perpetua first list the male martyrs and only then the female martyrs.42 As he wanted to foreground Perpetua’s position, the editor will have shifted the place of Felicitas in the list. Unfortunately, we cannot be wholly sure how the editor’s honesta nata exactly has to be interpreted, but the small size of the town, the whipping of her father (Passio 6.5) and Perpetua’s liberal education suggest that she did not belong to the highest classes but probably came from the ordo decurionum.43 The social composition of Perpetua’s group thus is an interesting, if neglected, testimony to the more egalitarian nature of early Christianity. Slaves and free people, even if not of the highest classes, could all be members of the same organisation in a way that would have been unthinkable in ‘pagan’ society. As noted before,44 this must have promoted a sense of bridging social distances that was also encouraged by the house churches in which the early Christians met.45 In other words, the close relationships within the congregations must have en­ abled lower-class persons to interact with people of higher classes, which thus 39 Apuleius, Apol. 4.1, Flor. 18, cf. Augustine, CD 8.12; T. Kotula, ‘utraque lingua eruditi’, in J. Bibauw (ed.), Hommages à Marcel Renard, 3  vols (Brussels, 1969) 2.386–93. 40  Å. Fridh, Le problème de la Passion des Saintes Perpétue et Félicité (Gothenburg, 1968) 46–83, cf. this volume, Chapter  26.1. 41 Solin, Analecta Epigraphica, 53 f. 42  This volume, Chapter  24.2. 43  Thus, persuasively, Ameling, ‘Femina liberaliter instituta’, 83 f. 44  This volume, Chapter  2.4. 45  See this volume, Chapter  2.4.

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contributed to their self-esteem and well-being. It will have also contributed to their persistence in the Christian faith, even under the most difficult and fatal circumstances.

2.3 Haec ordinem totum martyrii sui iam hinc ipsa narravit, sicut conscriptum manu sua et suo sensu reliquit, ‘From this point on the entire narrative of her martyrdom is her own, just as she left it written out by her own hand according to her own intention’ (transl. Farrell and Williams): with these words the editor states emphatically that the text of chapters 3–10 was entirely written and designed by Perpetua herself. He marks the beginning with iam hinc, ‘from this point onward’, a phrase which is used in this sense by several other authors at the beginning of a new section, e.g. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 2.11.1 Iam hinc ergo nobis inchoanda est ea pars artis ex qua capere initium solent qui priora omiserunt. Tertullian’s works contain a number of examples, e.g. Apol. 23.4 Sed hactenus verba; iam hinc demonstratio rei ipsius and De anima 54.1 Quo igitur deducetur anima, iam hinc reddimus. Perpetua described the entire development of her martyrdom not only ‘with her own hand’,46 but also suo sensu, a phrase which excludes all advise or guidance of others.47 Tertullian uses it about God creating Wisdom in Proverbs 8.22 ff., ‘The Lord created me the first of his works etc.’ Commenting on these words, he writes: in sensu suo scilicet condens et generans (Adversus Praxean 6.1). In Adversus Hermogenem 45.3 he quotes Jeremiah 51.15 (God) suo sensu extendit caelos.48 The truth of the author’s statement has been called into question, especially by Heffernan who notes that Augustine too ‘makes the unconventional point that the text may not be from the hand of Perpetua’. He draws this conclusion from the words in Augustine’s De natura et origine animae 1.10.12: nec illa sic scripsit vel quicumque illud scripsit. His own rendering betrays that there is something wrong with this quotation: ‘nor does the saint herself, or whoever it 46 

See this volume, Chapter  22.2. Note the chiastic structure, in which sua and suo are directly coupled. 48 The final sentence of section 2.3, which was quoted above, is treated by E. Ronsse, ‘Rhetoric of martyrs; listening to Saints Perpetua and Felicitas’, JECS 14 (2006) 282–327 at 301. Some quotations: ‘My translation is keen to recognize these meaningful verbs and their important accompanying adverbs: this woman, Perpetua, (haec) has already (iam) thus (hinc) recounted (narravit) her testimony’, ‘There is even some intentional ambiguity here whether or not Perpetua actually wrote the work: the work is in someone’s handwriting (conscriptum manu sua but “hand” is a feminine Latin word and so naturally requires “her” modifying possessive pronoun be feminine’. The reader may be inclined to disbelief, but we are quoting literally from a page in which the author is boasting about her ‘careful attention to linguistic and grammatical details’. Unfortunately, these are by no means the only cases in which the Latin language is maltreated by the author. 47 

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was who wrote the account, say’ (H.’s italics). For a correct understanding, the entire context needs to be taken into account. In combating the Pelagianist view that baptism is not indispensable for being admitted to heaven Augustine notes that Perpetua’s second vision of Dinocrates cannot be adduced as an argument.49 Apart from the fact that the Passio is not a canonic writing, nec illa sic scripsit vel quicumque illud scripsit, ut illum puerum, qui septennis mortuus fuit, sine bap­ tismo diceret fuisse defunctum, ‘she did not write – or whoever wrote this passage – with the implication (sic) that this boy who died seven years old had passed away without baptism’. The negation nec does not apply to scripsit, but to sic…ut…diceret (her words did not imply). Moreover, Augustine does not express any personal doubt about Perpetua’s authorship, he merely mentions the possibility that others may do so, adding that this is entirely irrelevant for his interpretation. Such a meaning of vel quicumque occurs more often, e.g. tibi vel cuicumque alii feminae ad Deum pertinenti (Tertullian, Ad uxorem 1.1.6), Christiani vel quaecumque apud Dominum secta (id., De testimonio animae 3.3), Platonici vel quicumque alii ista senserunt (Augustine, De civitate Dei 10.3), vel sanctus Cyprianus vel quicumque illam scripsit epistulam (id., Contra Cresconium 2.33.41). The last quotation deserves special attention, because the context does not imply that Augustine himself doubts Cyprian’s authorship of the letter in question; he refers to others who accuse the Donatists of having tampered with the text of Cyprian’s letters. As appears more clearly from Augustine, Ep.  93.38, he was not inclined to believe this himself. We conclude that neither the context nor the correct full quotation of the crucial sentence nor the other cases of vel quicumque warrant the conclusion that Augustine doubted that Perpetua was the author of the report.50

16.1 This section begins with one of the most remarkable statements of the entire document: Quoniam ergo permisit et permittendo voluit Spiritus Sanctus ordinem ipsius muneris conscribi, ‘Since, therefore, the Holy Spirit permitted and, by virtue of permitting it, willed that the sequence of the actual spectacle be written down’. The Holy Spirit is here mentioned explicitly for the very first time since the prologue, where there are two occurrences and a quotation of 49  See also J.A. Trumbower, Rescue for the Dead. The Posthumous Salvation of Non-Christians in Early Christianity (New York, 2001) 133–37. 50 Discussing the further arguments of Heffernan’s, ‘Philology and authorship’, would overstep the bounds of this paper. Moreover, they have already been essentially refuted as not enhancing a correct understanding of Perpetua’s report by F. Dolbeau, RÉAug 42 (1996) 312 f. What is, in fact, a desideratum, is a careful analysis by a linguist who is well versed in the modes and rules of narrative texts.

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Acts 2.17. Composing a description of the death of the martyrs in the arena was mentioned by Perpetua at the end of her text: Hoc usque in pridie muneris egi; ipsius autem muneris actum, si quis voluerit, scribat, ‘This is my account of what happened up to the day before the games. As for an account of the games themselves: someone else may want to write that up’ (10.15). There is a considerable difference between Perpetua’s suggestion of the possibility and the editor’s firm conviction that the Holy Spirit wants it to be done, the more so because of the decisiveness expressed by quoniam ergo. Whereas the causal conjunction quia usually adds the causal background of an event reported in the preceding main clause, quoniam precedes the main clause by establishing a factual state of affairs, with due consequences for what is stated in the main clause. This distinction tends to disappear in later Latin, but the original position and function of the quoniam-clause fits the present text in an excellent way. The editor presents the wish of the Holy Spirit as an established fact, which has its consequences for his description of the events in the arena in the final chapters of the Passio. This interpretation is supported by the addition of ergo, ‘which pertains to common involvement of author and reader, and hence is an objectivity marker rather than a subjectivity marker’.51 A clear example of a quoniam ergo-clause may illustrate this. At the end of the introductory section of his survey of rhetoric the anonymous Rhetor ad Herennium summarises this introduction by Quoniam ergo demonstratum est quas causas orator recipere quasque res habere conveniat, ‘Since, then, I have shown what causes the speaker should treat and what kinds of competence he should possess’ (Rhet. Her. 1.3, tr. H. Caplan).52 We may conclude that the editor’s quoniam ergo expresses his emphatic claim that the Holy Ghost wants him to compose a report of the death of the martyrs in the arena and, moreover, his assumption that his readers have reached the same conclusion. This entails the question, on which conviction such an assumption could rest. Perpetua’s general invitation in 10.15, quoted above, hardly seems to offer a sufficient basis, but it does, if it is combined with the last two sections of the editor’s prologue, in which he describes the task he has undertaken: Et nos itaque quod audivimus et contrectavimus, annuntiamus et vobis, ‘So then that which we have heard and handled declare we unto you (1.6).53 Although he does not state this explicitly, the purport of the entire prologue implies the inspiration by the Holy Spirit. The combination of the conviction ex51  C.H.M. Kroon, ‘Scales of Involvement and the Use of Latin Causal Connectives’, in A. López Eire and A. Ramos Guerreira (eds), Registros lingüísticos en las lenguas clásicas (Salamanca, 2004) 65–86 at 85. 52  Instead of the translator’s ‘I have shown’, a phrase like ‘we have seen’ may do more justice to ergo. 53  For an analysis of the entire prologue, see J. den Boeft, ‘The Editor’s Prime Objective: Haec in Aedificationem Ecclesiae Legere’, in Bremmer and Formisano, Perpetua’s Passions, 169–79.

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pressed in the prologue and Perpetua’s open invitation may be regarded as justifying the editor’s claim. The Holy Ghost’s permission (permisit) means, in fact, his command (permittendo voluit) according to the author’s apodictic statement, the persuasiveness of which is enhanced by the wordplay which in the case of nouns and adjectives is usually called polyptoton: permisit…permittendo. The theological problems involved are conveniently avoided. Augustine would not have been satisfied; cf. e.g. Dominus autem permisit causa fornicationis uxorem dimitti; sed quia permisit non iussit (De sermone Domini in monte 1.45).54 Far more interesting, however, are the conspicuous differences with the relevant views of Tertullian, which Luigi Pizzolato, who quotes a handful of passages in Tertullian’s oeuvre showing that Tertullian ‘escludeva la coincidenza tra permittere e velle’, brought to light.55 One of these is the following passage in De exhortatione castitatis 3.1–2: Nam etsi quaedam videntur voluntatem dei sapere, dum ab eo permittuntur, dum ab eo permittuntur, non statim omne quod permittitur ex mera et tota voluntate procedit eius, qui permittitur. Ex indulgentia est quodcumque permittitur, ‘although some things, in being permitted by God, seem to bear the fingerprint of His will, it does not automatically follow that everything which is permitted emerges from the pure and entire will of the one who permits’. A few pages hereafter we find the following terse formula: Si enim vellet, non permisisset, immo imperasset (4.4). According to Pizzolato, these and a few other passages with the same purport accentuate the unlikelihood of the suggestion that Tertullian was the editor of the Passio Perpetuae,56 even though his language suggests a close association with Tertullian.57 The editor mitigates his self-assurance somewhat by the addition of the concessive clause etsi indigni, a sign of humble modesty. Judging by the brief section in TLL VII 1.1188.65–74, in which instances of indignus expressing ‘humilitas’ are registered, such a use of indignus is far from frequent.58

54 

See further G.R. Evans, Augustine on Evil (Cambridge, 1982) 106 f. L.F. Pizzolato, ‘Note alla Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis’, VigChris 34 (1980) 105–19. The first section of this paper (105–108) is entitled ‘Una discordanza con Tertulliano’. 56  This further supports the arguments against Tertullian being the editor of the Passio by R. Braun, ‘Nouvelles observations linguistiques sur le rédacteur de la “Passio Perpetuae”’, VigChris 33 (1979) 105–17, repr. in Braun, Approches de Tertullien (Paris, 1992) 287–99. 57  Cf. Ameling, ‘Femina Liberaliter Instituta’ and Den Boeft, ‘The Editor’s Prime Objective’. 58 Nearly a century ago, R. Reitzenstein, Die Nachrichten über den Tod Cyprians, SB Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, 1913.14, 47, paid tribute to the editor in these words: ‘Der Schriftsteller – und es ist einer von den grossen –nennt sich nicht; er will hinter dem Stoff verschwinden und fühlt sich nur als Werkzeug des Geistes’. 55 

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16.2 In the Acta et Passiones Martyrum one often meets a clash between two contrasting ways of life and thinking. In the Passio Perpetuae the conflict of Perpetua and her father figures conspicuously, but there are more contrasts, as in 16.2 Cum tribunus castigatius eos castigaret, quia ex admonitionibus hominum vanissimorum verebatur ne subtraherentur de carcere incantationibus magicis, in faciem ei Perpetua respondit, ‘When the tribune was treating them with especial harshness because, on the basis of some warnings that he had received from some very foolish people, he was afraid that they would be stolen away from prison by certain magical incantations, Perpetua answered him face to face’. Supernatural escapes from imprisonments are a recurring theme in ancient literature. A famous instance occurs in Euripides’ Bacchae Answering Pentheus’ threat to take him into custody, Dionysus announces: λύσει μ’ ὁ δαίμων αὐτός, ὅταν ἐγὼ θέλω (498), which announcement becomes true in line 614: αὐτὸς ἐξέσωσ’ ἐμαυτὸν ῥαιδίως ἄνευ πόνου. The entire episode is treated by O. Weinreich within the framework of his large study on miraculous openings of doors in antiquity.59 Another well-known example is Apollonius of Tyana: in Book 7, ch. 38 of Philostratus’ biography the great man, who is in prison awaiting trial, encourages his desperate companion Damis by taking his leg out of the shackle (ἐξήγαγε τὸ σκέλος τοῦ δεσμοῦ), then put his leg back and remained a prisoner of his own free will. The biographer emphasizes that there was no question of magic, as silly (εὐηθέστεροι) people might assume. 60 In a Christian setting, it is God’s help that liberates prisoners, as appears in three scenes in Acts. In 5.19 an angel opens the doors of the prison in which the apostles were held, Peter’s liberation by an angel is reported in 12.6–10, and in 16.25 ff. the fetters of the imprisoned Paul and Silas were unfastened as a result of an earthquake. Weinreich mentions other ‘Befreiungswunder’ in the third chapter of his survey. Perpetua’s group did not consist of gods or divine men like Apollonius, but there were other means of escaping, for instance by magic spells (incantationibus magicis). Such formulas indeed existed, as is shown by Weinreich in the section ‘Türöffnung im Zauber’, which contains references to literary texts, such as Ovid, Amores 2.1.27–28: Carminibus cessere fores insertaque posti / quamvis robur erat, carmine victa sera est, ‘it was magical verse which made the door give way and overpowered the bar slotted into the doorpost, though it was 59  O. Weinreich, ‘Türöffnung im Wunder-, Prodigien- und Zauberglauben der Antike, des Judentums und Christentums’, in: Genethliakon Wilhelm Schmid (Stuttgart, 1929) 200–464, repr. in id., Religionsgeschichtliche Studien (Darmstadt, 1968) 38–298. 60  For the passage and its connection with the Bacchae, see also J.-J. Flinterman, ‘Apollonius’ Ascension’, in K. Demoen and D. Praet (eds), Theios Sophistes. Essays on Flavius Philostratus’ Vita Apollonii (Leiden, 2009) 225–48 at 231 f.

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of solid oak’ (tr. J. Booth), but also to ‘Zauberpapyri’. 61 Some of the formulas quoted by him begin with Ἄνοιξις (θύρας). He also quotes a formula that had already been interpreted as a parallel of the liberation scenes in the Acts of the Apostles by Reitzenstein: λυθήτω[σ]αν οἱ δεσμοὶ τοῦ δεῖνα, καὶ ἀνοιγήτωσαν αὐτῷ αἱ θύραι, καὶ μηδεὶς αὐτὸν θεασάσθω, ‘the shackles of N.N. must be loosened, the doors opened and nobody may see him’.62 The people who warned the tribunus may well have been familiar with such magic formulas. Moreover, at the beginning of the third century in North Africa, as all over the Roman Empire, magic was a phenomenon of everyday life. Less than half a century before, the talented and much esteemed rhetor Apuleius had to defend himself against the accusation that his marriage with a rich widow had been contrived by magic practices. 63 An amazing testimony of the presence of magic is offered on a third-century funeral inscription in Lambaesis (CIL 8.2756), in which a widower reports the death of his young wife in these words: quae non, ut meruit, ita mortis sortem retulit: carminibus defixa iacuit per tempora muta, ut eius spiritus vi extorqueretur quam naturae redderetur, cuius admissi vel Manes vel Di caelestes erunt sceleris vindices, ‘cursed by spells, she long lay mute so that her life was rather torn from her by violence than given back to nature. Either the infernal gods or the heavenly deities will punish this wicked crime’ (tr. John G. Gager). 64 One can hardly think of a more striking illustration of the impact of magic. We have, of course, no idea what precise reasons stirred the tribunus’ advisers to warn him that Perpetua’s group might be freed by the methods of magic. Within a society in which stories of supernatural escapes from imprisonment, also by magical spells, were circulating, and in general magic was omnipresent, their advice can be easily understood. Small wonder that the tribunus acted accordingly. Yet the editor – and the text seems to imply that he reflects Perpetua’s own reaction – styled these advisers as ‘utterly empty-headed’ (vanissimorum). Why was that? For the simple reason that they had no idea of the ideals and 61 

62 

121.

Weinreich, ‘Türöffnung’, 342–48 = 180–86. PGM XII.163, cf. R. Reitzenstein, Hellenistische Wundererzählungen (Leipzig, 1906)

63 Apuleius, Pro se de magia liber, also known as Apologia, cf. Vincent Hunink’s commentary (Amsterdam, 1997); F. Graf, Magic in the Ancient World (Cambridge MA, 1997) 65–88. 64  J.G. Gager, Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World (New York, 1992) 246. Audollent’s famous collection of binding spells, published more than a century ago, already contains fifty documents originating from the provincia proconsularis: A. Audollent, Defixionum tabellae quotquot innotuerunt tam in Graecis orientis quam in totius occidentis partibus praeter Atticas (Paris, 1904) 286–345. Since then, more curse tablets and binding spells from the region have been published: D. Jordan, ‘A Survey of Greek Defixiones Not Included in the Special Corpora’, GRBS 26 (1985) 151–197 at 185–87; ‘New Defixiones from Carthage’, in J.H. Humphrey (ed.), The Circus and a Byzantine Cemetery at Carthage I (Ann Arbor, 1988) 117–34 and ‘New Greek Curse Tablets (1985–2000)’, GRBS 21 (2000) 5–46 at 24–25; R. Gordon, ‘Fixing the Race: Managing Risks in the Circus at Carthage and Hadrumetum’, in M. Piranomonte and F. Marco Simón (eds), Contesti magici / Contextos mágicos (Rome, 2012) 47–74.

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values held high by the arrested catechumens, in whose religious conviction there was no place for magic and who, far more important, did not envisage any escape and flight, but were determined to testify to their faith by martyrdom. In order to emphasize the opposition between her group and the others she reacted head-on (in faciem) with a paradox: noxiis nobilissimis, the truly distinguished persons were regarded as the culprits in traditional pagan society. The gap between Christian and pagan was indeed unbridgeable.

17 A few brief remarks in addition to Bremmer’s notes on this chapter may be useful. 65 In threatening the pagan public with God’s judgment (comminantibus iudicium dei) the prisoners took a leaf out of Polycarp’s book: Πῦρ ἀπειλεῖς τὸ πρὸς ὥραν καιόμενον καὶ μετ’ ὀλίγον σβεννύμενον: ἀγνοεῖς γὰρ τὸ τῆς μελλούσης κρίσεως καὶ αἰωνίου κολάσεως τοῖς ἀσεβέσι τηρούμενον πῦρ, ‘you threaten me with a fire which burns for a time and before long is put out; for you are ignorant of the fire of the future judgement and everlasting punishment which is being maintained for the ungodly’ (Martyrium Polycarpi 11.2). 66 The passage is one more example of the influence of the Martyrium Polycarpi on later martyrological literature. 67 hodie amici, cras inimici looks like a proverb, but although passages in which the opposition hodie – cras or amicus – inimicus occurs are not scarce, 68 Per­ petua’s phrase, in which both are combined, has no parallel. The various renderings of adtoniti are not entirely convincing: ‘in amazement’ (Musurillo), ‘sconvolto’ (Chiarini), ‘erschüttert’ (Habermehl), ‘remplis d’étonnement’ (Amat), ‘profondamente turbati’ (Formisano). The context points to a more positive reaction, like ‘speechless with admiration’ (this vol-

65  See this volume, Chapter  24.1. It is only fair to say that Bremmer should not have contested Amat’s suggestion that the qualification libera of the cena libera hints at the Roman god Liber/Bacchus, cf. Tertullian, Apol. 42.5: non in publico Liberalibus discumbo, quod bestiariis supremam cenantibus mos est, ‘nor do I recline to eat in public at the Liberalia, which is the habit of the beast-fighters taking their last meal’ (tr. T.R. Glover); see also the note ad loc. in the commentary of J.P. Waltzing (Paris, 1931) and W. Weismann, ‘Gladiator’, in RAC 11 (1981) 23–45 at 32. 66  See G. Buschmann, Das Martyrium des Polykarp (Göttingen, 1998) 202, n.   179 for a number of parallels in canonical and apocryphal writings. 67  B. Dehandschutter, Polycarpiana. Collected Essays, ed. J. Leemans (Leuven, 2007) 115– 17. 68  Some examples: qui dedit hoc hodie, cras, si volet, auferet (Horace, Epist. 1.16.33), quod hodie non est, cras erit: sic vita truditur (Petronius 45.2), qui multos numerare amicos studet, una inimicos ferat (Publilius Syrus, Q 69 Friedrich), quibus deerat inimicus per amicos oppressi (Tacitus, Hist. 1.2.3).

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ume, Chapter  24.1) or ‘fascinated’ (Oxford Latin Dictionary s.v. 5); cf. also phrases like mater gaudio stabat adtonita (Jerome, Ep.  130.5). It is time to come to a close. We do not expect that our honorand will be adtonitus by these small notes, but we do hope that they attest of our admiration for his work on the early Christian martyrs, the more so as in the past he has approvingly spoken of our ‘précieuses Notiunculae Martyrologicae’. 69

69 Dehandschutter, Polycarpiana, 115. We are grateful to Fritz Graf for information and to Ton Hilhorst for his comments.

Chapter 26

The Vision of Saturus in the Passio Perpetuae One of Ton Hilhorst’s main interests has always been the genre of the Acta Martyrum.1 In fact, it was probably the work that I did with Jan den Boeft on these Acta in the early 1980s that first brought us into contact. He may therefore be interested in some observations on a Passio that has long intrigued both of us, the Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis (henceforth: Perpetua).2 Whereas most scholars have concentrated on Perpetua and her visions, the vision of Saturus, her spiritual guide, has been somewhat neglected by modern critics.3 That is why we venture to offer our erudite colleague the following contribution, in which we will look first at Saturus himself and the text of his vision (§  1), then examine his welcome in heaven (§  2) and conversation with clergy on earth (§  3), and conclude with a few observations on the vision as a whole.4

1.  Saturus and (the text of) his vision Saturus first makes his entry onto the martyrological scene in a vision of Perpetua, where she sees him preceding her to heaven and remarks: ‘he who later had given himself up spontaneously on account of us (because he had instructed

1 

The chapter originally appeared in a Festschrift for Ton Hilhorst. quote the Passio Perpetuae from J. Amat, Passion de Perpétue et de Félicité suivi des Actes (Paris, 1996); the other Acta martyrum, where possible, from A.A.R. Bastiaensen et al., Atti e passioni dei martiri (Milan, 1987), and the Passio Montani et Lucii (henceforth: Montanus) from the new edition by F. Dolbeau, ‘La Passion des saints Lucius et Montanus’, RÉAug 29 (1983) 39–82, reprinted in his Sanctorum societas, 2  vols (Brussels, 2005) 1.83–129. I have gratefully adapted the translations of H. Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford, 1972). 3  Cf. E. Corsini, ‘Proposte per una lettura della “Passio Perpetuae”’, in Forma futuri. Studi in onore del Cardinale Michele Pellegrino (Turin, 1975) 481–541 at 509 note  6 4: ‘Ignorata o quasi dalle testimonianze antiche relative alla Passio, la visione di Saturo non ha avuto fortuna neanche presso la critica “storica”’; but see J. Amat, Songes et visions. L’au-delà dans la littérature tardive (Paris, 1985) 122–28; P. Habermehl, Perpetua und der Ägypter (Berlin, 20042) 188–96. 4  I freely use and update some of the results of J. den Boeft and J.N. Bremmer, ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae II’, VigChris 36 (1982) 383–402, and of my The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife (London and New York, 2002) 57–64; this volume, Chapters 22 and 27. 2  I

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us): he had not been present when we were arrested’ (4.5).5 Evidently, he was the catechist of Perpetua and her group. However, he does not seem to have been a cleric, since he is nowhere given a clerical rank and clearly rates himself lower than a bishop or a presbyter (14.3: §  3). And indeed, in the time of Tertullian a catechist could be a layman. 6 Saturus is a typical slave name,7 which suggests that he was a freedman, just like some of the others named in his vision (§  3). It must have been pure chance that he was not arrested together with his pupils, since the little that we know about the persecutions under Septimius Severus indicates that they targeted catechumens and their instructors. 8 After having reported the four visions of Perpetua, the editor of Perpetua continues with the observation: ‘But blessed Saturus too left the following account that he himself composed (edidit) of a vision that he had, which he wrote down himself’ (11.1). Bastiaensen (ad loc.) interprets edidit as narravit and Amat translates ‘fait connaître’, but there seems to be no reason why we should not take edidit in its technical sense as giving a manuscript to a friend on the understanding that he would make further copies and initiate circulation.9 The more so, since it is explicitly stated that he wrote down the vision ipse,10 perhaps even as part of a larger report. It was not unusual among the early Christians to write in prison – witness Paul, Ignatius, Perpetua and the first part of Montanus, which was written de carcere (12.1) – and these letters and reports must have served to encourage the fellow faithful.11 It is not fully clear in which language Saturus had left behind this description. Fridh has demonstrated that both the Latin and the Greek version of Saturus’ vision have a prose rhythm different from the parts of Perpetua by Perpetua and the editor. This points to an originally independent ‘edition’ of Saturus’ vision, although we do not know in what form. Fridh favours a Greek original,12 but his discussion seems to show rather that in some passages the Greek version went back to a better Latin version than has eventually come down to us, just as the Greek version of Perpetua’s visions sometimes displays knowledge of a better 5  It was considered a special honour to lead the way to martyrdom, cf. Cyprian, Ep.  6 .4, 28.1.1–2, 39.2.1, 60.1.2. 6 Hippolytus, Apost. Trad. 19: sive clericus est qui dat (doctrinam) sive laicus; Tert. De praes. haeret. 3.5; Cyprian, Ep.  29.1.2, 73.3.2. 7  M. Lamberz, Die griechischen Sklavennamen (Vienna, 1907) 29–30; H. Solin, Beiträge zur Kenntnis der griechischen Personennamen in Rom I (Helsinki, 1971) 68–70. 8  See this volume, Chapter  25 on c. 2.1–2. 9 For this sense of edere, see T. Dorandi, Le style et la tablette (Paris, 2000) 103–28; R. Nauta, Poetry for Patrons (Leiden, 2002) 121–24. 10  This is also stressed in 14.1. 11  For more examples, see P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Scritti agiografici, 2  vols (Rome, 1962) 1.213–14; R. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (Harmondsworth, 1986) 471; add Cyprian, Ep.  22.2.1; this volume, Chapter  22.2. 12  Å. Fridh, Le problème de la Passion des Saintes Perpétue et Félicité (Gothenburg, 1968) 12–45 (prose rhythm), 46–83 (priority of Greek version).

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Latin Vorlage than our present text. As he himself notes, the words ‘et coepit Perpetua graece cum illis loqui’ (13.4) also occur in the Greek version, where they look rather strange. Fridh tries to solve the problem by stating that Saturus tells his vision in a manner ‘très simple et naïve’, but the far from naïve manner in which the internal problems of the Carthaginian church are treated in his vision (13), the mention of Perpetua’s Greek, and his many conversations in Latin (4.6, 17.1–2, 18.7, 21.1 and 4) all make it highly unlikely that Saturus originally wrote in Greek.13 Whereas Van Beek and Amat do not rate the Greek version very highly in their constitution of the text, it has recently been persuasively argued that in some passages this version offers better readings than our most important manuscript, A.14 In particular, it has preserved the name of Perpetua’s home town Thuburbo Minus (2.1: Chapter  25 ad loc.), which is not found in the Latin version, and the name of the predecessor of Hilarianus, Minicius Opimianus (6.3), if in a somewhat garbled form.15 Moreover, in Saturus’ vision Amat accepts the Latin Iocundum (11.8), but the Greek version’s Ioukondon clearly points to the correct Iucundus. The spelling Iocundus is not attested in Latin literature or inscriptions until Late Antiquity (ThLL s.v.) and probably is a secondary corruption. Similarly, Amat accepts ‘Saturninus’ in A as the name of Iucundus’ fellow martyr, but both the Greek version and three of the Latin manuscripts (B, D, E2) have ‘Saturus’. As this was a common name, there seems to be no reason not to accept it into the text: the name Saturninus may well have been introduced in an attempt to avoid confusion. So what did Saturus see in his vision? [11] We had undergone martyrdom, he said, and parted from the flesh, and were carried towards the east by four angels who did not touch us with their hands. But we moved along not on our backs facing upwards, but as though we were climbing up a gentle hill. And after having passed the first world, we saw an intense light, and I said to Perpetua (for she was at my side): ‘This is what the Lord promised us. We have received his promise’. And while we were being carried by those four angels, a great space appeared which was just like a park, with rose bushes and all kinds of flowers. The trees were as tall as cypresses, and their petals were constantly falling. There, in the park, there were four other angels more splendid than the others. When they saw us, they paid us homage and said to the other angels in admiration: ‘Look, they are here! Look, they are here!’ And those four angels who were carrying us were impressed and set us down. And on our own feet we went through the park along a broad road. There we met Iucundus, Saturus, and Artaxius, who had been burned alive in the same persecution, as well as Quintus,

13  Fridh is clearly biased towards the priority of the Greek version, as is shown by his unpersuasive discussions of 11.8 (67–8), 11.9 (68–71), 12.1 (71–2) and 12.5 (74–5). 14  See this volume, Chapter  2 2.2. 15  See this volume, Chapter  2 2.3.

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who had died as a martyr in prison. And we asked them where the others were.16 The angels said to us: ‘First come and enter and greet the Lord’. [12] And we came to a place whose walls seemed to be constructed of light. And four angels stood before the gate of that place, who dressed us with white robes as we went in. And we entered and heard the sound of voices in unison chanting endlessly: ‘Holy, holy, holy’. And we saw someone sitting in the same place who looked like an old man, with white hair but a youthful face, whose feet we did not see. And on his right and left were four elders, and behind them there stood several other elders. And entering with admiration we stood before the throne, and four angels lifted us up and we kissed him, and he touched our faces with his hand. And the other elders said to us: ‘Let us rise’. And we rose and gave the kiss of peace. And the elders said to us: ‘Go and play’. And I said to Perpetua: ‘You have what you want’. And she said to me: ‘Thanks be to God that I am happier here now, although I was happy in the flesh.’ [13] And we went out, and before the gate we saw Bishop Optatus on the right and Aspasius the presbyter teacher on the left, apart from one another and looking sad. And they threw themselves at our feet and said: ‘Make peace between us, because you have departed and left us behind like this.’ And we said to them: ‘Are you not our bishop and you the presbyter? How can you fall at our feet?’ And we were moved and embraced them. And Perpetua started to talk to them in Greek, and we drew them apart into the park under a rose arbour. And while we were talking to them, angels said to them: ‘Let them enjoy themselves. And if you have any quarrels, forgive one another.’ And they made them confused and they said to Optatus: ‘Scold your flock, because they assemble before you as if they had returned from the circus and were discussing the different teams.’ And it thus seemed that they wanted to close the gates. And we recognised there many brethren, and also martyrs. All of us were fed by an indescribable smell that satisfied us. Then I woke up full of joy.

2.  Saturus’ welcome in heaven Saturus starts by observing that they had died and were carried by four angels towards the east. The passage is a clear example of the widespread belief among the early Christians that martyrs would not have to wait, but could immediately ascend to heaven.17 This is also confirmed by Saturus’ eastwards destination (in orientem), since the early Christians believed that Paradise was situated in the east, a normal location already in intertestamentary literature.18 However, Saturus did not go unaccompanied. The presence of Perpetua at his side is a nice confirmation of the close association between teacher and pupil that we can also

16  I follow Bastiaensen in reading: Et quaerebamus de illis ubi essent ceteri, whereas Musurillo puts a full stop after essent. 17  For many examples, see J.N. Bremmer, The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife (London and New York, 2002), 58; add Cyprian, Ep.  31.3, 55.20.3, 58.3.1 and Ad Fort. praef. 4, 13. 18  Genesis 2.8; T. Job 52.10; 1 Enoch 32.2; 2 Enoch 31.1, 42.3; 4 Ezra 5.21, cf. F. Dölger, Sol salutis (Münster, 19252) 173–81; S. de Blaauw, Met het oog op het licht. Een vergeten principe in de oriëntatie van het vroegchristelijk kerkgebouw (Nijmegen, 2000).

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notice in Perpetua’s first vision (4.6).19 Moreover, they were accompanied by a group of four angels, a specific number that is already attested in Jewish tradition:20 Saturus clearly was not without a certain feeling of importance. Rather intriguingly, Saturus relates that they went ‘as if walking up a gentle hill’. Apparently, heaven was somewhere above them. Similarly, Perpetua had to climb a high ladder (4.3), and in the Passio Mariani (6.9–10) Marian had to ascend a high tribunal.21 Moreover, heaven is situated beyond ‘the first world’, just as Paradise lies extra mundum in Montanus (7.5). No further details are provided regarding its geography, except that they already saw lucem immensam before their actual arrival in heaven. Light was perhaps the most striking feature of the Christian paradise,22 and in this way its brightness is particularly stressed. On arrival, just like Perpetua in her first vision (4.8), they saw a great open space that looked like a viridiarium, ‘park’. The term is also used by Cicero (Att. 2.3.2) in the context of the Cyropaedia, but here probably refers to the wonderful parks of the Roman grandees in North Africa, which we can still admire on the mosaics and which ultimately derived from the Persian paradeisoi.23 Such a representation of heaven as a kind of ‘paradise’ was not abnormal in intertestamentary literature.24 In this case the park was full of flowers, with very tall roses in particular.25 Amat connects the rose with funerary customs, 26 but such a meaning seems to be out of place here. Roses were the spring flowers par excellence, and their mention suggests a mild climate in heaven:27 spring also became de rigueur in Roman descriptions of the Golden Age and the locus

19  C. Osiek, ‘Perpetua’s Husband’, JECS 10 (2002) 287–90 unpersuasively suggests that Saturus might have been Perpetua’s husband. The text does not provide any indication for such a relationship. 20  J. Michl, ‘Engel II’, in RAC 5 (1962) 60–97 at 89–90 (four angels around God’s throne), and ‘Engel IV’, ibidem, 109–200 at 183–4 (other groups of four angels). 21  See the bibliography in this volume, Chapter  2 2 note  98. 22 Bremmer, Rise and Fall, 60, 124, 126. 23  For these Roman wild parks, see F. Olck, ‘Gartenbau’, in RE 7 (Stuttgart, 1912) 768–841 at 838; M. Blanchard-Lemée et al., Mosaics of Roman Africa, tr. K.D. Whitehead (London, 1996) 167–77; M. Guggisberg, ‘Vom Paradeisos zum “Paradies”. Jagdmosaiken und Gartenperistyle in der römischen Herrschaftsarchitektur Nordafrikas und Siziliens’, Hefte des Archäologischen Seminars der Universität Bern 17 (2000) 21–39. Persian paradeisoi: Bremmer, Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible and the Ancient Near (Leiden, 2008) 36–45 and ‘The Birth of Paradise: to Early Christianity via Greece, Persia and Israel’, in A. Scafi (ed.), The Cosmography of Paradise: The Other World from Ancient Mesopotamia to Medieval Europe (London, 2016) 10–30 at 15 f. 24  For various examples, see A. Hilhorst, ‘A Visit to Paradise: Apocalypse of Paul 45 and Its Background’, in G.P. Luttikhuizen (ed.), Paradise Interpreted (Leiden, 1999) 128–39 at 136 f. 25  The picture of roses as tall as trees is very rare, but note Hesychius ρ 394. 26 Amat, Songes et visions, 125. 27  Note also the moderate climate in the picture of the underworld in [Plato], Axiochos 371D.

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amoenus.28 This does not exclude the possibility that the roses also carry a different meaning, as we will soon see. A mild climate in heaven is also mentioned in a sermon, formerly believed to have been by Cyprian, which probably dates to the first years of the 250s and may well have originated in Carthage itself. After a graphic picture of the torments that await the unrighteous, the author continues with the pleasures of paradise: where in the verdant fields the luxuriant earth clothes itself with tender grass, and is pastured with the scent of flowers; where the groves are carried up to the lofty hill-top, and where the tree clothes with a thicker foliage whatever spot the canopy, expanded by its curving branches, may have shaded. There is no excess of cold or of heat, nor is it necessary that in autumn the fields should rest, or, again in the young spring, that the fruitful earth should bring forth her bounty. All things are of one season: fruits are borne of a continued summer, since there neither does the moon serve the purpose of her months, nor does the sun run his course along the moments of the hours, nor does the banishment of the light make way for night. A joyous repose possesses the people, a calm home shelters them, where a gushing fountain in the midst issues from the bosom of a broken hollow, and flows in sinuous mazes by a course deep sounding, at intervals to be divided among the sources of rivers springing from it. 29

In this sermon that had to intimidate and stimulate the imagination of the faithful, torments and pleasures are of course much more elaborated than in Saturus’ vision, but the idea of a pleasant climate with eternal light, lux perpetua, is crystal clear. The rose trees Saturus saw were as tall as cypresses.30 Tall trees were desirable for their shade and therefore also occur in other pictures of wonderful gardens, such as in that of Alcinoos in the Odyssey (7.114), in that encountered by Socrates and Phaedrus in Plato’s Phaedrus (230B) and, still, in a garden in the late fourth-century Visio Pauli (24), where Paul sees arbores magnas et altas valde before entering Paradise. But what do the petals of the rose trees do? The Latin manuscripts unanimously state that they cadebant sine cessatione, and the Greek version confirms the antiquity of this text. Yet falling petals are somewhat surprising, since Cyprian (Carm. 6.227) writes about Paradise: nulla cadunt folia. That is why Amat’s edition of Perpetua has followed Robinson’s emendation canebant, as some descriptions of the locus amoenus stress the melodious sound of leaves.31 Yet these interpretations clearly fit the leaves of trees, 28  Spring flowers: Nisbet and Hubbard on Horace, C. 1.38.4. Golden Age: Verg. G. 2.149– 50; Ovid, Met.1.107 with F. Bömer ad loc., F. 5.207–8; Lucian, VH 2.12; Claud. Epithal. 55. 29 Pseudo-Cyprian, De laude martyrii 21, translation adapted from R.E. Wallis, The Writings of Cyprian II = Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol.  13 (Edinburgh, 1894) 245–6, cf. Amat, Songes et visions, 155–6. For date and place, see the concise discussion by J. Doignon in R. Herzog and P.L. Schmidt (eds), Handbuch der lateinischen Literatur der Antike IV (Munich, 1997) 578. 30  Servius on Virg. Ecl. 1.25: cupressus vero arbor est maxima. 31  See the discussions by A. Dieterich, Nekyia (Leipzig, 19132) 34; Fridh, Le problème,

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whereas our passage concerns petals of roses. Such a continuing rain of rose petals must have created a pleasant, fragrant (below) atmosphere in which to converse, and to lie on roses was considered the height of hedonism;32 in fact, roses already occur in Orphic(-like) descriptions of the underworld.33 Even so, there is something idiosyncratic about the detail. Saturus, Perpetua and their angels now met another group of four angels, who were clearly higher in rank, as they guided them to the place where God was sitting on his throne. With them, they walked on a broad road that apparently crossed the parc (stadium). Such roads cannot have been unusual, as it is repeatedly mentioned regarding paradeisoi that they provided possibilities for walking.34 Here they met three martyrs, Iucundus, Saturus and Artaxius, who had been burned to death in the same persecution. The names are illustrative of the ‘multicultural’ nature of the Roman Empire, but also strongly suggest that they were freedmen. Iucundus is an impeccably Latin name; Saturus is a Greek name, and Artaxius was probably a native Armenian, since several Armenian kings of that name are known.35 The probability that they were freedmen would fit the nature of their execution – the vivicomburium was a not uncommon penalty for the lower classes, but also for Christian martyrs;36 the names and the penalty thus also tell us something about the social level from which the Carthaginian Christians were recruited. The fourth martyr was a certain Quintus, who had already died in prison. Such a fate was also not uncommon. Cy­ prian (Ep.  22.2) provides a list of a whole group of Christians who had died in prison from bad conditions; in fact, even one of Saturus’ group, Secundulus, had died before he could be executed for his faith (14). As both our passage and that of Cyprian demonstrate, such a, so to speak, premature death did not deprive Christians from the coveted title of martyr.37 From the park the martyrs arrived at God’s palace. Fridh compares the distinction between Paradise and palace in 2 Enoch (8 and 20), where the former is situated in the third heaven and the latter in the seventh, but in the African imagination the two are clearly in the same space; similarly, Marian heads for the praetorium of the heavenly judge through a wonderful landscape (Passio Mariani 6.11–12). Amat (ad loc.) compares the palace of Cupid in Apuleius’ Meta59–61 and V. Saxer, Bible et hagiographie (Berne, 1986) 92–4. F. Dolbeau, RÉAug 37 (1987) 315 proposes candebant, but this is less convincing, as sine cessatione presupposes an action and roses hardly candent. 32  Nisbet and Hubbard on Horace, C. 1.5.1. 33  Pindar, fr. 129.3 Maehler; Aristophanes, Frogs 448. 34 Bremmer, Greek Religion and Culture, 48 f. 35  R. Schmitt, ‘Artaxerxes, Ardašir und Verwandte’, Incontri Linguistici 5 (1979) 61–72. 36 Cf. Mart. Polycarpi 12–6; Mart. Carpi, Papyli et Agathonicae (Greek) 37–44; Mart. Pionii 20–1; Passio Philippi 11–13; Eus. MPal. passim; F.J. Dölger, Antike und Christentum (Münster, 1929) 243–57; J.-P. Callu, ‘Le jardin des supplices au Bas-Empire’, in Du châtiment dans la cité (Rome, 1984) 313–59. 37  Note also Montanus 2; Eus. HE 5.2.3.

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morphoses (5.1) but, in contrast to the elaborate description of that building,38 Saturus is very reticent. He only mentions that its walls were built of light, another example of the prominence of light that we have already encountered. At the entrance, the martyrs had to put on new, white clothes; this is already the colour typical of the saints in heaven in Revelation (6.11, 7.9, 13, 14).39 Such a change of clothes is also attested in 2 Enoch (22.8–10) and the Ascensio Isaiah (9.2), and was probably a standard motif in early Apocalypses. On entering, they heard people singing in unison ‘Holy, holy, holy’.40 The words are a straight quotation from one of the visions of Revelation (4.8), where the beasts round the throne of God ‘rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy. Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come’; the Greek form of the words may well point to its use in contemporary liturgy.41 The object of their praise is God himself, represented as a man with grey hair and a youthful face. As has often been seen, the background to this picture is Revelation 1.14, where it is said of God that ‘his head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow’. Yet, at the same time, his youthful face refers to Christ: the same fusion between God and Christ that we can see in the visions of Perpetua, where it is often difficult to establish whether she sees God or Christ.42 Why are God’s feet invisible? Amat (ad loc.) thinks that this expresses Gods ‘caractère surhumain’, whereas Bastiaensen (ad loc.) suggests that it indicates ‘il mistero che circonda la figura di Dio’. Neither of these explanations is really persuasive, and we may wonder whether the detail is not the reflection of the same picture in Revelation, where it is said that God was ‘clothed with a garment down to the foot’ (1.13), even though a bit later his feet are said to be ‘like unto fine brass’ (1.15). On either side of God, there were four elders, and elders also stood behind him. Amat and Bastiaensen (ad loc.) understandably compare the elders of Rev38  See. S. Brodersen, ‘Cupid’s Palace – A Roman Villa (Apul. Met. 5, 1)’, in M. Zimmerman et al. (eds), Aspects of Apuleius’ Golden Ass II (Groningen, 1998) 113–25; G. Brugnoli, ‘Il palazzo di Amore nella Favola di Amore e Psiche di Apuleio e nell’ Asino di Machiavelli’, Fontes 3, 5–6 (2000) 83–98. 39  For many more examples, see U. Körtner and M. Leutzsch, Papiasfragmente. Hirt des Hermas (Darmstadt, 1998) 386 note  71 and 480 note  202; E. Tigchelaar, ‘The White Dress of the Essenes and the Pythagoreans’, in F. García Martínez and G.P. Luttikhuizen (eds), Jerusalem, Alexandria, Rome. Studies in Ancient Cultural Interaction in Honour of A. Hilhorst (Leiden, 2003) 301–21; A. van den Hoek and J. Hermann, Jr., Pottery, Pavements, and Paradise (Leiden, 2013) 107–32. For the heavy dependence of Perpetua on Revelation in its description of the afterlife, see this volume, Chapter  22 note  102. 40  For the chant, see L. Koenen, ‘Der erweiterte Trishagion-Hymnus des Ms. Insinger und des P.Berl. Inv. 16389’, ZPE 31 (1978) 71–6; add I. Alexandreia 187; C. Böttrich, ‘Das “Sanctus” in der Liturgie der hellenistischen Synagoge’, Jahrbuch für Liturgik und Hymnologie 35 (1994–95) 10–36; D.G. Martinez, Baptized for our Sakes: A Leather Trisagion from Egypt (P. Mich. 799) (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1999); A. di Bitonto Kasser, ‘Due nove testi cristiani’, Aegyptus 79 (1999) 93–106. 41  L. Duchesne, Origines du culte chrétien (Paris, 1925) 182. 42  See this volume, Chapter  2 2.4.1.

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elation (4.10), who worship God, but in our passage they play a role in the reception and are able to give various indications as how to behave coram Deo. That is why it is attractive to follow Brent Shaw’s suggestion that these seniores also reflect a lesser known African clerical order. Shaw notes the occurrence of these church authorities in Tertullian (Apol. 39.4–5) and here in Perpetua, but observes that there is a ‘considerable gap in the literary evidence during the entire mid-century before elders are mentioned again in an African context’.43 However, we can point to a passage that possibly closes the mid-century gap. According to the Passio sancti Felicis episcopi (1), in AD 303 the Roman curator rei publicae Magnilianus ordered the seniores plebis of a village not far from Carthage to be brought to him, since bishop Felix had gone to Carthage. Shaw well observes that in the text the seniores are the highest church authority after the bishop, that is, before the priest and the readers. Now in a letter by Firmilian to Cyprian (Ep.  75.4.3), originally written in Greek in the autumn of 256 but translated into Latin in Cyprian’s secretariat, Firmilian states that ‘we find it needful that each year seniores et praepositi should come together’. Given the prominence of the seniores after the bishop in the Passio Felicis and the familiarity of the term presbyteri in Africa, the occurrence of seniores in our text may well be another testimony to the prominence of this somewhat obscure group in the African church. Once again, a group of four angels is present to lift up Saturus and Perpetua in order to give God a kiss. The kiss looks like a greeting kiss,44 but God’s response hardly signifies the washing away of the tears as Amat and Bastiaensen (ad loc.) suggest – in any case, neither the Latin nor the Greek easily provides that meaning.45 The touching of their faces suggests intimacy, but the absence of reciprocity in kissing also indicates a certain distance between God and the martyrs. The Latin then rather abruptly proceeds with ‘Let us stand’, whereas the Greek has: ‘Let us stand and pray’. One cannot escape the idea that at this point in the Latin text something has gone wrong, since just before it was said that the martyrs were standing before God’s throne (12.5). Can it be that they had first fallen flat on their face in front of God in order to do him obeisance, just like Enoch (2 Enoch 4)? In any case, the custom to end a prayer with a ‘kiss of peace’ (osculum pacis or pax) is well attested in Carthage from Tertullian onwards.46 The seniores dismissed Saturus and Perpetua with the words Ite et ludite. The phrase is not that easy to understand. Bastiaensen (ad loc.) probably rightly ob43 B. Shaw, Rulers, Nomads, and Christians in Roman North Africa (Aldershot, 1995) Ch. X (‘The Elders of Christian Africa’), 210 (quote, Felix). 44  For such a kiss, see K. Thraede, ‘Friedenskuss’, in RAC 8 (1972) 505–19 at 507–11. 45  Contra: Amat, Songes et visions, 126 note  126; Bastiaensen ad loc. 46  K. Thraede, ‘Ursprünge und Formen des >Heiligen Kusses< im frühen Christentum’, JAC 11–12 (1968–69) 124–80 at 150–3, who does not mention our passage.

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serves that it denotes ‘felicità escatologica’, even though he provides no clear parallels, but his comparison with Dinocrates’ play is hardly persuasive, since the little boy plays more infantium (8.4), which cannot be expected of Saturus and Perpetua. We might perhaps think of contemporary pagan funerary iconography on the sarcophagi, which displays a clear dominance of a ‘freudigfest­liche Thematik’ with its many Dionysiac scenes.47 Can it be that we see here its Christian counterpart? This part of the vision is concluded by a brief dialogue between Saturus and Perpetua. The latter introduces her concluding sentence with Deo gratias, an expression which already occurs in Tertullian’s De patientia, 14.4, as Bastiaensen and Amat (ad loc.) observe, but, more importantly, also concludes the end of Marian’s vision (Passio Mariani 6.15). It fits the intense expectation of the life everlasting displayed by Perpetua’s own vision that Saturus here lets her comment that she is now even more hilaris in heaven than on earth.48

3.  Conversation with the clergy on earth After their meeting with God, Saturus and Perpetua leave His palace, and it is striking that the stress on play and hilaritas is rather abruptly succeeded by sadness and discontent: one cannot fail to note an artful disposition in this part of the vision, which clearly aims at contrasting the elevated position of the martyrs in heaven with the troublesome situation of the clergy on earth. Before the gate, they saw their bishop and one of his presbyters, a presbyter doctor, far away from one another. They are not said to be martyrs, and the sequel shows that they are in fact still alive. Amat (ad loc.) states without argument that Optatus was bishop of Carthage. Although this is not supported by the text, his conversation in Greek (below) and the reference to the circus factions seem indeed to fit better a bishop of Carthage than that of Saturus’ small town of Thuburbo Minus. Optatus is one of the very few African bishops known by name from the period before Cyprian.49 This relative absence of early bishops in our tradition may well be an indication of their modest position before Cyprian greatly increased the importance of the function. Names taken from participles ending in –atus were preponderant in Africa and typical for slaves, freedmen

47  See the stimulating observations of P. Zanker, Die mythologischen Sarkophagreliefs und ihre Betrachter (Munich, 2000) 10 f. 48  For the spiritual connotation of hilaris, see Amat ad loc.; see also this volume, Chapter  22.3 and 24.3. 49  See the list in G.W. Clarke, The Letters of St. Cyprian of Carthage I (New York and Ramsey, 1984) 158.

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and soldiers.50 Aspasius’ Greek name also points to an origin as a freedman.51 His function, presbyter doctor, which is attested only in Africa, must have been that of a specialised class of presbyters, viz. those who had to teach the catechumens or potential clerics.52 Optatus’ and Aspasius’ names, then, add to the indication of a strong presence of freedmen among Africa’s first Christians, as already suggested by the names of Iucundus, Saturus and Artaxius (§  2).53 The standing apart of both clerics is evidently symbolic of the dissensions within their congregation, and it is remarkable that they prostrate themselves before the lay persons Saturus and Perpetua. Their humiliation is so striking that the text calls attention to it by letting Saturus and Perpetua exclaim: ‘Are you not our bishop (papa) and you presbyter?’ Although papas was not unknown in Latin and probably introduced by the Greek speaking paedagogi,54 papa seems to have been re-introduced into Christian usage via the Greek speaking community that formed the basis of the African Christian congregation.55 Whereas originally a form of address attested first in Tertullian (Pud. 13.7), we can note here its development towards a title for a bishop, which is already complete by the time of Cyprian (Ep.  23, 30–1, 36).56 After this exclamation, Saturus and Perpetua embrace the dissenting couple, another sign of the martyrs’ superiority – although perhaps not without a slight hint of condescension on the part of Saturus. The context does not elucidate why Perpetua now starts to speak with them in Greek. Tertullian’s use of Latin in the majority of his treatises seems to indicate that this was the language of the majority of his audience, but the higher, educated strata of the Carthaginian population, including the Christian community, evidently spoke or understood Greek.57 Can it be that Perpetua wanted to speak to Optatus and Aspasius without being understood by other people, as 50  R. Syme, ‘“Donatus” and the Like’, Historia 28 (1978) 588–603 = Syme, Roman Papers III, ed. A.R. Birley (Oxford, 1984) 1105–19. 51  In the West, the name is less rare than that of Artaxius, see CIL 5.1099, 13.11207 and 11441. 52  For this rarely mentioned function, see H. Janssen, Kultur und Sprache (Diss. Nimwegen, 1938) 39–43; add Cyprian, Ep.  29.1.2, with Clarke ad loc., and Acta Saturnini, Dativi et sociorum 10; for the value of the latter Acta see A.R. Birley, ‘A Persecuting Praeses of Numidia under Valerian’, JThS NS 42 (1991) 598–610. 53  Add these examples to G. Schöllgen, Ecclesia sordida? (Münster, 1985) 249. 54  See E. Courtney on Juvenal 6.633. 55  For Greek examples, see Dionysius Alex. apud Eus. HE 7.7.4; Origen, Dialogus cum Heraclide 1.20, Hom. 1 in Samuel, Epistula ad Africanum 11.85.49; Gregory Thaumaturgos, Epist. Can., can. 1. Papa was very popular as a name in Asia Minor, cf. C. Brixhe and M. Özsait, Kadmos 40 (2001) 163. 56  For the title, see C. Pietri, Roma christiana, 2  vols (Rome, 1976) 2.1609–12. 57  G. Schöllgen, ‘Der Adressatenkreis der griechischen Schauspielschrift Tertullians’, JAC 25 (1982) 22–7; T. Barnes, Tertullian (Oxford, 19852) 67–9, but also see W. Ameling, ‘Femina Liberaliter Instituta – Some Thoughts on a Martyr’s Liberal Education’, in J.N. Bremmer and M. Formisano (eds), Perpetua’s Passions (Oxfo0rd, 2012) 78–102 at 87 f.

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they took the clergy aside under a rose arbour? However this may be, the mention of the rose arbour is probably not without significance and one more indication of the importance of Saturus and Perpetua in comparison with the quarreling clergy. In early Christianity, red roses were symbolic of the blood of the martyrs, just as their thorns could symbolise the martyrs’ torture. This symbolism already occurs in Cyprian, and would stay alive until the fifth century.58 By associating themselves with the rose, then, Saturus and Perpetua stressed their pre-eminent position. It was apparently not enough that the martyrs addressed the clergy; the angels also had to contribute to putting them into their rightful place. They sternly address the clergy, and mention of the martyrs’ refrigerium once again presents the reader with the difference between the eschatological joy of the martyrs and the all too earthly difficulties of the clergy.59 Moreover, in addition to these none too angelic exhortations, Optatus is reprimanded because he apparently keeps his flock insufficiently disciplined. The angels compare the behaviour of his parishioners with those of the supporters of the horse racing teams of the circus (de factionibus). 60 We do indeed have interesting evidence that these chariot races roused the passions of the Carthaginians, since in Carthage several curses have been found against the charioteers or their horses, which start to appear from the second century AD onwards.61 Apparently, ancient supporters did not behave that differently from modern football hooligans. 62 The angels compound their reprimands by pretending to close the gates. Which gates? The text is curiously vague at this point, but they can hardly be other than the gates of Paradise. The Old Testament does not provide any explicit information about such gates, but the mention in Genesis (3.23) of cherubs guarding the entrance to Paradise provided the stimulus for later generations to introduce walls. 63 And, clearly, no walls without gates.

58  See the passages offered by J. den Boeft and J.N. Bremmer, ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae’, VigChris 35 (1981) 43–56 at 53 and ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae II’, 397–9; add Cyprian, De op. et eleemos. 26; Hier. Ep.  54.14; Paulinus of Nola, Carm. 18.146 ff. 59 For the eschatological connotation of refrigerium, see Bastiaensen on Perpetua 3.4; D. Hofmann, ‘Der “Ort der Erfrischung”, “Refrigerium” in der frühchristlichen Literatur und Grabkultur’, in W. Ameling (ed.), Der Topographie des Jenseits (Stuttgart, 2011) 103–22. 60  Bastiaensen (ad loc.) comments: ‘I fedeli, divisi in fazioni come nei giochi del circo, si gettano contro il loro vescovo’, but factiones are the teams, not the supporters, cf. Al. Cameron, Circus Factions (Oxford, 1976) 14. 61  See this volume, Chapter  25 note  6 4. 62  For the riotous behaviour of these supporters, which became even worse over time, see Cameron, Circus Factions, 271–96; M. Matter, ‘Factions et spectacles de l’hippodrome dans les papyrus grecs à Hermoupolis de Thebaide. Etude preliminaire’, Ktema 21 (1996) 151–56; M. Whitby, ‘The Violence of the Circus Factions’, in K. Hopwood (ed.), Organised Crime in Antiquity (London, 1998) 229–54. 63  See the Apocalypse of Moses 17.1; bKetubbot 77b; bShabbath 119b; Vita Adam 31.2, 40.2.

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In addition to the garden-like appearance of heaven, we are struck by the stress on the presence of many others there: Perpetua sees ‘many thousands of people’ and Saturus ‘many of our brethren’. This multitude of people fits the description of heaven as a large place. The idea frequently recurs in early Christian epitaphs, where the dead are said to have joined the beati, iusti, electi and sancti, whereas the pagan deceased of the period wander by themselves in the Elysian Fields. 64 But who were these heavenly people? Saturus notes: Et coepimus illic multos fratres cognoscere, sed et martyras. In earlier discussions of some elements of Saturus’ vision, I followed Musurillo’s translation of the last three words (‘martyrs among them’) and argued that Tertullian’s reproduction of this passage, ‘on the day of her passion the most heroic martyr Perpetua saw in the revelation of Paradise only martyrs there’,65 deviously canvasses his own exclusivist views about admission into heaven, since Perpetua does not contain such a passage and the vision of Saturus explicitly contradicts his words.66 This interpretation has recently been disputed by Dolbeau, who states that the ‘opposition’ between Perpetua and Tertullian ‘est indiscutable, mais seulement en anglais, car le texte latin de PPerp présente une certaine ambiguité’.67 Dolbeau probably means that the Latin can equally mean ‘brethren who were also martyrs’, but is he right? Let us look again at the passage. G. Chiarini (apud Bastiaensen, Atti, 135) follows Musurillo (‘martyrs among them’) by translating sed et martyras with ‘e tra essi anche dei martiri’; Bastiaensen suggests ‘those of the brothers who were martyrs’ or ‘the brothers who were also martyrs’; Amat translates with ‘tous des martyrs’ in her edition, and Charles Hill with ‘…many brethren, and moreover martyrs’. 68 These translations demonstrate that the meaning of sed et is not immediately transparent, although these words are crucial to a proper understanding of the sentence. So what do they mean? The combination sed et also occurs elsewhere in Perpetua. After the visions of Perpetua, the editor continues with mentioning that Saturus also (sed et Saturus) put his vision into circulation (11.1). And Felicitas in magno erat luctu (15.2) because she was prevented from martyrdom by her pregnancy. Sed et conmartyres graviter contristabantur that they would leave her behind (15.3). In these cases the combination sed et clearly mentions two different categories (Perpetua and Saturus; 64  G. Sanders, Licht en duisternis in de Christelijke grafschriften, 2  vols (Brussels, 1965) 2.661–8 (Christians), 691–2 (pagans). 65 Tert. An. 55.4: Quomodo Perpetua, fortissima martyr, sub die passionis in revelatione paradisi solos illic martyras vidit, etc. 66  Thus Bremmer, ‘The Passion of Perpetua and the Development of Early Christian Afterlife’, Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift. 54 (2000) 97–111 at 101 and Rise and Fall, 59. 67  F. Dolbeau, RÉAug 47 (2001) 382. 68  A.A.R. Bastiaensen, ‘Tertullian’s Reference to the Passio Perpetuae in De Anima 55, 4’, SP 12.2 (Berlin, 1982) 790–95; Ch. Hill, Regnum Caelorum. Patterns of Millennial Thought in Early Christianity (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, 20012) 154.

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Felicitas and her fellow martyrs), of which the contrast is not particularly marked. This is indeed a development in post-classical Latin, which can also be noticed in Tertullian and Apuleius, where the combination sed et is regularly ‘mehr weiterführend als adversativ’, but always seems to mention two (or more) different categories. 69 Although in post-classical Latin sed et, in the meaning of sed etiam, can also appear without a preceding non modum (LHSz II.518–9), the translation ‘and also martyrs’ is probably more attractive than the equally possible ‘but also martyrs’, since the categories of brethren and martyrs are not necessarily exclusive. I would therefore conclude that Saturus saw ‘many brethren, and also martyrs’ in heaven. Tertullian’s interpretation strongly suggests that he wanted to limit entry into heaven to martyrs only, and he was not unique in this respect. In our tradition, the words sed et are attested only in the two best manuscripts, Amat’s A (Van Beek’s 1) and D (Van Beek’s 2), whereas they are omitted in the other testimonies. This omission suggests that, like Tertullian, their scribes preferred a heaven with only martyrs. Such a preference may have been an uneasy compromise between the competing early Christian views of an immediate entry into heaven of all saints or the Irenean notion of a waiting in Hades for the resurrection.70 It is somewhat surprising that Saturus only now notes the wonderful smell in heaven. Can this have been influenced by Perpetua’s first vision, in which she wakes up with a wonderful taste in her mouth? Bastiaensen and Amat (ad loc.) suppose that the motif derives straight from the New Testament (2 Cor 2.14–5 and Eph 5.2).71 Yet the idea of supernatural fragrance already occurs in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, and probably is an inheritance from pagan tradition,72 even if Christians had already appropriated the motif before Saturus.73 Influence from Perpetua’s vision at this point is indeed not impossible, since Saturus’ phrasing of his waking up, expertus sum, is identical to Perpetua’s experta sum at the end of her first vision (4.29), whereas this form of the participle does not occur elsewhere before the fourth century.74 Saturus’ joy (gaudens) reflects the joy of the Christians in their suffering, which is often attested and also occurs elsewhere in Perpetua.75 Perpetua tells us that of all her kin her father would be the only one who would not derive joy from her suffering (5.6), and when the 69  E. Löfstedt, Zur Sprache Tertullians (Lund and Leipzig, 1920) 62, who compares Tertullian, De idololatria 10: quaerendum autem est etiam de ludimagistris, sed et ceteris professoribus litterarum; Apuleius, Met. 7.7, 8.16, 10.6, etc. 70 Hill, Caelum regnorum, 155. 71 Amat, Songes et visions, 127 still saw here a direct reference to ‘la croyance archaïque’ that souls and demons fed themselves with perfumes. 72  W. Déonna, Euôdia. Croyances antiques et modernes (Geneva, 1939) 163–267; N.J. Richardson, The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Oxford, 1974) 252–3. 73 B. Kötting, Ecclesia peregrinans, 2   vols (Münster, 1988) 2.23–33 (‘Wohlgeruch der Heiligkeit’); G. Buschmann, Das Martyrium des Polykarp (Göttingen, 1998) 301–9. 74 Bastiaensen ad loc. who refers to ThLL s.v. 75  See this volume, Chapter  2 2.3; G. Stroumsa, ‘Les martyrs chrétiens et l’inversion des

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crowd demanded that Perpetua and her fellow martyrs should be scourged by the group of venatores, they ‘rejoiced at this that they had obtained a share in the Lord’s sufferings’ (18.9). On this ‘happy note’, then, Saturus’ vision concludes.

4. Conclusion When we now look back at the vision, we can see that it consists of two parts, which demonstrate the esteem and importance of Saturus both in heaven and on earth. In the first half (11–12), Saturus elaborately describes his entry and reception in heaven. This part shows the esteem he enjoys from God and the heavenly host of angels and seniores. The reader is left in no doubt that we have to do here with somebody who is held in high regard by the heavenly hierarchy. At the same time, the vision must also have confirmed and strengthened (if that was necessary) his role as the spiritual guide of Perpetua and his other fellow martyrs. The second part of the vision (13) demonstrates the importance of the martyr on earth, even if via a heavenly meeting. The clergy pays its respect to the martyrs, and the martyrs are free to reproach the clergy, assisted in this respect by angels. We have no information about the immediate context of the quarrels alluded to in the vision, but given the pre-eminence of martyrs and confessores in the early Church it is easy to imagine tensions between them and the slowly developing hierarchy, such as becomes all too visible in the letters of Cyprian.76 Finally, the terrible events in New York in September 2001 and the continuing stream of Palestinian suicides in Israel raise the harrowing question as to the nature and identity of the people who ‘happily’ die for a cause they espouse, as well as the conditions that facilitate the voluntary giving up of everything for what many may consider a mistaken ideal. Such an investigation would of course go beyond the limits of this contribution. Yet both Perpetua’s and Saturus’ visions clearly demonstrate that the strong belief in a welcoming hereafter can be a powerful stimulus in bearing torture and execution.77 Similarly, the highjackers of the WTC-planes carried a description of the Islamic Paradise with them,78 and Paradise also seems to have played a role in the motivation of émotions’, in P. Borgeaud and A.-C. Rendu Loisel (eds), Violentes émotions (Geneva, 2009) 167–81. 76  A. Brent, ‘Cyprian’s Reconstruction of the Martyr Tradition’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 53 (2002) 241–68. 77  For belief in immortality as an important Christian ‘compensator’, see the interesting reflections of R. Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton, 1996) 163–89. 78  This is clear from the widely reported finding of an Arabic manuscript in the suitcase of Mohammed Atta, which was left behind when he flew the first plane into the WTC tower; a fragment of the same manuscript was found in the wreckage of the plane that crashed in Penn-

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the Chechens who occupied a Moscow theatre in October 2002 with fatal consequences for themselves and many of the theatre-goers.79 Heaven still exerts a powerful influence on earthly imaginations, however difficult this is for us secularised Westerners to accept. 80

sylvania. For a discussion and English translation, see D. Cook, ‘Suicide Attacks or “Martyrdom Operations” in Contemporary Jihad Literature’, Nova Religio 6 (2002) 7–44; H.G. Kippenberg, and T. Seidensticker, The 9/11 Handbook. Annotated Translation and Interpretation of the Attackers’ Spiritual Manual (London, 2006); this volume, Chapter  24.3. 79  I conclude this from the fact that a female ‘kamikaze’ wrote down a prayer for a Russian, who had shown interest in her, and told him: ‘If you recite this very often, you will join us in Paradise’, cf. C. van Zwol, ‘De gijzeling in Moskou van uur tot uur’, NRC Handelsblad, Zaterdags Bijvoegsel 2/3–11–2002; see also this volume, Chapter  24.3. 80  For information and comments, I am most grateful to Jan den Boeft, Ruurd Nauta and Stelios Panagiotakis. Kathleen Coleman kindly and carefully corrected my English.

Chapter 27

Contextualising Heaven in Third-Century North Africa In the earliest stages of the movement of Jesus followers, heaven was no issue. They looked out for his speedy return and were in no need of a detailed description of the ‘life everlasting’.1 It can therefore hardly be chance that the most important texts in the Gospels about the afterlife, the story about Dives and Lazarus as well as Jesus’ words on the cross to the criminal (‘Truly, I say to you, today you shall be with me in Paradise’) both occur only in Luke, the youngest Gospel.2 And indeed, towards the end of the first century the situation had changed. It had become clear that Jesus would not return within his followers’ lifetime, yet the persecutions required an elaboration of the afterlife in order to sustain those Christians who were prepared to die for their faith. Given the absence of any authoritative description, it is surprising how early the main features of heaven became accepted in the Christian tradition.3 Nevertheless, this absence of an authoritative tradition also gave scope for individual appropriations of the standard views. We should never forget that precisely in this area there always was room for more idiosyncratic ideas, since the more interesting visions of heaven invariably also contain a personal touch. In this final chapter I would like to present a commentary on one of these more personal pictures of heaven: a vision of a North African martyr in the middle of the third century. Such visions illustrate the ways in which individual Christians had accepted and modified more traditional ideas. At first sight, a thematic discussion might perhaps be more satisfactory, but a more comprehensive survey of North African ideas of heaven is possible only after a detailed analysis of all available evidence, and we have not yet reached that stage. Chris1  My investigation builds upon and sometimes makes use of my earlier investigations into early Christian afterlife: J.N. Bremmer, The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife (London and New York, 2002) 56–70; this volume, Chapters 22 and 26. 2  For the origin of the term ‘Paradise’, see A. Hultgård, ‘Das Paradies: vom Park des Perserkönigs zum Ort der Seligen’, in M. Hengel et al, La cité de dieu = Die Stadt Gottes (Tübingen, 2000) 1–43; Bremmer, Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible and the Ancient Near (Leiden, 2008) 36–45 and ‘The Birth of Paradise: to Early Christianity via Greece, Persia and Israel’, in A. Scafi (ed.), The Cosmography of Paradise: The Other World from Ancient Mesopotamia to Medieval Europe (London, 2016) 10–30 at 15 f. 3  For these ideas, see A. Lumpe and H. Bietenhard, ‘Himmel’, in RAC 15 (1991) 173–212; J.B. Russell, A History of Heaven: The Singing Silence (Princeton, 1997); J.E. Wright, The Early History of Heaven (New York, 2000); B. Lang and C. McDannell, Heaven. A History (New Haven and London, 20012).

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tian North Africa was unusually interested in visions compared to other areas of the Roman Empire and, as a first step towards a thematic discussion, I will naturally also adduce parallels from other visions in order to show that the idea of heaven in this particular vision sometimes followed traditional views.4 Subsequently we will look at our source, the Passio Sanctorum Mariani et Iacobi (hence: Marianus: §  1), the court scene in the vision (§  2), its landscape (§  3), its fountain (§  4) and its vision of heaven in general (§  5).

1.  The Passio Sanctorum Mariani et Iacobi Our source derives from the description of the martyrdom of a group of North-African Christians, who were arrested near Cirta in Numidia during the Valerian persecution.5 They were executed in the spring of 259, a few weeks before Montanus, Lucius and others at Carthage, but after the martyrdom of Cyprian in the autumn of 258 (§  2). 6 The description itself dates from the early fourth century, but it has used an earlier eyewitness report.7 The final editor had read the Passio Perpetuae, as a number of verbal echoes demonstrate, and was fully in command of Roman stylistic devices such as ‘chiastical parallelism, symmetry, alliteration and homoioteleuton’.8 In short, he clearly possessed some literary training. The Passio contains several visions of which we will discuss here the one by the lector Marian, one of the protagonists of the martyrdom, as it is the most informative one about heaven. After Marian had been subjected to a gruelling torture, he had the following vision:

4  For an enumeration of the African visions, see G.W. Clarke, The Letters of St. Cyprian of Carthage, 4  vols (New York and Ramsey, 1984–1989) 1.150, 3.218. For a detailed analysis of the visions in the Passio Perpetuae, see this volume, Chapters 22.4 and 26. 5  I use the text and translation (albeit adapted) of H. Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford, 1972) 194–213, which is based on P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, La Passio SS. Mariani et Iacobi (Rome, 1900) 42–63. For French translations, introductions and notes, see V. Saxer, Saints anciens d’Afrique du Nord (Vatican City, 1979) 88–103; P. Maraval, Actes et passions des martyrs chrétiens des premiers siècles (Paris, 2010) 211–27. For the date, see the excellent discussion by A. R. Birley, ‘A Persecuting Praeses of Numidia under Valerian’, JThS NS 42 (1991) 598–610 at 603. For the ‘genre’ of the Acta martyrum and the problem of their trustworthiness and authenticity, see this volume, Chapter  22.1. 6  For the Passio Montani et Lucii (hence: Montanus), see the new edition by F. Dolbeau, ‘La Passion des saints Lucius et Montanus’, RÉAug 29 (1983) 39–82, reprinted in his Sanctorum societas, 2  vols (Brussels, 2005) 1.83–129; see also R. Herzog and P.L. Schmidt (eds), Handbuch der lateinischen Literatur der Antike IV (Munich, 1997) 429–30 (by A. Wlosok, with the most recent bibliography). 7  Herzog and Schmidt, Handbuch IV, 427–9 (by A. Wlosok, with the most recent biblio­ graphy). 8  See Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Passio SS. Mariani, 13 note  1; J. Aronen, ‘Marianus’ Vision in the Acts of Marianus and Iacobus’, Wiener Studien 97 (1984) 189–86 at 172–3 (quotation).

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I was shown, brothers, the towering front of a shining, high tribunal (tribunal), on which, instead of the governor, a judge of a very handsome countenance presided. There was a scaffold (catasta) there, whose lofty platform was reached not merely by one but by many steps and was a great height to climb. And up to it were brought ranks of confessors, group by group, whom the judge ordered to be executed by the sword. It also came to my turn. Then I heard a loud, clear voice of somebody saying; ‘Bring up Marian!’ And when I climbed up to that scaffold, look, all of a sudden Cyprian appeared, sitting at the right hand of that judge, and he stretched out his hand and lifted me up to a higher spot on the scaffold. And he smiled at me and said: ‘Come, sit with me’. And so it happened that the other groups were interrogated, while I too was an assessor of the judge. And the judge rose, and we escorted him to his residence (praetorium). Our road lay through a place with lovely meadows, clad with the joyous foliage of flourishing woods, shaded by tall cypresses and pine trees that beat against the heavens, so that you would think that that spot all round was crowned with flourishing groves. In the centre was a hollow of a crystal spring that abounded with fertilizing watercourses and pure water. And lo! all of a sudden that judge vanished from our sight. Then Cyprian picked up a cup (fiala), that lay at the edge of the spring, and when he had filled it from the spring like a thirsty person, he drank. And filling it again he handed it to me, and I drank gladly. And when I said ‘Thank God’, I woke (he said) by the sound of my own voice (Marianus 6).

2.  The court scene At first sight, it seems that the vision starts with a normal court scene. This should not be surprising. At the moment of his vision, Marian had already been tortured and he was now waiting for his interrogation by the judge. In the Roman legal system, the pro-consul held judicial assizes in the main provincial cities.9 During the actual interrogation, the judge and his assessors were sitting on a semi-circular tribunal, the tribunal or bêma.10 In front of him there was a platform (catasta or ambon), on which suspects were interrogated and tortured; apparently, this platform often had only one step, but could also be higher.11 However, the future martyr does not see the normal court arrangement, such as it must have been familiar to him from experience of hearsay. On the contrary. Marian sees an extremely high tribunal that was also white; moreover, he did not see the normal Roman governor but an extremely handsome judge. As white 9  For the Roman system, see C. Habicht, ‘New Evidence on the Province of Asia’, JRS 65 (1975) 64–91; G.P. Burton, ‘Proconsuls, Assizes and the Administration of Justice under the Empire’, JRS 65 (1975) 92–106; J. den Boeft and J.N. Bremmer, ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae III’, VigChris 39 (1985) 110–30 at 119. 10  Acta Pauli et Theclae 16; H. Gabelmann, Antike Audienz- und Tribunalszenen (Darmstadt, 1984) 172–4; L. Robert, Le martyre de Pionios, prêtre de Smyrne (Washington DC, 1994) 107 f. 11  Perpetua 6.2; Acta Phileae (Latin) 1; Martyrium Theodoti 6; Eusebius, HE 8.9.5; P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Scritti agiografici, 2  vols (Rome, 1962) 1.57, 94, 231.

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was typical of angels and other people in heaven in early Christianity,12 the colour suggests a heavenly tribunal and that is, presumably, also suggested by its impressive height and the handsome judge.13 In other words, we already are in heaven, although we are not told how Marian ascended. Marian was not the only martyr who dreamt of a court tribunal.14 In his Life of Cyprian, Pontius relates that on the day on which Cyprian’s exile started the Carthaginian bishop had the following vision: There appeared to me (he said), when I was not yet enveloped in the quiet of sleep, a youth taller than man’s measure. When this person led me, as it were, to the residence, I seemed to be conducted toward the tribunal of the proconsul who was sitting there. As he looked at me, the latter immediately began to note on his tablet a sentence that I did not know, for he asked me nothing in the usual manner of interrogation. Indeed, however, (another) young man who was standing behind him read the notation with great curiosity. And because he could not express it in words, he showed by an explanatory nod what were the contents of the writing on that tablet. With his open hand as flat as a blade, he imitated the stroke of the customary punishment, thus expressing as clearly as by speech what he wanted understood […].15

For our purpose, it is sufficient to note that Cyprian also dreamt of being led to a tribunal. We know that he was immensely influential among African Christians, as also appears from his presence in Marianus and Montanus,16 where he is even consulted as the most important expert regarding the question whether the final death-blow would be painful. Although both future martyrs would have been naturally preoccupied by their impending court case, a certain influence of the dream of Cyprian on Marian can hardly be excluded, given the bishop’s great prestige in North-Africa. In his dream, Marian conflates both an earthly and a heavenly court scene. The earlier aspect is reflected in Marian’s vision of many groups of confessores being brought up who the judge condemns to the sword, as is the case with Cyprian. Confessores were those Christians who had confessed the name of Christ and thus were likely to become martyrs. Cyprian often mentions this confession in his contemporaneous letters.17 To pronounce the verdict of capital punishment was the prerogative of the Roman governor,18 and death by the 12  For many examples, see U. Körtner and M. Leutzsch, Papiasfragmente. Hirt des Hermas (Darmstadt, 1998) 386 note  71 and 480 note  202; this volume, Chapter  26.2. 13  Christ is regularly pictured as a ‘handsome youth’ in the AAA, cf. E. Peterson, Frühkirche, Judentum und Gnosis (Rome, 1959) 191 f. 14 For such dreams, see also the fine discussion by B. Shaw, ‘Judicial Nightmares and Christian Memory’, JECS 11 (2003) 533–63. 15 Pontius, Vita Cypriani 12.3–5, ed. Bastiaensen, tr. R. J. Deferrari, Early Christian Bio­ graphies (Washington DC, 1952) 17 (slightly adapted). For the dream, see especially J. Amat, Songes et visions. L’au-delà dans la littérature latine tardive (Paris, 1985) 131–38. 16  Marianus 6.9, 14 and Montanus 11.2, 13.1, 21.3. 17 Cyprian, Ep.  5.1.2, 6.1.1, 21.1.1 and passim. 18 Cf. J. Ermann, ‘Ius gladii – Gedanken zu seiner rechtshistorischen Entwicklung’,

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sword was the most merciful death;19 other ways of execution – for example, death through a bear – were dreaded by future martyrs.20 However, at this point the scene abruptly shifts away from the normal proceedings during a court case on earth. Marian hears a voice commanding him to appear before the judge. When he starts to climb the steps of the scaffold, he suddenly sees Cyprian appearing at the right hand of the judge,21 one of the testimonies to the enormous respect the bishop enjoyed (above). Cyprian lifts up Marian to the higher spot and smiles at him. We find such smiles also elsewhere in early Christian literature. When in the Acts of Paul (IX.19) the apostle Paul is in prison, there appears a young man (above) of great beauty (like the judge in Marian’s vision) who smiles and loosens his bonds, and in the Acts of Peter (16) Jesus appears smiling to Peter in prison. The motif clearly derives from pagan epiphanies where the appearing deity traditionally smiles to reassure anxious mortals.22 His words ‘Come, sit with me’ meant that Marian would immediately ascend to heaven and sit on the judgment tribunal at Christ’s right hand. It was indeed a widely shared idea among early Christians that after their execution martyrs would ascend straight to heaven, where they became assessors of Christ;23 this idea of an immediate ascent would exert a long lasting influence and was even taken over by the Jews during the times of the crusades.24 Although this small sentence might seem natural to us, it perhaps also betrayed a world of frustration, since on earth Cyprian would normally have sit with presbyters only: minor clergy, such as Marian who was a lector, had always to remain standing in deference in his presence.25

Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Romanistische Abteilung 118 (2001) 365–77. 19  B. de Gaiffier, Recherches d’hagiographie latine (Brussels, 1971) 70–76. 20  Perpetua 19.4: Saturus dreads a bear and hopes to be killed by one bite of a leopard. 21  This was the normal place of honour, see the many parallels in Körtner and Leutzsch, Papiasfragmente. Hirt des Hermas, 407–8 (by Leutzsch). 22  Note also Acts of John 73. For many parallels see O. Weinreich, Antike Heilungswunder (Giessen, 1909) 3 note  2; M. Puelma, ‘Die Dichtersbegegnung in Theokrits Thalysien’, Mu­ seum Helveticum 17 (1960) 144–64 at 149. 23 Hermas, Vis. 3.1.9 (martyrs at God’s right hand); Tertullian, Ad martyras 2.4; Hippolytus, Commentary on Daniel 2.37.4; Cyprian, Ep.  6 .2.1, 12.2.1, 15.3, 31.3, Ad Fort. 13; Eusebius, HE 6.42.5; K. Berger, Die Auferstehung des Propheten und die Erhöhung des Menschensohnes (Göttingen, 1976) 374 note  489; this volume, Chapter  22.4.1. 24  S. Shepkaru, ‘To Die for God: Martyrs’ Heaven in Hebrew and Latin Crusade Narratives’, Speculum 77 (2002) 311–41. 25 Cf. Cyprian, Ep.   1.1.1, 39.5.2, 40.1.2, 45.2, 59.19.1; Gesta apud Zenophilum, CSEL 26.186–7 (standing); Clarke, Letters, 1.50.

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3.  The heavenly landscape After the completion of the trial, Cyprian and Marian escorted the judge to his residence (praetorium):26 Our road went through a place with lovely meadows, clad with the joyous foliage of burgeoning groves, shaded by cypresses rising up high and pine trees that beat against the heaven, so that you might think that that spot in its entire circumference was crowned with fertile woods. A hollow in the centre abounded in fertilising watercourses and pure water from a clear spring (6.12–13).

The journey confirms our impression that in this vision Marian is already in heaven and therefore no longer needs to cross a difficult terrain. Whereas Perpetua (Perpetua 10.3), Hermas (Vis. 1.1.3) and the girls in Methodius of Olympus’ Symposium (5: §  4) have to pass through a rough countryside before they reach their proper goal, Marian’s journey is smooth and easy. The landscape shows certain elements of a locus amoenus but, unlike Saturus in the Passion of Perpetua (below), Marian does not enter into much detail and mentions only a few characteristics.27 The element of height occurs in other pictures of lovely gardens, such as in that of Alcinoos in the Odyssey (7.114) and in that encountered by Socrates and Phaedrus in Plato’s Phaedrus (230B). It even occurs in the much later, late fourth-century Visio Pauli (24), where Paul sees arbores magnas et altas valde before entering Paradise. Height suggests the shade that is so desirable in the Mediterranean. Pines can grow to eighty feet and were common shade trees in Greece and Italy. They are mentioned in idyllic landscapes, and Ovid fondly remembered (one would nearly be attempted to say ‘pines for’) the pines of his gardens during his exile in far-away Pontus.28 The presence of cypresses is more problematic. It fits the context that it was considered one of the tallest trees, 29 but it also had a strong funerary connotation. ‘Its branches were placed at the door of the mourning house, on the funerary altar and the pyre itself’.30 Yet the context does not evoke associations with death, and here the cypress must have 26  For the development in meaning of praetorium, see R. Egger, ‘Das Praetorium als Amtssitz römischer Spitzenfunktionäre’, Sitzungsber. Österr. Ak. Wiss. 250 (1966) 3–47; A. Martin, ‘Praetoria as Provincial Governor’s Palaces’, in Historia testis. Mélanges T. Zawadski (Fribourg, 1989) 229–40; F. Schäfer, Praetoria: Paläste zum Wohnen und Verwalten in Köln und anderen römischen Provinzhauptstädten (Mainz, 2014). 27 G. Schönbeck, Der Locus Amoenus von Homer bis Horaz (Diss. Heidelberg, 1962); J. Ntedika, L’évocation de l’au-delà dans la prière pour les morts (Louvain and Paris, 1971); Amat, Songes et visions, 117–20; P. Hass, Der locus amoenus in der antiken Literatur (Bamberg, 1998). 28  Theocritus 1.1–2; Ovid, Ars 3.692, Pont. 1.8.43–4; R. Nisbet and M. Hubbard, A Commentary on Horace, Odes Book II (Oxford, 1978) 58 f. 29  Servius on Verg. Ecl. 1.25: cupressus vero arbor est maxima. Note the combination of the pine and the cypress in Horace, C. 4.6.10. 30  Nisbet and Hubbard, Commentary on Horace, Odes Book II, 236.

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been chosen rather for its shade evoking qualities. The author may well have had in mind its place in contemporary parks and gardens of the local grandees, such as can still be seen on North-African mosaics of the time.31 The cypress is also evoked in another North African vision. In the Passion of Perpetua the spiritual guide of Perpetua, Saturus, relates how, after his death, he was carried by four angels beyond the present world to an intense light. Here, ‘there appeared to us a great open space, which looked like a kind of park (viri­ diarium), with roses as tall as trees and all kinds of flowers. The trees were as tall as cypresses and their petals were constantly falling’ (11.5–6). Apparently, Saturus also thinks of the local parks (viridiaria), and his mention of roses evokes spring, as the rose was the spring-flower par excellence in antiquity.32 And indeed, in Roman times eternal spring had become a recurrent feature of the Golden Age and the locus amoenus.33 It is not surprising that it thus was incorporated into descriptions of heaven too.34 A garden-like picture of the hereafter is also alluded to by the Carthaginian Tertullian,35 and he and Saturus may well have been influenced by the Apocalypse of Peter (ca. AD 135: Chapter 18.1), in which God showed a great open garden. (It was) full of fair trees and blessed fruits, full of fragrance of perfume. Its fragrance was beautiful and that fragrance reached to us. And of it ... I saw many fruits (16E).36

Yet the closest parallel to Marian’s vision can be found in a sermon, formerly believed to have been by Cyprian, which probably dates to the first years of the 250s and may well have originated in Carthage itself. After a graphic picture of the torments that awaiten the unrighteous, the author continues with the pleasures of paradise: where in the verdant fields the luxuriant earth clothes itself with tender grass, and is pastured with the scent of flowers; where the groves are carried up to the lofty hill-top, and where the tree clothes with a thicker foliage whatever spot the canopy, expanded by its curving branches, may have shaded. There is no excess of cold or of heat, nor is it necessary that in autumn the fields should rest, or, again in the young spring, that the fruitful earth should bring forth her bounty. All things are of one season: fruits are 31 M. Blanchard-Lemée et al., Mosaics of Roman Africa, tr. K.D. Whitehead (London, 1996) 167–77; M. Guggisberg, ‘Vom Paradeisos zum “Paradies”. Jagdmosaiken und Gartenperistyle in der römischen Herrschaftsarchitektur Nordafrikas und Siziliens’, Hefte des Archäologischen Seminars der Universität Bern 17 (2000) 21–39. 32 Theophrastus, Hist. Plant. 6.8.2; Cicero, Verr. 5.27; Columella 12.28.3. Note also the combination of spring and roses in a vision related by the late seventh-century Valerius of Bierzo, Dicta ad beatum Donadeum, cf. M. Diaz y Diaz, Visiones del Más Allá en Galicia durante la Alta Edad Media (Santiago de Compostela, 1985) 45–7. 33 Verg. G. 2.149–50; Ovid, Met.1.107 with F. Bömer ad loc., F.5.207–8; Lucian, VH 2.12; Claudian, Epithal. 55. 34 Cyprian, Carm. 6.227. 35 Tertullian, Ad nationes 1.19.6, Apol. 27.14, 47.13, De oratione 3.3. 36  For the Apocalypse, see this volume, Chapters 17–19.

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borne of a continued summer, since there neither does the moon serve the purpose of her months, nor does the sun run his course along the moments of the hours, nor does the banishment of the light make way for night. A joyous repose possesses the people, a calm home shelters them, where a gushing fountain in the midst issues from the bosom of a broken hollow, and flows in sinuous mazes by a course deepsounding, at intervals to be divided among the sources of rivers springing from it.37

There are a number of verbal echoes of this sermon in Marian’s description of the heavenly paradise,38 and it seems virtually certain that our author knew this sermon – not surprisingly, if it was indeed written in Carthage. The passage elaborates on the Arcadian aspect in comparison to Marian’s vision, but it also points to another aspect which is not uncommon in descriptions of idyllic places: instead of an eternal spring, the seasons have now disappeared altogether. We find the same abolishment of the seasons in the description of the fate of the just by the second of the Sibylline Oracles (327), which in this respect may eventually go back to the Greek Utopian tradition. In a description of life in the reign of Kronos, Plato (Politikos 272A) already mentions that the seasons had been tempered so as to cause primeval man no grief, and in the Utopian picture of Horace’s Epode 16 (56), Jupiter is said to be ‘moderating each of the two (extremes of climate: utrumque rege temperante caelitum)’. In this heavenly paradise, there is no more night or day, but light for ever. The eternal light may well derive from Revelation (21.23, 22.5), where it is said that there will be no more sun or moon, since the splendour of the Lord will give light. In turn, Revelation may have been influenced by the prophecy in Zechariah (14:6–7) that ‘it shall come to pass in that day, that the light shall not be clear, nor dark: But it shall be one day which shall be known to the Lord, not day, nor night: but it shall come to pass that at evening time it shall be light’. Before entering heaven, Saturus also saw an intense light (Perpetua 11.4), and many passages show that light was indeed the characteristic of heaven for the early Christians.39

4.  The fountain and the cup The final part of this description is a fountain, and this aspect brings us back to Marian’s vision, where he saw a crystal spring with fertilising watercourses and pure water. The detail is not elaborated upon and hard to explain from his vision 37 Pseudo-Cyprian, De laude martyrii 21, translated (slightly adapted) by R.E. Wallis, The Writings of Cyprian II = Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol.  13 (Edinburgh, 1894) 245–46, cf. Amat, Songes et visions, 155–56. For date and place, see the concise discussion by J. Doignon in Herzog and Schmidt, Handbuch IV, 578; this volume, Chapter 26.2. 38  Aronen, ‘Marianus’ Vision’, 180 f. 39 Bremmer, Rise and Fall, 60.

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only. Fortunately, the picture in pseudo-Cyprian helps us on our way. Here the spring is the source of rivers, and such a spring we also find elsewhere. In an imitation of Plato’s Symposium, a Christian author of the later third century, perhaps Bishop Methodius of Lycian Olympus, lets a number of virgins discuss themes of Christian theology in the Garden of Virtue. Its description contains several themes that have now become familiar to us, such as light, fragrance, trees and shade: The spot was extraordinarily beautiful and full of a profound peace. The atmosphere that enveloped us was diffused with shafts of pure light in a gentle and regular pattern; and in the very centre was a spring from which there bubbled up, as gently as though it were oil, the most delicious water; and the crystal-clear water formed into little rivulets. These, overflowing their banks, as rivers do, watered the ground all about with their abundant streams. And there were various kinds of trees there, laden with mellow, ripe fruit hanging gaily from their branches – a picture of beauty. The ever-blossoming meadows, too, were dotted with all kinds of sweet-scented flowers, and from them there was wafted a gentle breeze laden with perfume. Now a stately chaste-tree (vitex agnus castus) grew nearby; here under its far-spreading canopy we rested in the shade.40

The description clearly alludes to the beginning of Plato’s Phaedrus, but instead of settling beneath a plane tree – an influential motif in ancient literature – the virgins settled under an agnus castus, a tree symbolic of chastity.41 For our subject it is important to note that here too we find a spring in the very middle of a landscape that is explicitly called a ‘new Eden’. In other words, the spring in Marian’s vision is evidently the spring in Paradise from which the four great rivers (Pishon, Gihon, Tigris and Euphrates; Genesis 2.10–14) originated.42 The similarities between the Carthaginian and Lycian descriptions of the spring suggest an earlier source, which unfortunately has to remain obscure. The spring is not yet mentioned in Genesis, and the ‘source and the river flowing from it’ in the garden of Eden mentioned by the early Jewish Apocalypse of Abraham (21.6) can hardly have been at the base of the later descriptions. The same is true of the already mentioned Apocalypse of Paul, where the apostle sees ‘a tree planted from whose roots water flowed out, and from this was the begin-

40 Methodius, Symposium, Prelude 7–8, tr. H. Musurillo, St. Methodius, The Symposium. A Treatise on Chastity (Westminster and London, 1958) 40–1. For the Greek text and the author, see H. Musurillo and V.-H. Debidour, Méthode d’Olympe, Le Banquet (Paris, 1963). 41  Plane tree: Plato, Phaedrus 229A; Cicero, De oratore 1.29; Apuleius, Met. 1.18; Achilles Tatius 1.2.3; Marcellinus, Life of Thucydides 25. Agnus castus: see the brilliant study by H. von Staden, ‘Spiderwoman and the Chaste Tree: the Semantics of Matter’, Configurations 1 (1992) 23–56. 42  For the rivers, see E. Noort, ‘Gan-Eden in the Context of the Mythology of the Hebrew Bible’, in G.P. Luttikhuizen (ed.), Paradise Interpreted (Leiden, 1999) 21–36 at 27–34.

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ning of the four rivers’ (45).43 It is not impossible, then, that the spring in Marian’s vision is the product of a Christian development.44 After Cyprian and Marian had arrived at the spring, the judge suddenly vanished from our sight. ‘Then Cyprian picked up a cup (fiala), that lay at the edge of the spring, and when he had filled it from the spring like a thirsty person, he drank. And filling it again he handed it to me, and I drank gladly. And when I said “Thank God,” I woke (he said) by the sound of my own voice’. Unlike Perpetua, who explains her visions several times in the Passion of Perpetua (4.10, 7.9, 8.4, 10.14), Marian does not interpret his own vision, but his editor continues with: ‘Then James also recalled that a manifestation of the divine favour had hinted this crown would be his’ (7.1). In other words, using the immensely popular metaphor from athletics, the editor suggests that Marian would become a martyr. But how did he arrive at this interpretation? We may perhaps find some kind of an answer if we take a closer look at the two other visions in which a fiala occurs. When in a vision Perpetua had seen her deceased brother Dinocrates in a sorry state, she prayed intensely for him and after a few days she had another vision: I saw that place that I had seen before and Dinocrates with a clean body, well dressed and healthy. And where the wound was, I saw a scar; and the basin that I had seen before now had its rim lowered to the level of the boy’s waist. And water incessantly flowed from it. And above the rim there was a golden cup (fiala) full of water. And Dinocrates drew close and drank from it, yet that dish did not run short. And when he was satisfied he began to play with the water, as children do, full of happiness. And I woke up. Then I realized that he was liberated from his penalty (Perpetua 8).45

Rather remarkably, the fiala also returns in Montanus, where a mother, Quartillosia, whose husband and son had just been martyred and who herself also soon would be a martyr, saw in a vision her martyred son coming to prison. He sat down at the rim of the water-trough and said: ‘God has seen your pain and tribulation’. And after him there entered a young man of remarkable size who carried two cups (fialas) full with milk in his hands. The young man gave everybody to drink from these cups, but they were never empty. Hereafter, the window of the prison suddenly became bright and heaven became visible. Then the young man put down his two cups and said: ‘Look, you are satisfied and there is more: still a third cup will be left over for you’. And then he left (8).

43  For a discussion of the passage see A. Hilhorst, ‘A Visit to Paradise: Apocalypse of Paul 45 and Its Background’, in Luttikhuizen, Paradise Interpreted, 128–39. 44  For a representation of this source on a Tunisian vessel, see A. Grabar, Christian Icono­ graphy (Princeton, 1968) fig. 39. 45  For the vision, see this volume, Chapter  2 2.4.2.

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Although the two later visions have clearly have been influenced by Perpetua’s vision, they have appropriated her visions each in their own way.46 Yet they can perhaps help us to find a meaning in this at first sight rather enigmatic symbol. In Montanus, the young man (an angel?) hands out cups with milk. Now the newly initiated faithful received milk and honey after baptism,47 which was then immediately followed by the Eucharist.48 A connection of milk with the Eucharist is supported by the fact that on the day after the vision the future martyrs received alimentum indeficiens instead of their daily ration of food from two fellow Christians velut per duas fialas (9.2), a clear reference to the two cups in Quartillosia’s vision. The young man’s promise that there is still a third cup left seems to point to the impending martyrdom of Quartillosia. In the case of Marian’s vision, the connection is much less clear. The text interprets the vision itself as a revelation by divina dignatio in order to confirm his hope of salvation (ad fiduciam spei salutaris: 6.5) and Marian’s vision is immediately followed by a report of a vision of James which is also interpreted as a manifestation of the divina dignatio that the martyr’s crown would be his (7.1). In other words, the context suggests a link between the cup and martyrdom.49 Now in a discussion of the penitent, Cyprian rhetorically asks: ‘How can we make them fit for the cup of martyrdom (ad martyrii poculum), if we do not first allow them the right of communion and admit them to drink, in the Church, the cup of the Lord?’50 Our fiala, then, is clearly a representation of this ‘cup of martyrdom’ and by gladly drinking from it Marian accepts his forthcoming martyrdom. There is a striking difference, though, between the vision of Perpetua and that of Marian. In Perpetua’s vision her brother takes the cup himself, but in Marian’s vision Marian receives the cup from Cyprian. Perpetua seems to have been a highly self-confident young woman, who felt assured enough to ask a vision from God (Perpetua 4.1–2); consequently, she imagined her brother as taking the cup by himself. Marian, however, occupied only a low position in the

46  See the subtle analysis by V. Lomanto, ‘Rapporto fra la “Passio Perpetuae” e “Passiones” africane’, in Forma futuri, 566–86, who at 581–85 discusses the parallels between Perpetua and Marianus. 47 Tertullian, De corona 3.3, Adversus Marcionem 1.14.3, Scorpiace 1.12; Hippolytus, Traditio apostolica 21; still useful, H. Usener, Kleine Schriften IV (Leipzig and Berlin, 1910) 398–417 (‘Milch und Honig’). 48 Tertullian, De idololatria 7: manus admovere corpori Domini; Cyprian, Ep.  58.9.2, De lapsis 15; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catecheses mystagogicae 5.21; Chrysostomus, Hom. 47 (PG 63, 898); Franchi, Scritti agiografici, 1.236 note  3. 49  See also Mark 10:38–9. 50 Cyprian, Ep.  57.2.2; the expression poculum martyrii also occurs in Ep.  37.2.2. Elsewhere he speaks of poculum salutare (Ep.  28.1.2) and calix salutis (Ep.  76.4.2); see also Martyrium Polycarpi 14.2; Tertullian, Scorpiace 12; Origen, Exhortatio ad martyrium 28; Franchi, Scritti agiografici, 2. 244 note  1; this volume, Chapter 22.4.2.

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Christian clergy, and he could only imagine receiving the cup from his revered bishop. After he had drunk from the cup, Marian said Deo gratias. The words may seem normal to us, but they will have be more significant to contemporaneous African readers. When a group of martyrs from Scillium was condemned to death by the proconsul Saturninus,51 they answered Deo gratias; the same words were pronounced by Cyprian and the young recruit Maximilian.52 Apparently, this was the standard African Christian reaction on the pronouncement of their death sentence. And it is by the sound of these, so fateful words that Marian is woken up. Similarly, Perpetua woke up from her first vision after those present in heaven had said: ‘Amen!’ (4.9).

5.  Marian’s heaven Having come to the end of our discussion of Marian’s vision of heaven, what can we conclude? Firstly, it is clear that heaven is above us. Marian has to ascend a high tribunal, just as in the Passion of Perpetua Perpetua has to climb a high ladder (4.3); similarly, her teacher Saturus relates that after his death he was carried by angels as if they were climbing a gentle hill (11.3).53 Although Marian’s vision does not stress the vertical symbolism to the same extent as happened in Perpetua’s vision, where she had to climb a dangerous ladder,54 it clearly situates heaven above us. Secondly, there is a close connection between heaven and martyrdom in our texts. Perpetua, Saturus and Marian all dream that they ascend straight to heaven after their martyrdom. This was indeed a widespread belief among the early Christians, which must have sustained them during their arrests and executions.55 Thirdly, in his Peregrinus (13) the pagan satirist Lucian had already noted that Christians had persuaded themselves that they were immortal and would live forever.56 It is therefore not surprising that they must have been curious as to what heaven looked like. We know about this curiosity from an intriguing passage in Montanus (7.3–5). Here a presbyter, Victor, relates that in a vision he saw a youth (puer: §  2), ‘whose face shone with an indescribable brilliance’, entering his prison. Victor realised that he was the Dominum de paradiso and, rather 51 

For the proconsul, see J. Nollé, Side im Altertum I (Bonn, 1993) 239–40 on I. Side 57. Passio Sanctorum Scillitanorum 15, 17; Acta Cypriani 32.6, ed. Bastiaensen; Acta Maximiliani 3.2; Franchi, Scritti agiografici, 2.243–5. 53  For the bibliography, see this volume, Chapter  2 2 note  98. 54  For the ladder, see this volume, Chapter  2 2.4.1. 55  C. Hill, Regnum caelorum. Patterns of Millenial Thought in Early Christianity (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, 20012) 203–6; Bremmer, Rise and Fall, 58 f. 56  See also this volume, Chapter  5. 52 

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surprisingly, asked Him where heaven was. When He answered: ‘It is outside this world’, Victor said: ‘Show it to me’. But the youth refused to do so and replied: ‘And where would your faith be?’ Thus, if a presbyter could already be curious, how much more the average Christian? Fourthly, heaven in Marian’s vision is depicted as a garden but not in great detail. Both aspects deserve some comments. From the description in the Apo­ calypse of Peter (§3), it is clear that already at an early stage the Christians had adopted the identification of heaven with Paradise. The garden is still virtually absent in New Testament eschatology, but it is important in Jewish eschatology, as the projection in the Endzeit of the Urzeit Garden of Eden.57 Descriptions of this garden are elaborated with details from the traditional locus amoenus and contemporary parks (§3). Yet Marian presents less details than some of the other descriptions quoted. It is not impossible that in his case we find an influence of Cyprian, who was rather reticent about the content of fate after death:58 this reticence seems reflected in the scarcity of details about heaven in both Marianus and Montanus. Finally, I have called my contribution ‘contextualising heaven’ not without a reason. Whether we believe or not, we all carry with us certain stereotyped images of heaven. Yet we should always remember that these images are the fruit of a two millennia long tradition. In the first centuries of the new faith, the Christian faithful could still contribute to that tradition. Marian’s vision shows that his picture of heaven was already influenced by the intertestamentary tradition of Paradise in heaven, but also by his knowledge (experience?) of the legal procedure during the interrogations of Christians, his impending martyrdom and his admiration of Cyprian. His idiosyncratic vision demonstrates that traditions always have to be appropriated, and this process is conditioned by the context in which we find ourselves: be it on earth or, as in Marian’s case, in heaven.

57  See the various studies in Luttikhuizen, Paradise Interpreted; J.P. Brown, Israel und Hellas III (Berlin and New York, 2001) 138–40. 58 Amat, Songes et visions, 153 f.

Acknowledgements 1. ‘“Christianus sum”: The Early Christian Martyrs and Christ’, in G.J.M. Bartelink et al. (eds), Eulogia (Steenbrugge and The Hague: Nijhoff International, 1991) 11–20, updated in J.N. Bremmer, The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife (London and New York: Routledge, 2002) 103–08, 175–78. 2. ‘The Social and Religious Capital of the Early Christians’, Hephaistos 24 (2006) 269– 78. 3. ‘Why Did Early Christianity Attract Upper-class Women?’, in A.A.R. Bastiaensen et al. (eds), Fructus centesimus, Mélanges G.J.M. Bartelink (Steenbrugge and Dordrecht: S. Pietersabdij and Kluwer, 1989) 37–47. 4. ‘Pauper or Patroness: The Widow in the Early Christian Church’, in J.N. Bremmer and L.P. van den Bosch (eds), Between Poverty and the Pyre (London and New York: Routledge, 1995) 31–5. 5. ‘Peregrinus’ Christian Career’, in A. Hilhorst et al. (eds), Flores Florentino. Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Early Jewish Studies in Honour of Florentino García Martínez (Leiden: Brill, 2007) 729–47. 6. ‘The Domestication of Early Christian Prophecy and the Ascension of Isaiah’, in J.N. Bremmer et al. (eds), The Ascension of Isaiah (Leuven: Peeters, 2016) 1–23. 7. ‘Women in the Apocryphal Acts of John’, in J.N. Bremmer (ed.), The Apocryphal Acts of John (Kampen: Kok, 1995) 37–56, updated and abbreviated as ‘Drusiana, Cleopatra and Some Other Women in the Acts of John’, in A.-J. Levine (ed.), A Feminist Companion to the New Testament Apocrypha (London and New York: Conti­ nuum, 2006) 77–87. 8. ‘Man, Magic, and Martyrdom in the Acts of Andrew’, in J.N. Bremmer (ed.), The Apocryphal Acts of Andrew (Leuven: Peeters, 2000) 15–34. 9. ‘Aspects of the Acts of Peter: Women, Magic, Place and Date’, in J.N. Bremmer (ed.), The Apocryphal Acts of Peter (Leuven: Peeters, 1998) 1–20. 10. ‘Magic, Martyrdom and Women’s Liberation in the Acts of Paul and Thecla’, in J.N. Bremmer (ed.), The Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla (Kampen: Kok, 1996) 36–59. 11. ‘The Acts of Thomas: Place, Date and Women’, in J.N. Bremmer (ed.), The Apocryphal Acts of Thomas (Leuven: Peeters, 2001) 74–90. 12. ‘Conversion in the Oldest Apocryphal Acts’, in B. Bøgh et al. (eds), Conversion and Initiation in Antiquity: shifting identities - creating change (Berne: Peter Lang, 2014) 59–76. 13. ‘Magic in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles’, in J.N. Bremmer and J.R. Veenstra (eds), The Metamorphosis of Magic from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period (Leuven: Peeters, 2003) 51–70. 14. ‘The Apocryphal Acts: Authors, Place, Time and Readership’, in J.N. Bremmer (ed.), The Apocryphal Acts of Thomas (Leuven: Peeters, 2001) 149–70.

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15. ‘Pseudo-Clementines: Texts, Dates, Places, Authors and Magic’, in J.N. Bremmer (ed.), The Pseudo-Clementines (Leuven: Peeters, 2010) 1–23. 16. ‘Foolish Egyptians: Apion and Anoubion in the Pseudo-Clementines’, in A. Hilhorst and G.H. van Kooten (eds), The Wisdom of Egypt (Leiden: Brill, 2005) 311–29, updated as ‘Apion and Anoubion in the Homilies’, in J.N. Bremmer, The Pseudo-Clementines, 73–92. 17. ‘The Apocalypse of Peter: Greek or Jewish?’, in J.N. Bremmer and I. Czachesz (eds), The Apocalypse of Peter (Leuven: Peeters, 2003) 1–14. 18. ‘Orphic, Roman, Jewish and Christian Tours of Hell: Observations on the Apocalypse of Peter’, in T. Nicklas et al. (eds), Other Worlds and their Relation to this World = JSJ, Suppl. 135 (Leiden: Brill, 2010) 305–21. 19. ‘Christian Hell: From the Apocalypse of Peter to the Apocalypse of Paul’, Numen 56 (2009) 298–325. 20. ‘Tours of Hell: Greek, Roman, Jewish and Early Christian’, in W. Ameling (ed.), Topographie des Jenseits (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2011) 13–34. 21. ‘Descents to Hell and Ascents to Heaven’, in J.J. Collins (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature (Oxford: OUP, 2013) 340–57. 22. ‘Perpetua and Her Diary: Authenticity, Family and Visions’, in W. Ameling (ed.), Märtyrer und Märtyrerakten (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2002) 77–120. 23. ‘Felicitas: the Martyrdom of a Young African Woman’, in J.N. Bremmer and M. Formisano (eds), Perpetua’s Passions (Oxford: OUP, 2012) 35–53. 24. ‘The Motivation of Martyrs: Perpetua and the Palestinians’, in B. Luchesi and K. von Stuckrad (eds), Religion im kulturellen Diskurs. Festschrift für Hans G. Kippenberg zu seinem 65. Geburtstag / Religion in Cultural Discourse. Essays in Honor of Hans G. Kippenberg on Occasion of His 65th Birthday (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2004) 535–54. 25. (with J. den Boeft) ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae VI: Passio Perpetuae 2, 16 and 17’, in J. Leemans (ed.), Persecution and Martyrdom in Late Antique Christianity. Essays in Honour of Boudewijn Dehandschutter (Leuven: Peeters, 2010) 47–63. 26. ‘The Vision of Saturus in the Passio Perpetuae’, in F. García Martínez and G. Luttikhuizen (eds), Jerusalem, Alexandria, Rome. Studies in ancient cultural interaction in honour of Ton Hilhorst (Leiden: Brill, 2003) 55–73. 27. ‘Contextualizing Heaven in Third-Century North Africa’, in R.S. Boustan and A.Y. Reed (eds), Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions (Cambridge: CUP, 2004) 159–73.

Index of names, places and passages Abitinia 5  7  10 and 13–18  15  17  18 

9 23, 38 9 24 23 24

acclamations  185, 385 – deus/theos 140 – heis kai mo­nos  153, 162, 185 – magnus  128, 208 – salvator/sôter 140 – Victoria 385 Achilles Tatius  118 – and Acts of Andrew 228 – Acts of Thomas  170, 228, 242 – and Bardaisan  227–28, 242 – date of  152 – and Heliodorus  227 – 2.2.4–6  152 139 2.9  3.23  141 157 6.2  Acta martyrum – accessible  351 – and acta proconsulis 351 – and Acts of Paul and Thecla 156 – Devil  361 – slowly evolving genre  350–52 – liturgical reading  352, 355, 390–91 – sacrifices to gods/emperors  361 – stenographed  351 – transcripts  351, 391

Acts of Andrew – and Achilles Tatius  228 – and Acts of John  114, 119 – and Acts of Thomas 170 – Aegeates  120–21, 175 – author of  116 – bedrooms  175 – civic values  117 – date  119, 222 – ethical vocabulary  117–18 – and Gregory of Tours  115, 119 – Latin translation  224 – males  120 – martyrdom  129–31 – Maximilla  115, 117, 120, 175 – and military service  119 – Nicomedia  114 – and Patras  116 – place of composition  115–16 – readership  122 – self-control  186 – Stratocles  120–21, 130 – Varianus (name) 129 – AA 2  120, 125, 204 2–3  38, 126, 205 35, 127, 141, 206 3  4  116, 129 5  126–28, 134, 205, 207 8  120, 120, 175 13  15  116, 175 18  120 36  120 43  120

* The Acta martyrum are quoted by the name of their protagonist(s) or cities. I mention only the names of modern scholars in the main text and concentrate on the most important pagan and patristic passages.

472

Index of names, places and passages

45  130 46  120, 130 51  130 130 60  – AAco 9  119, 126, 129, 205 123–24, 199 10  14  127–28, 207 – AALat 115 3  4  121 5  116, 125, 127–28, 203, 206–07 7  125–26, 128, 205, 208 9  119 11  118, 199 13  129, 208 126, 205 14  17  205 128–30, 207, 217 18  19  173 22  116–17, 121, 125, 204 23  116–17, 122, 125–26, 203–05 120, 125, 128, 208 24  25  116 27  125–27, 203–06 122 28  29  116, 126–27, 205 204, 206 29  30  120 34  116, 126–27, 204, 206 – Mart. pr. 3–4  129, 217 6  128 Acts of John – and Acts of Andrew  114, 119 – and Acts of Peter  112, 182 – and Acts of Thomas 170 – and Chariton  111, 228 – conversion  182–87 – date  111–2, 222 – and Ephesus  100–01 – female readership  109–10 – Latin translation  224 – and liberation  110 – and Manichaeans  224 – and novel  229

– old women  40, 50, 104–08, 183 – place of composition  112–14 – polymorphy  184 – and Roman world  110–11 – self-control  186 – theatre  184 – widows  107–09 – women  99–111 – and Xenophon of Ephesus  111 – 2.23  105 4.48  105 6.14–15  105 105 12.9 and 18  19–29  100–02 182 19  20  182 21  182 23  183 24  173, 213 25  183 27  185 30  49, 112 40, 50 30–36  31  102, 110, 112 184 37–47  42 and 44  185 46  26, 185 47  173, 185, 213 48  229 48–55  110 54  186 56  112, 201 207 57  59  102 63  102, 186 63–86  102–04 63–65  186 186 70  70–71  229 71–74  187 73  112 187 79–80  82–83  173, 213 86  187 87–105  112 87  184 88–93  184 94–102  184 26 106–10 

Index of names, places and passages

Acts of Paul – and Acts of Peter  145, 163 – and Acts of Thomas  176 – composition  163 – conversion  93 – date  163, 222–23 – Latin translation  224 – and Luke’s Acts  150 – and novel  229, – and Physiologus  163 – place of composition  165 – widows  192 – Ant. 1 and 3  190 – Myra 3  191 – 2  191 4  49, 108, 191 7  104, 176, 229 459 9.19  12.3  90 91 12.5  14.1  192 26  213 28  130 33–35  130 47  35 Acts of Paul and Thecla – and Acta martyrum 156 – and Augustine  301 – and Carthaginian women  111, 146, 154 – coiffures  158 – crowd  201 – crowns  159 – and elite  153 – Falconilla  114, 145, 154, 160, 191, 237, 375 – female readership  109–10 – and feminism  149 – love sickness  153 – and Perpetua  154, 161, 230, 375 – Paul’s appearance  151–52 – R(r)esurrection  162, 172 – seals  162 – and Seleucia  163 – Thamyris  153 – Theoclia  153 – tour of hell  173

473

– Tryphaena  114, 145, 154, 160–62, 191, 230, 237, 375 – widow  213 – wineless Eucharist  152 – and women  160, 179 179 – 1  3  150–51 5–7  26 7  23, 179, 191 8  153 9  152–53, 191 11  153 155, 190, 201 15  16  156–57 157 17  19  153 20  156–57, 190, 201 21  363 22  157, 161 26  153, 158 27  159–60 29  230, 375 410 30  31  161 161 33–34  34  162, 191 36  160 36–37  162 38  191 39  162, 191 40–42  163 40  191 155, 163 43  – see also Acts of Paul Acts of Peter – and Acts of John  112, 182 – and Acts of Paul  145, 163 – and Actus Silvestri 212 – Q. Iulius Balbus  114, 137, 145 – conversion  187–90 – date  145–47, 222–23 – dog  188, 211 – fish  211 – Latin translation  140, 146–47, 209, 223 – Granius Marcellus  113, 145 – Marcellus  108, 111, 135–36, 139–42, 146, 188, 211, 223, 230

474

Index of names, places and passages

– miracles in  142 – and Nicomedia  114, 145 – and Perpetua  139, 146, 230 – Peter vs Simon Magus  208–16 – place of composition  143–45 – and Priscillianists  223–24 – resurrections  142, 144, 188–89, 211–16 – Rufina  134, 172, 188 – senators/senatorial women  145–46 – and sex  134–35 – and statue emperor  188 – and virgins  134–35 – and widows  50, 135, 188 – women  133–40 – 1  187 2  134, 172, 188 3  137, 145 4  134, 140–41, 145, 188–89, 209, 211 6  188 8  50, 108, 135 11  128, 147, 188, 206–07, 223 13  142 14  188 15  142, 211 16  104, 459 17  34, 36, 211 19  136 19–20  188 19–21  30, 135 21  50, 108, 136 22  135, 189 23–24  217 25  212 25–28  189 27  135, 146 28  50, 108, 135, 143–44, 201, 214, 248 29  135 30  35, 36, 137 31–32  190, 216 33  38, 190 34–39  190 34  137 40  143 41  5 – Coptic fragment  134

– Mart. Petri 30  137 Acts of Philip 225 – tour of hell  337 Acts of Thomas 38 – and Achilles Tatius  170, 228, 242 – and Acts of Andrew 170 – and Acts of John 170 – and Acts of Paul 176 – angelus interpres 324 – author  169–70 – and Bardaisan  170 – bedrooms  175 – chastity in  171 – Christian virtues  174 – date of  169 – demonstrative pronouns  325 – and Edessa  167–69 – flute girl  171 – freedom  176 – Greek and Syriac versions  170 – and Heliodorus  168–69 – Hymn of the Pearl  167–68 – and India  240 – Latin translation  224 – and Mani(chaeans) 168 – mire  325 – Mnasara  176–77 – Mygdonia  168, 173–74, 176 – and Nisibis  168–69 – pasgriba  167–68 – place of composition  167–68 – polymorphy  177 – proskynêsis  174 – Roman names and institutions  169 – Tertia  176 – tour of hell  324–25 – widows  173 – women  171–77 – 3.17–19  169 4–5  171 8–9  171 8  173 16  171 20  201 39  176 41  5 44  207

Index of names, places and passages

46  207 51 and 53  172 53–54  213 55–57  173, 324 59  173 62–64  204 64  173 73–4  128, 207 75  207 77  128, 207 82  174 83  173 84–86  174 87  174 89  175–76 92  174 96  175 100  173 104  201 106  141 118  176 120–21  176 129  174 134  173 136–37  176 138  174 142  176 151  177 154  177 155  174 157  239 159  177 166  176 agape/dilectio  71, 406 Agape, Irene and Chione 3.2  9 4.2  37, 107, 226 7  9 Alexander of Abunoteichos  138 Alexander Polyhistor  322 Amat, J.  374, 406, 410–11, 426, 429, 440–41, 443, 445–47, 452 ambon  368, 457 Ambrose, De viduis 59 Ambrosiaster 63 Ammia 85

Amsler, F.  236 Andronicus  102–04, 110, 112 A(n)noubion  246, 252–56 – date  254 – and Dorotheus  254–55 – and Firmicus Maternus  254 – name  253 – and pseudo-Manetho  254 – and Rhetorios  255 Antonius Diogenes  227, 233 Aphrodisias  112–13, 117 A(p)pion 256–64 – and Alexandria  259 – anti-Semitism  261–62 – birth place  257–58 – grammarian  259–61 – and magic  263 – name  256–57 – necromancy  247, 263–64 – Pleistonikes  258 – FGrH   616 F1–21  262 Apocalypse of Abraham – ascent  342 – 21  320 21.6  463 22, 23 and 25  342 Apocalypse of Elijah  325–26, 336–37 – date and place  325–26 – tour of hell  336–37 Apocalypse of Moses 37.3  277 Apocalypse of Paul 296–312 – and Apocalypse of Peter 297 – and Apocalypse of Zephaniah 327 – and Barhebraeus  300 – charity  308 – crimes  304–09 – date  299–302 – demonstrative pronouns  328 – Eucharist  305 – fast  307 – and Historia Apollonii Tyrii 299 – homosexuality/lesbianism  307 – Latin translation  302 – lector  305, 310 – magic  307

475

476

Index of names, places and passages

– and monks  301–02 – Nestorian conflict  309 – and Origen  300 – place  298–99, 302 – priest  304–05 – punishments  309–12 – respite of punishments  311–12 – river of fire  309, 327–28 – sinners  304 – sins  327 – text and translations  296–97 – torture  310–11 – and virgins  306 – and widows/orphans  305 – 1–2  298 9  308 13  321, 327 16  276 22–23  277 23  308 24  444, 460 29–30  308 31  305, 309, 327–28 34  304, 310 35  305 36  305, 310 37  306, 309 39  306–11 39–40  305 40  306, 308, 310 44  300 45  463–64 Apocalypse of Paul (Gnostic), ascent  342–43 Apocalypse of Peter 269–96 – Acherusian Lake  277 – and Alexandria  280 – angelus interpres  292, 324, 336 – and Apocalypse of Paul 297 – and apocalypticism  275 – and Bar Kokhba  281–82 – blasphemy/persecution  288 – and blood  286 – βόρβορος  278–79, 282, 286 – catalogues of sinners  292–93 – cats  282 – crime categories  287 – crimes and punishments  284–91

– date  281–83 – demonstrative pronouns  292, 324, 336 – discovery  256, 295, 313 – and Egypt  280, 282–83 – Elysian fields  277 – and 1 Enoch 282 – and Epistula Apostolorum 283 – Ethiopic text  273 – Greek fragments  274 – Greek mythology  287 – and Lucian  283 – magic  307 – and Orphism  278–80, 287–88, 292–93 – place  281–83 – punishments  324, 336 – and Septuagint  283 – sexuality  290 – sins  324, 327 – smells  286 – and talio  286, 336 – Tartarouchos  275–76 – Temelouchos  276–77 – and Theophilus  283 – 1G  87 2.1–4E  326 6.11–15E  326 7.1–2E  325 7.5–6E  325 8E  286 9E  50, 287, 289 10E  287, 289 11.4–5E  287 12.4–7E  307 13–14E  274 15G  321 15–16E  321 15–17E  282 16E  461 22G  324–25, 336 23–24G  278–79, 282, 286, 292, 325 23G  272 24G  324–25 25G  272 27G  271 28G  287, 289 30G  311

Index of names, places and passages

31G  279, 282, 286, 292, 325 32G  272, 287, 289 Apocalypse of Zephaniah  304, 326, 336–37 – and Apocalypse of Paul 327 – date and place  326–27 – sins  327 – tour of hell  336–37 Apocryphal Acts – animals in  176 – authors  219–21, 230 – chronology  221–25 – conversion  181–96 – crowd  106, 143, 156, 159 – and female readership  193 – and feminism  99, 149 – fluidity of text  220–21 – Latin translation  223–24 – magic  197–217 – and Manichaeans  224 – and miracles  105–06 – and novel  101, 228–30 – and Origen  169 – and historical persons  175 – place of composition  225 – and Priscillianists  224 – readership  225–34 – resurrection in  173, 212 (indirect) – and Roman world  230 – theatre  106, 157, 184, 208 – visions  100 – and women  177–79, 230–34 Apollonius 2  9 Apuleius – creativity  220 – Apol. 82  156 – Met. 1.10  201 2.27–30  215 2.28  201, 215 2.29  216 3.21  210 4.26  118 9.29  201

10.31  415 10.34.3  414 10.6  201 Arda¯ Vira¯z  312, 328, 338 Aricia  140, 209 Aristides 15  7 Aristippe 102 Aristobula 102 Aristophanes – Frogs 145–81, 273  282 – Knights 1362–3  286 Arnobius, Adv. Nat. 2.13 and 2.62  340 Artemidorus 3.52  16 Ascension of Isaiah – Isaiah  93 – 4.21  335 6  89, 92 6–11  94 6.10  339 6.17  95 7.5  339 9.13  94 10.7–10  335 11.36  94 ascents 338–45 – of Apollonius  344 – and 1 Enoch 334 – of Elijah  343 – and Er  339 – first person account  340 – Gnostic  343 – Iranian influence  338–39 – of Jesus  343 – layered heavens  340–41 – Mesopotamian  329 – roundtrips  34–43 – of Romulus  343 – of soul  339 Asinius Pollio  321 assize system  100, 156, 457

477

478

Index of names, places and passages

Athenagoras, Leg. 1.3  7 26.4–5  66 Athenodorus 251–53 Athenogenes 352 Augustine – De bono viduitatis 59 – Contra Adimanti calumnias 17  147, 223–24 – Contra adverversari­um legis et prophetarum 20  224 – Contra Faustum 22, 30.4 and 79  224 – De natura et origine animae 1.10.12  431–32 – De sermone domini in monte 1.20  224 – Enchiridion 29.112–3  300 – Ep. 3*  60 28*.2  390 29*.1.2  392 93.38  432 134.4  390 139.1  390 – De haer. 7  101 – Sermo 309.1  355 315.1  355, 391 382  390 – Treatise on John 98.8  300 Augustus 78 Bakhtin, M.  365 Bardaisan/esanes  167–69, 240 – and Achilles Tatius  227–28, 242 – and astrology  256 – and Egypt  264 – FGrH 719 F l and 2  169 – Leg. 170, p. 5 Drijvers  23, 179 Bartelink, G.J.M.  VIII

3 Baruch 10.2  277 bath 134 – mixed  203 Bastiaensen, A.A.R.  VIII, 387, 408, 411, 430, 440, 446–47, 451–52 Bauckham, R.  275–76, 280–81 Beek, C.I.M.I van  353, 390, 411, 426, 441 bêma  130, 156, 457 Bible – Gen 3.14  383 3.15  369, 415 28  367 – Lev 18.22  291 – 1Kings 17  53 – Isaiah 7.14  93 – Ez 40–48  333 – Zech 1–8  333 14.6–7  462 – Mt 2.4  66 4.6  209 4.8  320 5.7  126 7.13–14  369 8.3  395 8.28  125 8.29  126, 205 10.10  175 12.45  125 13.8  59 13.52  66 16.21  66 20.18  66 21.32  289 23.34  66 24.40–41  326 27.26  416 27.51  78

Index of names, places and passages

– Mark 1.24  205 1.25  128, 207 1.26  128, 207 1.43  127, 207 2.12  127, 207 3.31–35  363 5.2–5  125 5.7  205 5.8  128, 207 5.13  128, 207 6.9  175 9.18  205 9.20  126, 128, 205, 207 9.25  127–28, 207 10.38–39  378 13  8 12.40–44  44 14.23  379 16.9  125 – Luke 2.36–38  45 4.26  45 4.41  207 5.25  395 7.11–17  45 8.2  125 8.27  125 8.28  126, 205 11.26  125 12.51–53  363 16.24–26  376 17.34–36  326 18.1–8  45 21.1–4  45 22.20 and 42  379 – John 11.39  214 11.45  408 12.42  408 – Acts 2.16–21  83 2.42–47  75 2.44–45  17 4.4  408 4.32–37  75 4.34–37  17 5.19  435

6  46 6.1  17 7.58–60  418 8.5–25  208 9.36  17 9.36–43  46 9.39  17 10.1  202, 248 11.26  7 11.27 and 28  82 12.6–10  435 13.1  82 13.50  27, 35, 164 14  140–41, 150 15.22  82 15.29  77 15.32  82 16.18  128, 207 16.26–34  188, 435 17.12  27 19.6  83 21.8–9  82 21.10–11  82 21.25  77 26.24  157 28.6  140 31.1  82 – Rom 1.1  5 1.26  291 12.6  82–83 15.26  17 – 1Cor 1  396 7.8–9 and 39–40 47 11.4–5  82 11.15  81 12.10  94 12.11  82 12.28–29  82 13.2  83 13–19  82 14.1–25  83 14.1  82 14.3  82 14.5  82 14.31  82 14.39  82

479

480

Index of names, places and passages

14.33b–36  85 14.36  88 14.39  82 16.8  47 – 2Cor 2.14–15  452 12  396 12.1–4  340 – Ephes 2.20, 3.5 and 4.11  82 5.2  452 – Phil 1.1  5 – Col 4.14  150 4.16  19, 68 – 1Thess 1.1  25 4.13–18  30 5.20  82 5.27  19, 68 – 1Tim 1.18  87 2.9  48 4.13  19, 68 4.14  83, 85 5.3–16  48–49 6.1  289 – 2Tim 2.10  24 4.8  407 4.10  150 – Titus 1.1  5, 24 2.3  40, 107 2.5  289 – Philemon 16  27 24  150 – Hebrews 11.38  308 – James 1.27  17, 48 – 2Peter 2.1  87 2.21  289 – 1John  87

– Rev 1.1  87 1.3  19, 68 1.10  87 1.13  446 1.13–14  371 1.14  446 1.15  446 2.20–23  84 4.2  87 4.8  446 4.10  447 6.11  446 7.9  446 11.18  84 13–14  446 16.13  87 17.3  87 18.20  84 19.20  87 20.10  87 21.10  87, 320 21.23  462 22.5  462 Bickerman, E.  7–8 Blandina  4, 27, 33, 130, 363–64, 398 blasphemy 289 Boeft, J. den VII, 439 Bömer, F.  323 Bolkestein, H.  16 Boll, F.  221 Bolyki, J. IX Bonnet, M. IX, 176 Book of Muhammad’s Ladder 79  328, 338 Book of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ 46.3  277 Bourdieu, P.  13, 28 Bousset, W.  4 Bowersock, G.  283 Bowie, E.  225, 227–29 bribery  70–71, 157, 175 Brown, P.  39–40, 53, 57–58

Index of names, places and passages

Brüderlichkeitsethik 75 Brunt, P.  10 Burrus, V.  109 Caesar, death  78 Callimachus, youth in Acts of John  102–04 Canones Hippolyti 5, 9 and 32  56 Carpocratians 101 Carpus, Papylus and Agathonice 159 – (Lat.) 3.5  9 5  4, 371 – (Greek) 5  7 23–24  9 36  363 47  352 Cassius Dio 56.31.2–43.1  343 56.45.2  78 57.13.1  111 59.11.4  78 60.2  174 73.4.7  175 castration  110, 290 catasta 368 Celsus  15, 73 – on prophets  83 Chariton, and Clementines  229, 242 – Xenophon of Ephesus  229 – Callirhoe  109, 112 – 1.4.13–5.1  229 1.5  144 2.5.4, 4.3.1, 4.4.3 and 6.7.10  164 Chiarini, G.  406–07, 410, 437, 451 Christ/Jesus, and Cynics  76 – death  78 – as Good Shepherd  371 – as Kyrios 5–6 – as lawgiver  21, 69, 74 – name and magic/miracles  142, 184 – polymorphy  136–37, 177, 184, 189

481

– portrait  101 – as sophist  74 Christian(s)/ity – as ‘atheists’  74 – baptism  465 – bonding and bridging  25–28, 430 – in brothel  121–22, 160 – catechumenate  427–28 – and charity  16–17, 73, 108–09, 163 – and Christ/Jesus  3–6, 363–64 – and codex  19–20, 122 (miniature), 135–36 – as collegia/thiasoi 14–16 – and Cynics  76 – and damnation  30, 106–07, 184, 406–07 – divides families  21–23, 363, 393 – egalitarianism  26, 430 – family aspects  20–25 – interconnectedness  18–20 – and laughter  141 – and life everlasting  30–31, 73 – and literacy  18–20, 71–72, 231–32 – love God  29–30 – miracles free  248–49 – and mystery cult  69–70 – names of  7–12 – number  231–32 – Paradise  442 – and prophecy  81–95 – reading Scriptures  68 – religious capital  28–31 – and salvation  30 – siblings  24, 396 – as ‘slaves’ 5 – social capital  16–28 – and upper class males  28 – and (upper class) women  33–41, 177–79, 231 – and widows  43–64, 178 – write in prison  356, 440 – young  23–24, 179, 191–92, 195, 427 Christiana/us sum  9–11, 145, 360, 394 Chryse  5, 36, 137 Chrysostom – and Antioch  326

482

Index of names, places and passages

– Contra Iudaeos et gentes 10  311 – Life of Olympias 4  62 – Oratio ad viduam juniorem 59 – PG 51.321–38; 59, 323D  56 church – house  25 – pluralisation  26 Cicero – Ad Atticum 2.3.2  443 2.12.2  406 13.30.1  407 – Rep. 6.11  320 Clemens Alexandrinus – Ecl. 48  276 – Paed. 3.4.28–29  34 – Strom. 1.21.3  262 3.27.1.5  70 2.144.1  399 1 Clement – and prophets  86 – 5.7  364 8.4  51 60.2  5 Clementines, Pseudo– and Antonius Diogenes  242, 248 – author  241 – and Bardaisan  240 – and Chariton  229, 242 – date and place of  197, 239–41 – Faustus  237 – Grundschrift 235–38 – and Historia Apollonii Tyrii  242, 256 – and Iamblichus  242 – Mattidia  237, 253 – and Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum 249 – and Posidonius  242 – text  235–38 – Homilies    date 240–41

   location 240   1.5   245   1.6.1  236   1.17.1  236   2.24  246   2.26  247   2.26, 3–6   235   2.30  247   2.32  264   2.34   245, 249   4.3   246   4.4   245   4.6   251, 258   4.12   252   5.2   262   5.3  263   5.27  262   7.9  251   6.1  251   6.3   260   7.10  248   8.3  243   9.3–5  244   9.4–5  244   14.11  246, 252   14.12  253   17  251   20.4–6  202   20.11  253, 258   20.13, 17  251   20.21  252   20.21–22  251 – Recognitions   Arabic epitome, date and location 240   1.5  199, 245   1.30.2–3  198   2.2  247   2.9  210   2.13.1–2  200   3.47 and 57  210   4.29.1  244   4.7.2  205, 207   4.27  243–44   8.2.2  252,   9.29.2  240   10.9  255   10.10.7–13  240

Index of names, places and passages

  10.52  252, 258   10.55.3  202, 248, 251   10.56  252   10.58–59  252   10.59  251   10.62–63  252   10.63–64  251 Cleomedes 2.1.91  16 Cleopatra  100–02, 110 Clionius 91 Codex Theodosianus 2.8.1  312 2.8.18  312 3.11.1  61 8.8.1  312 8.8.3  312 8.16.1  60 9.7.6  307 9.7.10  312 9.7.13  312 9.21.4  60 9.25.1–3  61 9.38.3, 8  311 9.38.7–8  311 16.2.20  62 16.2.27–28  62 16.10.12.1  307 Coleman, K.  398, 414 Coluthus 10 confessores 458–59 Constitutio Sirmondiana 7–8  311 Constantine  304, 312 Constitutiones Apostolicae 3.6.3 and 3.7.3  54 3.16.1  55 6.17.4  55 8.13.14  56 conversion  105, 181–96 – and apostates  188, 196 – and discourses  190 – and exorcism  142 – of household  162, 191–92 – of lion  192

– and miracles  185, 188, 194 – and mission  196 – as process  184, 194–95 – and social status  188 – of women  195 – of young  195 Cornelius, bishop  52, 63 Cooper, K.  219 craticula 325–26 Crispina 33 Croix, G.E.M. de Ste  10 crucifixion  121, 130 culleus 121 curiosi  147, 223 curiositas 406–07 Cynics  66, 76 Cybele  36, 40 Cynegius 299 Cyprian, bishop – influential  458–59 – and martyrdom  379 – Ad Donat. 10  368 – Carm. 6.227  444, 461 – De bono pat. 14  373 – De habitu virginum 13  412 – De lapsis 25–26  172 26  373 – (Pseudo-Cyprian) De laude mart. 8  368 21  444 – Ep. 1.1.1  457 5.1, 6.4  440 7.1.1  71 12.2  71 13.3.1  369 14.2  71 15.1.2  373 21  375, 461–62 22.2  445

483

484

Index of names, places and passages

23  449 28.1.2  379, 440 30–31  449 36  449 37.2.2  379 39.2.1  440 39.2.2  369, 415 39.5.2  459 40.1.2  459 45.2  459 57.2.2  379 58.9.1  369, 415 58.9.2  379 59.19.1  459 60.1.2  440 69.15  128, 207 75.4.3  447 76.4.2  379 77.2.1  351, 391 Cyprian, magician  123, 200, 246 Cyprian 1.2  9 32.3  394 32.6  466 4.1  161 5.5  31 Czachesz, I.  290 damnatio ad bestias  161, 310, 382, 400 Dasius 4.4  363 Davies, S.L.  99 deaconesses 56 Dead Sea Scrolls 1QS 4.10–11  289 4Q213  341 4Q372 1 13  289

– as dogs  204 – exorcism  127–28, 141, 206–08 – initiative  205 – kills  126, 205 – leaving  128, 207 – motor disorder  126, 204–05 – number  125, 204 – parhedros 124 – resists  206–07 – Semmath/Sammoth  124, 200 – smiling  141 – strikes  125, 204 Demosthenes 43.62  49 Descents – catalogues of sinners  316–17 – first person account  316 – Mesopotamian  329 – of Odysseus  313, 316, 330 – of Heracles  314, 316–18, 330 – of Orpheus  314–16, 318, 330–32 – of Pythagoras  330–31 – and Vergil  334–35 Devil  361, 369 – black  382 Didache – and prophets  86–87 – 10.7  86 11.2  84 12  75 15.1  84 Didascalia Apostolorum  54, 56, 239 Diebner, B.J.  327 Diels, H.  237, 270, 328 Dieterich, A.  272–75, 277, 286, 291–92, 295, 313–14, 317, 333 dikaiosynê 289–90

Decius, persecution by  11–12, 240, 352

dikrossion  102, 187

Dehandschutter, B.  423

Diocletian, persecution  310

Deissmann, A.  4

diogmitae  155, 165

demon – as animals  125, 204 – and apostle  126–27 – and bath  124–26, 203 – black  125, 138, 204

Dionysios of Alexandria  351 Dioscurus 352 Diospolis 253–54 divinisation  140–41, 171, 189

Index of names, places and passages

Dölger, F.  138

22.8–10  446

Dolbeau, F.  426, 451

Epicurus 38

doors, automatically opening  103, 177, 187, 192, 435

Epiphanius, Haer. 33. 3–7  34 51.33  85

Dorcas 17 Drijvers, H.J.W.  167, 174, 176, 241 Drusiana  102–04, 109–11, 113–14, 133 Drusilla 78 Dunn, P.W.  99

epiphany – not anthropomorphic  183 – smiling in  103–04, 152, 459 Eubola  34, 36, 138, 211

eagle 78

Eucharist 378 – and milk  465 – wineless  152

Eck, W.  75, 146

euergetism, male and female  62

Egeria 427

Eunapios 489  69

Egger, B.  233 Egyptians/Ethiopians – athletes  382 – black  139, 209, 230, 382 Eitrem, S.  209 ekklêsia 25 Engberg, J.  193–94 1 Enoch  275, 317, 321 – angelus interpres  318, 333 – and ascent  334, 342 – demonstrative pronouns  318, 333 – and Er  334 – and Homer  318–19, 332–33 – and Sibyllines 335 – and Vergil  320, 322 – 14  334 14.8–24  342 15.1  342 17.1–5  332–32 17–18  320 17–19  318, 332 17–22  292 18.13  318 19.3  318 91.7  289 96.7  289 108  288 2 Enoch  340–41 – 4  447 8 and 20  445

Euplus 1  4, 9, 31, 360 2.2G  363 Eusebius – HE 3.1  169 3.31.3  86 4.15.4  311 4.15.47  351 4.23.10  52 4.23.13  37, 145 5 praef. 2  351 5.1.41–42  130 5.2.3  445 5.3.4  88 5.16.7  90 5.16.14  88 5.17.2  88, 90 5.18.4  88 5.24.2  86 5.173–74  85 6.3.1–6  357 6.5.6  375 6.14.1  283 6.43  108 6.43.11–12  36 7.11.3–11  351 8.9.5  457 – Vita Const. 4.18–20  312

485

486

Index of names, places and passages

exorcism, etymology  243 – see s.v. demon Favorinus 214 Felicitas  4, 27, 387–401 – giving birth  395–96, 405 – burial  401 – catechumen  389 – daughter  396 – death  397–98, 400 – husband 429 – marriage  393 – pregnant  395 – and Revocatus  387 – slave  388–89, 429 – young  393

Fridh, Å.  430, 440–41, 445 friend of the Emperor  136, 144 Fructuosus 2.3  9 5  30 7  352 7.2  369, 415 Fukayama, F.  14 funeral, Roman  144 Gallonius  4, 352 Gamble, H.  19, 136 genesis 252 gentleness 117

Felix 9 – 1  447

Gibbon, E.  129, 208

Feraboli, S.  255

Goff, J. le  161

Festugière, A.-J.  174

Gordon, R.  201

Ficker, G.  145

gospel, as amulet  122

Finke, R.  29

Gospel of the Nazarenes 171

first of  102, 112–13, 153, 158–59, 163–65, 168

Gospel of Truth 21  343 gossip 54–55

Flavius Josephus – AJ 8.47  127 12.142  66 18.82  35 20.42  263 20.195  35 – Bell. Jud. 2.20.2  35 – C. Ap. 2.2, 12 and 15  259 2.29 and 41  257, 259 2.135  259 2.270–71  290 – Vita 16  35 Flora 34 Formisano, M.  437 Fortunatus  103–04, 111 Forum Iulium  212, 248

Glykon 138

gradus 368 Graf, F.  279 Griesbach, J.J.  236 Guddenis 352 – prison  376 Habermehl, P.  364, 366–67, 374, 437 Hägg, T.  219, 225, 227, 233, 242 Harnack, A. von  7, 33, 93, 230, 269–70 Hardy, E.G.  10 Harris, J.R.  426 Hatch, E.  15 heaven – above  443, 466 – climate  443–44, 461 – curiosity about  466 – cypresses  460–61

Index of names, places and passages

– high trees  460 – as immense garden  370, 450 – journey to  460 – as locus amoenus 460 – light  443–44, 446, 462 – and martyrdom  466 – multitude of people  451 – as palace  445 – and Paradise  467 – as park  443, 461 – no seasons  462 – smell  452 – and spring  461 – visions of  455–67 – white  458 Heilen, S.  255 Heinrici, G.  15 Heintze, W.  237, 241, 252, 254 Heliodorus – Aethiopica 168 – and Achilles Tatius  337 – and Acts of Thomas 168–69 – 2.19  175 6.14, 21, 65  212 6.14–15  247 8.9  201 hell  295–312, 376 Hermas – Mand. 4.4  52 5.2.2  27 8.10  52 11  93 11.9  87 11.9–10a  93 11.12  86 11.13  87 – Sim. 1.8, 5.3.7, 9.15.4  86 9.16.5  86 9.25.2  86 9.26.2 and 27.2  52, 108 – Vis. 1.1.3  380, 460 1.2.2  371 1.7  69 2.4.2  226

487

2.4.3  52 3.1.2  367 3.1.8  86 3.5.1  86 4.1  369 4.1.3  367 4.2.2 and 5.1  371 Hilarianus  360–62, 373, 380, 382, 393, 415, 441 Hilhorst, A. XIII, 308, 439 Hill, C.  451 Himmelfarb, M. X, 274–75, 277, 280, 291–92, 313–14, 318, 320, 325, 333–34, 336 Hippolytus, Comm. in Daniel. 1.22  37 His­toria Apollo­nii Tyrii – and Apocalypse of Paul 299 – and Clementines  242, 256 – 31 RA, RB  116 51.26–28B  299 Holzberg, N.  219 homosexuality 290–91 Hopkins, K.  18, 23, 71, 167, 177–79, 191, 231–32, 350–51 Horace, Jewish influence  322 Horsfall, N.  321–22 Horst, P.W. van der  259 Hume, D.  34 Ignatius – Ephes. 2  71 12.2  70 – Magn. 2  5 4  7 15  71 – Rom 3  7 – Smyrn. 4.1 and 6.2  49 9.12  71 11  72

488

Index of names, places and passages

13.1  49 – Pol. 7  72 – Trall. 12  71 incest  118–19, 121 inn 142 – in Edessa  172 inscriptions – AE 1968.227–28  362 1993.828  160 1995.1775  429 – CIRB 1259, 1260–61, 1277–87, 1289  15 – I. Alexandreia 187  446 – I. Delos 290  277 1641b6  68 – IGR 3.115  115 4.1094.74–5  140 – I. Hadrianoi 173 – I. Istros 193  68 – I. Iznik 196, 1062, 1201, 1208  116 – I. Perge 294 and 321  68 – I. Pessinous 170  69 – I.Prusias 7.2.22  129 – I. Smyrna 652  260 – LSAM 80.10  68 – MAMA IV.4  88 V.23  88 XI.9  150, 95, 122 164  11 – O. Masada 788  257 – RE­C AM ii.324  116

– SEG 26.261  160 24.1055  68 30.93  277 31.1202  137 31.1316  164 33.1602  36 34.695  68 35.1330  117 36.1277  172 36.970.A.11–2  362 37.544.2, 4  129 38.1586  165 40.1568  253 41.1329A.4  15 41.1343, 1345–46 and 1353 164 43.441  116 43.850  117 44.1279  276 48.1120  15 51.1811 D.II.11  164 55.1463bis  15 55.1492  164 57.779  15 58.1538  11 – TAM III. 118.3, 180.3, 596.2 and 697.1 129 V.2.310  85 V.2.1326 and V.3.1840  11 – Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, nos. 9, 10, 17, 19  11 Iragaray, I.  365 Irenaeus, Adv. haer. 1.13.2–3  34, 90, 124, 200 1.13.5  90 1.21.3  70 1.23.4–5  245 1.25.6  101 2.32.4  86, 104–05 5.6.1  86 Irenaeus 3.1–2  24 4.9  363, 394 5.2  363 Isis 36

Index of names, places and passages

James, M.R.  269 James, William  181, 193 Jerome – and widows  62–63 – Adv. Jov. 2.14  169 – De viris illustr. 12–13  259 – Ep. 22.16  61 54  59, 62 77.10  62 107–108  62 123  59–60 127  61–63 130.5  438 130.13  61 – Vita Hil. 12  246 John – apostle  99–110 – portrait  101 Jones, C.P.  78 Jones, S.F.  236, 239, 264 Jubilees 7.13 and 9.1  244 Julian – and women  63 – Ep. 84  16 Julianus Africanus T47.9  262 Junod, E.  107, 110, 145 Justin 2.3  157 3.4  9 4  9, 37 5.2  363 6  352 Justin Martyr – 1Apol. 21.3  78 26  140 29.2  70 67  18, 26, 52, 68

54  70 66.4  70 67.7  108 – 2Apol. 2  34–35, 38 3  76, 102 6  104 – Tryph. 60.6  105 70 and 78  70 Juvenal 3.296  16 6.511–91  34 Kaestli, J.-D.  99, 107, 110, 145 katabaseis, see Descents Kerényi, K.  221 Kerygma(ta) Petrou 237 Khomeini, R.  420 Kippenberg, H.  404 Klauser, Th. 377 Klijn, A.F.J.  167, 173, 176 Klostermann, E.  270 Krech, V. XIII Kristeva, J.  365 Kroll, W.  254 Lachmann, K.  236 Lactantius, Mort pers. 5  369 36.7  310 Lane Fox, R.  10, 34, 105–06, 230 Leglay, M.  413 lesbianism 291 Liber Flavus Fergusiorum 107 Lieu, J.  21 Lightfoot, J.  296, 320 Lipsius, R.A.  IX Lloyd-Jones, H.  314–15, 320 logoi hieroi 71

489

490

Index of names, places and passages

Longus, Daphnis and Chloe 2.7  153 love-sickness 262–63 Lucian – and Revelation 283 – and Apocalypse of Peter 283 – and Christianity  65–79, 283–84 – and glossolalia  90–91 – Alexander 24  214 25 and 38  284 – Fug. 33  286 – Icaromenippus 339 – Onos 116 – Per. 9  66 10  66 11  15, 66, 85 11–13  284 12  50–51, 70, 107, 178 13  17–18, 21, 73–75, 214, 396, 466 14  75 15  76 16  77 39–40  77–79 41  72 – Phil­ops. 13  141, 214 14  201 16  127, 203, 205 31  127, 206 34–36  123–24, 200, 246 – VH 2.26  286 30  286, 324 Lucilla 53 Luhmann, N.  13 Lycomedes  100–02, 110–11 Lyons and Vienne 361 – 1  352 10  9 19–20  9 23  4 26  9, 107 35  364

50  9 53  191 55  364 56  4, 399 passim   363 2 Maccabees 6.30  364 4 Maccabees 9.29 and 31  364 10.20  364 MacDonald, D.  99 MacMullen, R.  33–34, 37, 104 magic/magician 123–25 – and Apuleius  217 – biaiothahatoi 247 – boy mediums  247 – and Egypt  200, 233, 246 – erotic  153, 155–56 – evil eye  101, 182–83 – exorcism  104–06, 123–29, 141–42, 202–08 – and Fallen angels  243 – flying  209–11 – Ham  199, 243 – instruction in  199 – inventor  198–99, 243 – Jewish  202–03 – and lynching  201 – and Manichaeism  217 – Memphis  246 – Mestraim  199, 243–44 – and money  200–01 – and monks  307 – and moon  209–10 – and Moses  212, 246 – Nebrod/Nimrod  244 – necromancy  245–47 – Nectabis  243 – Ninus  244 – Ostanes  243, 246 – in Palestine  245 – parhedros  200, 210, 247 – persecution of  201–02 – public performance of  212 – repression of  238, 248 – resurrections  214

Index of names, places and passages

– Samaritan  245 – secrecy  248 – speechlessness  142 – Simon Magus  208–16, 244–49 – teacher-pupil  124 – Thebes  246 – touching  142, 172 – Typhon  243 – ventriloquism  216 – whispering  189, 212–13 – young  199 – Zarathustra/Zoroaster  198–99, 244 Mani 34 manus-marriage 38 Marcellus 2.1  9 2.2  4 Marcion  86, 145 – M. literature  241 Marcus Aurelius  73, 112 Marcus Magus  34, 90, 124, 200 Marianus – date  456 – influence of Perpetua  354, 365, 368, 456 – low position  465–66 – 2.2, 5  361 4.5  364 5.1  361 5.2  9 5.4  361 6  457 6.5  378, 465 6.6–11  368 6.9  458 6.9–10  443 6.11–12  445 6.11–15  377 6.12–13  460 6.14  458 6.15  448 7.1  378, 465 7.3  382, 784 7.6  384 8.2  22 9.2  364

491

Marinus 3  9 marriage – age at  118, 134, 173 – Christian-pagan  177 – unequal  120, 175 Martimort, A.G.  239 martyr(s)/dom – animals against  130, 459 – as athletes  380 – as baptism  412–13 – birthday  352 – burned alive  429, 445 – and Christ  3–5, 363–64, 371 – crowd protests  130 – crown  464 – cup of martyrdom  378–79, 465 – damnatio ad bestias 161 – dawn execution  130, 161, 410 – delay for  10, 394 – Deo gratias 466 – Donatist  390 – and Eucharist  379 – at festivals  161 – being first  370, 440 – flogging  130, 415 – God/Jesus suffers in them  396 – hypomonê  363, 400 – immediate ascent to heaven  370, 419, 442, 459, 466 – intercession by  161, 375 – joy in suffering  364, 374, 396, 452–53 – nudity  161, 398 – rational choice  418 – refrigerium 450 – and roses  450 – ruling discourse  418–19 – and sacrifice  393 – sit with Christ  370, 459 – and Socrates  73 – and sword  458–59 – voluntary  74, 388, 418 – white clothes  446 – young  23–24, 387, 393, 418 Maxima, Donatilla et Secunda 2 and 4  24

492

Index of names, places and passages

Maximilian 1.2–3  9 2.4  4, 371 2.6  9 3.3  364 9  9

Morgan, J.  219–20, 225, 233

Maximilla, Montanist  87–90

Musaeus  320, 335

Meeks, W.  29

Musurillo, H.  406, 410, 437, 451

Merkelbach, R.  221

Myrte 91

Methodius, Symp. Prel.7–8  463 2.6  276 5  460 Meyboom, H.U.  236–37 Miller, P.C.  364–66, 374 Minicius Opimianus  361, 392, 426, 441 Minnen, P. van  281–82 Minucius Felix, Octavius 9.2  21, 74, 396 12.5  14 miracles, immediately  395 Mithras Liturgy 340 – 748–49  340 Mommsen, Th. 328 monks – habitation  308 – and magic  307 – white habit  308 Montanism 87–91 – and Ephesus  86 – in Thyateira  85 – and women  88

12.1  356, 440 13.1  458 13.2, 6  364 17.1  396 21.1  364, 458

necromancy  199, 246–471 – and Egypt  247 necrophilia  102, 180, 229 Nereus 94 Nero, persecution  33 Nicklas, T. XIII Nicomedia 113–14 Nock, A.D.  181, 193–96, 221, 427 Norden, E.  270–72, 286–87, 295–96, 313–15, 317, 320–21, 333, 335 Norelli, E.  93 novel, ancient – and Apocryphal Acts  101, 228–30 – and astrology  255–56 – authors  220 – fluidity of text  220 – readers of  228–29 – and women  232–33 nurse 175 Obbink, D.  251, 253–55

Montanus  87–88, 90

obstetrix 412

Montanus and Lucius 9 – Eucharist  377–78, 465 – influence of Perpetua  354, 365 – Paradise  443 – 2  445 4.2  356 7.3–5  466–67 7.6  368 8  377–78, 464 9.2  371, 378 11.2  371, 458

Odes of Solomon 42.11–22  335 oikonomos  116, 125 Olivieri, A.  254 Oracula Sibyllina 2.327  462 2.335–38  277 Origen – and Apocalypse of Paul 300 – Catenae … ad Corinthios 89

Index of names, places and passages

– CC 1.22–23  203 1.27  26 1.28  123, 200, 246 1.38  123, 200, 246 1.46  105, 123, 200, 246 1.67  206 2.33  206 3.9  35 3.23  15 3.24  206 3.28  206 3.44  23, 26, 191 3.55  34, 178 3.59  70 4.33–4  203 5.45  203 6.22  339 7.9, 11  83 8.48  106, 184 orphans  17, 36, 70 Orphism  271, 277–78 – and Apocalypse of Peter 273 – and afterlife  278 – catalogues of sinners  293 – and Chaldaean Oracles 339 – and Eleusis  280 – and Gnostic writings  339 – and Pythagoreanism  278–80 – underworld  279–80 – and Verg. Aen. 6.271  287 – and Wilamowitz  295, 315 – OF 1 and 3  320 19  320 474–96  277 708  316 717  287–88, 317, 321 870  316 980  315 1103  316 Ovid, Jewish influence  322–23 Palestinians 403–05

Palladius – Dial. 5  63 – HL 65.3  157 Pamoun 352 panegyris 77 Pansophios 352 papyri – P.Di­o­g. 6.3  129 – PGM I.1–3  124, 200 I.191–219  211 IV.222, 227, 249  247 IV.909–10  212 IV.1227 and 1242–4  128, 207 IV.2335  276 IV.3007ff  128, 207 IV.3037–41  127, 206 V.158  128, 207 VII.282  125 XII.79  124, 200 XII.163  436 XIII.242–44  127, 206 XIII.279–82,  215 XXXIV.3–7  210 XXXVI.76  125 – P.Kron. 3.1  129 – P.Oxy. 1.5  93 3.486.1  129 4.840  171 9.1201.16  129 12.1475.10  129 14.1642.4 and 1727.1  129 21.2295  261 22.2337  261 32.2617, 42.3010  34 42.3035  11 36.2785  427 43.3119  11 50.3429  10 50.3529  352 54.3759, 37–39  312 59.3965  261

493

494

Index of names, places and passages

64.4365, 70.4759  352 79.5201  258–59 – PSI 2.117  227 9.1041  427 – SB 1.4549, 12.10772 and 16.12497 11 Paradise, spring  463 parricide  110, 121, 186 Pausanias 2.21.7  47 10.38.12  48 Pepouza 89 peregrinus 306 Peregrinus  15, 18, 65–79 – apostasy  77 – ascension  77–79 – as author  68, 72 – and Christians  66–79 – as Cynic  76 – as Heracles  78 – in prison  75–76 – as Proteus  77 – resurrection of  79 – as Socrates  71 – statue  66 Perkins, J.  395 Perpetua – aunt  359 – baptism  372, 380 – no belt  381 – burial  401 – catechumen  428 – chaste  382–83 – and Christ/God  371, 384, 446 – date of death  409 – death  400 – ‘diary’  423, 428 – and Dinocrates  373–79 – and Eucharist  372–73 – eyes  412 – family  357–64 – father  359–63 – and Genesis  428 – and gladiators  384–85 – and Good Shepherd  372

– husband 358 – kissed  385, 447 – knows Greek  140, 154–55, 357–58, 372, 449 – and Pomponius  380–81 – prison  376, 405 – and Saturus  370, 442–43 – self-confidence  367, 412, 465 – sermons on  391 – sex change  382–83 – visions  364–85 – young  418 Perpetua and Felicitas 349–454 – and Acts of Paul and Thecla 154–55, 161, 230, 375 – and Acts of Peter  139, 146, 230 – agônothetês 383–84 – amphitheatre  383–84 – animals  400–01 – Artaxius  445 – Aspasius  449 – authorship  355–56, 431–32 – baptism  377 – catechumens  427 – and Christ  416 – crowd  399 – date  354 – deacons  373 – Devil  361, 369, 384–385 – Dinocrates  373–79 – editor  434 – eros and thanatos  400 – and Euripides  399 – Eucharist  372–73 – and gladiatorial combats  384–85 – Greek version valuable  354, 380, 403–04, 440–41 – and Pythian Games  380–81, 383 – Geta  409 – heaven  419 – and Hermas 370 – Holy Spirit  432–34 – influence  354, 391 – Iucundus  426, 441 – Latin not Greek original  353–54, 380 – ladder  367–70 – and Marianus  354, 365, 368, 456 – last meal  405–06

Index of names, places and passages

– Last Judgment  419 – magic  435–36 – and Montanus  354, 365 – Optatus  448–49 – papa 449 – and Polycarp 437 – and Polyxena  399 – priests of Saturn and Cereres  398, 413–14 – prison  396 – and Revelation  369–70, 446 – Rusticus  425, 430 – Saturninus  429, 441 – Secundulus  429 – seniores  447, 453 – sequence of martyrs  397, 410–11 – serpent  369–70 – social status  429–30 – and Tertullian  354, 397, 415, 434 – text  404, 409 – Thuburbo Minus  387–88, 425–26 – trishagion  446 – and Vita Cypriani 354 – written in prison  356 – 1.1–3  351 1.6  423 2.1  154, 387, 441 2.1–2  423–31 2.1  357, 410 2.2  24, 358–59, 425, 429 2.3  357, 432 3.1  359 3.1–4  154 3.2  9 3.2–3  360 3.3  361 3.5  356, 363, 373, 376, 389, 396 3.6  376 3.7  356, 373, 380, 396 3.8  24, 356,358–59, 405 4  366–67, 419 4.1–2  465 4.2–4  367 4.3  443, 466 4.4  428 4.5  370, 425, 430, 440 4.6  443

4.8  381, 427, 443 4.9  466 4.10  366, 369, 373 4.29  452 5.2  362 5.3  358 5.4  362 5.6  364, 452 6.2  457 6.3  441 6.4  9, 360, 393 6.5  362, 415, 430 6.6  382 6.7  358, 369, 415 7  359 7–8  230 7.1–9  373–74 7.4  354 7.9  356, 380 8  374, 464 8.2  377 9.1  405 10  139, 230 10.3  460 10.8  367 10.11  415 10.14  361 10.15  433 11  419 11–13  441–42 11–12  453 11.1  356, 440, 451 11.2  344 11.3  466 11.4  370, 462 11.5–6  371 11.9  426 12.1  381 12.3  371 12.5  447 12.7  370 13  453 13.3  407 13.4  140, 358, 371, 441 14  445 14.1  440 14.3  440 15  394, 405

495

496

Index of names, places and passages

15  4, 405 15.2  357, 451 15.3  451 15.5  395 15.7  396 16  405 16.1  432 16.2  435–37 17  405, 437–38 17.1  71, 408, 419 17.2  406 18  409–10 18.2  4, 397 18.3  397 18.4  398 18.7–8  406, 419 18.8  30, 380 18.9  364, 453 19  130, 410 19.3–4  380 19.4  401 20  392, 410 20.1  361, 426 20.2  161 20.4  383 20.6  399 20.8  425, 430 20.10  24, 359, 425 21.1–8  410 21.9  154, 363, 400, 410 21.11  351 Perpetua, Acta – date  354, 391 – interrogation in  391–92 – text  389–90 – I.1  410 I.1.1  387, 429 I.4.1  393 I.5.2–8  392 I.5.5  429 I.7.1  429 I.9.2  397 I.9.3–4  400 II.1.1  387, 429 II.7.1  429 Peterson, E.  8, 104 Phileas  9, 22, 352

– Latin 1  368 Philip, and daughters  82, 85–86, 89 Philo – Hyp. 290 5  14 – Leg. 368  289 – Probus 85  15 – SpecLeg 339 3.2  320 Philostratus, Life of Apollonius 1.15  143 1.19  141 3.15 and 17  141 3.38 and 4.20  127, 207 4.45  143 4.49  215 5.20  138 6.2  139 6.10–11  141 7.38  435 8.30  344 Picard, Ch. 413 Pseudo-Phocylides 6  288 184–85  291 187  290 192  291 229–30  289 Pionius 1  352 1.2  356 2.3  139 3  106 9  37 8.2 and 4  9 9  37 9.5 and 7  9 11.2  352 11.5  157 14.9  361 15.7 and 16.2  9 18.1  161 15.7, 16.2 and 18.6 9 21.5  352

Index of names, places and passages

23  352 Pizzolato, L.  434

12–13  143 12  9 14.2  370 17.2  4 18.3  352 22.3  352

Plato – Leg. 909A  34 – Phaedo 69C  282 114A  309, 327, 337 – Phaedrus 230B  460 – Pol. 272A  462 – Rep. 363D  282 615D, 616B  320 – Symp. 218B  320 – Tim. 41E  320

Potamiaena and Basilides 5  9

Pleket, H.W.  4

Pouderon, B.  237–38, 242

Pliny, Ep. 10.96.2  9, 360 10.96.7  14

Poupon, G.  146

Plotinus 38 Plutarch – and Er  339 – Life of Romulus 28.1  78 – Mor. 407C  34 554B  398, 414 815D  143 Poimandres 25–26  340–41 Poirier, P.-H.  167, 174 Polemon 214 Polycarp, and Perpetua 437 – 2.2  4, 396 3.1  361 4.3  418 8.2  364 9.3  4–5, 372 10  9 11  31 11.2  30, 107, 437

Polycrates 86 Pontius, Vita Cypriani 12.3–5  458 Poppaea 35 Porphyry – De antro 24  339 – Plot. 9  38 – F 4 Harnack – 70 F Becker 35

Preuschen, E.  270 priests, Jewish  65–66 Priscilla  87–88, 90 prison – two compartments  396 – crowdedness  376 – dark  356, 376, 396 – death in  445 – officers  188, 356 – writing in  356, 440 Prohairesios 69 prophêtês 67 prophets 81–95 – false  87 – male and female  81–82, 84 – and big cities  82, 86 – ecstasy  87, 90, 92, 95 – and glossolalia  83, 90 – number  91 – predictions  82 – ranking  82, 84 – wandering  84, 91 – writings of  90, 92 prostatês  15, 69

497

498

Index of names, places and passages

Protevangelium of James 6  67 prôtopolitês 164 prôtos tês poleôs, title, see first of Prudentius – Cathemerinon 5.125–36  311 – Peristeph. 5.207  326 Ptolemaeus and Lucius 2  107 11 and 16  9 10  360 15–16  9–10 Putnam, R.  13, 29 Quadratus 85 Quintillians 89 Radermacher, L.  320, 334 Reitzenstein, R.  270, 436 Religionsgeschichtliche Schule  270, 273 religious capital  29

– no cleric  440 – death  400 – irony  407 – kissed  447 – knows Greek  430, 449 – Latin not Greek original  440 – literacy  430 – name  440 – and Perpetua  370, 442–43 – social status  430 – vision  440–54 satyriskos 138 Sbordone, F.  163 Scaliger, J.J.  317 Schmidt, C.  134, 146, 164, 169, 236–27, 239–40, 252, 264 Schubert, P.  255 Scillitani 9–10 – 8  157 12  136 13  9 14  392 15  370, 466 16  392 17  466

remarriage  51, 60–61

scribes, Jewish  65–66

retiarius  397, 412

senator, age of  144

Robert, L.  138, 353, 380 Robinson, J.A.  269

Septimius Severus  146, 239 – persecution  357, 425, 440

Rohde, E.  221, 232

Sergius Paullus  75, 85

Roldanus, J. IX

Setaioli, A.  321

Romulus, ascension  78–79, 343

Shariati, A.  420

Rosenstiehl, J.-M.  276

Shaw, B.  39, 397, 446

Rüpke, J. XIII

Silverstein, T.  308

ruler cult  141, 143

Simon Magus  34, 133, 139, 208–16 – death of  88 – divinisation  140–41 – flies  141, 188, 190 – and necromancy  246–47 – vs Peter  208–16 – robs Eubola  138, 211 – voice  211–12

Sabazios 40 Sabina 27 Saïd, S.  168 Saller, R.  39 Saturus 130 – and angels  443

social capital  13–14

Index of names, places and passages

Söder, R.  106, 219, 227

Tatum, J.  219

Sozomen, HE 6.3  61 7.9.10  301 7.19.9  274, 301

teletê 70

spiritual capital  28–29 Stark, R.  29, 177–78, 231–32, 417–18 statue 140 statuettes 138 Stephen, protomartyr  355, 391, 418 Stephens, S.  225 Stock, B.  18 Stoneman, R.  219 Strabo 7.3.4  34 11.14.2 and 16.1.23  168 Strecker, G.  239–40 Stuckrad, K. von  404 Suetonius – Aug. 100  343 – Nero 25  8 suicide bombers  403–05, 416–22 – discourse about  419 – female  417 – and Paradise  419–21, 453 – voluntarily  417 – young  418 synagôgeus 68 synoptic/tabular method  236–37 Tabitha 46 Tacitus – Ann. 1.73  289 14.15.5  8 16.6  35 – Hist. 1.51.3  8 Tatian, Or. 32.1 and 33.1  23, 37, 191

499

Tertullian – and codex/scroll  136 – and Perpetua  354, 397, 415, 434 – Adv. Marc. 1.29.4  53 2.21.2  407 3.22  86 – An. 9.4  89, 396 55.4  451 57.1  243 – Apol. 23.4  105 27.14  461 38–39  14 39.4–5  447 39.8–10  21, 74 39.16  406 42.5  406 47.13  461 50.13  31, 408 – Bapt. 5  70 9.4  71 17  373 17.5  111, 154, 163, 230, 375 – Cor. 1  119 15  70 – De cultu feminarum 1.21.1  243 2.10.2–3  243 – De exhortatione castitatis 3.1–2  434 11 and 12.2  53 – De idololatria 9.1  407 – De pallio 4.10  414 – De patientia 14.4  448 – De praesc. haer. 14.2  407 40  70, 407 41  373, 407

500

Index of names, places and passages

– De testimonio animae 2.7  414 – Fug. 9.4  395 – Ieiun. 12.3 and 17  71 – Mart. 1.1 and 2  71 – Mon. 12 and 16.3  53 – Nat. 2.4.19  407 19.6  461 – Or. 3.3  461 28  71 – Pud. 13  53 13.7  449 – Scap. 4  35 – Scorp. 9.8–9  7 – Spect. 12.6  406 – Uxor. 1.1.1  389 1.4.4  53 1.4.6  52 1.8.4  53 2.1.4  53 2.4  17 2.8.5  389 – Virg. vel. 9  373 9–10  53

13.2  127, 206 17.3  205 18.21  205 Thecla  149–63, 398 Theodotus 352 6  368, 457 Theophilus, Autol. 2.8  105, 127, 206 theatre  104, 106, 129 Thessalos  247 1.13–14  271 12  254 Thomas, K.  35 thiasarchês 67–68 thiasos  15, 67 Tigchelaar, E.  282 Tissot, Y.  167, 174 Touati, C.  300 tours of hell  274–80, 292–93, 313–28, 333–38 – charts  325 Traditio apostolica 36 10, 20, 23 and 30  52 21  35 30  41 tribunal, see bêma Trumbower, J.  374 Turner, C.H.  146 Usener, H.  254, 270, 273

Tertullus  102, 111

Valentinus 38

Testament of Abraham, ascent  340 – 10  320

venationes/venatores  130, 159, 408, 415

Testament of Job 46–50  94 Testament of Orpheus  280, 282, 321 Testamentum Domini 55 Testamentum Salomonis 5.2ff  127, 206 8.1  125 12.2  205

Verus  104, 112 Vergilius – Jewish influence  321–22 – Aeneid 6 – angelus interpres 319 – demonstrative pronouns  292, 319–20, 334 – and 1 Enoch  320, 322, 335 – Orphic mysteries  319–20

Index of names, places and passages

– Sibyl  319–20 – sinners  287–88 – Aen. 6 318–20  319 426–29  321 608–13  287, 317 614–17  288, 317 618–24  288, 317 620  287–88 678  320 – G. 1.475  78 4.467–69  316 Versnel, H.S.  413 Veyne, P.  39, 58 Via Sebaste  150, 165 Vision of Ezra 336 Vouaux, L.  134, 144 vulture 78 Waitz, H.  237, 239 walking 120 Weber, M.  35, 75 Weinreich, O.  435 Weinstock, S.  255 West, M.L.  316 Westra, L.  146 white 381 widows  17, 36, 43–64 – age  49, 60 – in Christian Empire  56–63 – criticism of  107–08 – in Greece  47–51 – and New Testament  44–46 – order of  53, 55, 136, 179 – and prayer  136

501

– remarriage  61 – in Roman world  48, 51–53, 70 – over sixty  53 – in Syria and Egypt  54–56, 173 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von  270, 295–96, 315, 328 Winkler, J.  365 Wolf, F.A.  328 women – in Antioch  35 – as authors  109 – drunk  107 – and gnostics  102 – in Judaism  111 – liaisons  137 – letters  226 – and literacy  37, 88, 109 – in Luke  45–46 – Manichaean  55 – and Montanism  88 – and mysticism  35 – networking  55 – in novel  100 – old  17, 40–41, 50, 70, 104–09, 135 – as patronesses  36–37 – Paul’s followers  27 – and philosophers  38 – presumed gullibility  34 – reading  225–31 – and Reformation  38 – and sects  45, 138 – and sexuality  39–40, 57–63 – and synagogue  36 – upper class  33–41, 90 – and virginity  39–40, 57 Zalmoxis 331 Zatchlas  215–16, 247