Staging the Sacred: Performance in Late Ancient Liturgical Poetry 9780190065478, 9780190065461, 9780190065492, 9780190065485, 019006546X

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Staging the Sacred

Staging the Sacred Theatricality and Performance in Late Ancient Liturgical Poetry L AU R A S . L I E B E R

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2023 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Lieber, Laura S, author. Title: Staging the sacred : Theatricality and performance in late ancient liturgical poetry / Laura S. Lieber. Description: New York : Oxford University Press, [2023] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022060577 (print) | LCCN 2022060578 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190065478 | ISBN 9780190065461 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190065492 | ISBN 9780190065485 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Religious poetry—History and criticism. | Catholic Church—Hymns—History and criticism. | Theater—History—To 500. Classification: LCC PN1077.L L53 2023 (print) | LCC PN1077.L (ebook) | DDC 809.1/9382—dc23/eng/20230111 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022060577 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022060578 DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780190065461.001.0001 Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America

For Liz Past Perfect and for Scott Past Imperfect & Future Most Vivid

Contents Acknowledgments  Abbreviations 

ix xv

Prologue: Choosing a Script and Learning Lines 

1

1 Setting the Stage: Community Theater and the Translation of Tales 

23

2 Take Your Places: Authors, Actors, and Audiences 

99

3 Imagine, If You Will: Ekphrasis and the Senses in the Sanctuary 

162

4 Method Acting: Ethopoeia and the Creation of Character 

230

5 Sounds, Sightlines, and Senses: Bodies and Nonverbal Literacy 

289

6 The Stage is a World, the Body an Instrument: Hymns in Sacred Space 

346

Epilogue: Curtain Call: Afterlives of Liturgical Theater 

384

Index 

397

Appendix: Ekphrasis in the Progymnasmata 

224

Acknowledgments This monograph took shape, by fits and starts, over the course of ten years—​a tumultuous decade by any measure, and one only made not only bearable but fruitful thanks to the friendship, encouragement, collegiality, and support of people too numerous to catalog. Nevertheless, I hope the gratitude expressed here conveys some sense—​however inadequate and incomplete—​of all the debts I owe. This project would not exist without the opportunity afforded me by two dear colleagues: Ophir Münz-​Manor and Ra’anan Boustan. At their invitation, I presented at the Society for Biblical Literature International Meeting in 2012 on the topic of performance in late antique Jewish literature. What seemed initially an impossible subject to research—​one that by its very nature defied the kinds of sources upon which I relied—​soon proved itself a rich vein of inquiry. Following that initial, hesitant exploration—​conceived of more as a lark than a serious line of study—​I realized that these questions opened up a new approach to the study of piyyutim, and one which leveraged my work in translation quite elegantly (particularly as I realized how my need to gloss written translations could be understood as analogous to the decisions made in live performance). My fellow students of hymnography, including Georgia Frank, Derek Krueger, Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Michael Swartz, and Michael Rand (gone too soon) fostered occasions where I could continue to develop and expand this nascent project. The enthusiasm and support of these friends has been invaluable, and their insights texture every page of this volume. Indeed, the scope of this volume—​its ambitions to address Christian as well as Jewish and Samaritan poetry—​reflects their influence and my desire to integrate the study of Hebrew and Aramaic hymnody into the rich and vibrant scholarly conversations concerning Greek and Syriac textual traditions into which these colleagues so generously invited me. Similarly, my colleagues in the field of Targum Studies, especially Willem Smelik, Eveline van Staalduine-​Sulman, and Margaretha Folmer, along with the collaborative network of the Medieval Hebrew Poetry Consortium, especially Elisabeth Hollender and Tova Beeri, and my colleagues at the University of Regensburg (including Tobias Nicklas, Harald Buchinger,

x Acknowledgments and Stephanie Hallinger) have all shaped my work by offering me a sense of having an intellectual home and welcoming me to share my speculative projects at every stage and in any number of venues. Indeed, the scope of this volume echoes the hospitality of friends and colleagues who work in early Christianity, particularly those whom I came to know through my affiliation with the Elizabeth A. Clark Center for Late Ancient Studies at Duke. I am indebted to all those who, as faculty, guests, and students, have made the Center such a remarkable hub of intellectual joy. The Center is in many ways my academic home, and its denizens my dearest collaborators: Annabel Wharton, Tolly Boatwright, James Rives, Clare Woods, Cassandra Casias, Luk Van Rompay, and Jenny Knust have offered a generous welcome to the study of late antique Judaism and modeled ways in which comparative work and projects that strive for synthesis can, and should, be done. I am also grateful to all the graduate students from and with whom I learned so much, including Julie Lillis, Taylor Ross, Erin Galgay-​ Walsh, Nate Tilley, Jillian Marcantonio, and Nick Wagner; and those alumni of the Center—​the innumerable “children of Liz”—​among whom I consider myself lucky beyond words to have nosed my way into “stepchild” status. In addition to the community of support just outside my door, this project benefited tremendously from gatherings of scholars in less proximate places. I am particularly grateful to Rod Werline, who routinely gathered an international group of scholars working in liturgy on the idyllic campus of Barton College. I am grateful to Rod for all his hospitality, and to Rick Sarason, Anathea Portier-​Young, Daniel Falk, Angela Harkins, and Frances Flannery for all their feedback on this project at various stages and iterations. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Jörg Rüpke and Claudia Bergmann at the Max-​Weber-​Kolleg who hosted me for a summer research fellowship at the Research Centre “Dynamics of Jewish Ritual Practices in Pluralistic Contexts from Antiquity to the Present” at Universität Erfurt in 2019. Their gift to me of time, collegiality, and a magical setting proved instrumental in seeing this project to completion. I also recognize that I am profoundly lucky to be part of an inspiring intellectual community, one that encourages ambition and innovation. I will always be grateful to my colleagues here at Duke, including Eric and Carol Meyers, whose decades of energy and effort made Duke such a remarkable place in which to pursue my particular field of study; I hope to be half as productive before retirement as Eric and Carol are today. I am also deeply thankful for the privilege of working with Ellen Davis, from whom I learn

Acknowledgments  xi so much even as we teach together, and with Abdullah Antepli, who makes our campus so much richer through his genial presence and incisive wit. My colleagues in religious studies, including Marc Brettler, Richard Jaffe, Mark Goodacre, David Morgan, Larissa Carniero, Mark Chaves, Mona Hassan, and Anna Sun, have fostered a community of collaboration and collegiality; I particularly wish to single out Leela Prasad, with whom I discussed “performance” in our very first meeting; please, Leela, always save me a seat in department meetings. Duke has fostered a distinctly vibrant research space in the humanities, and this project has benefited tremendously from friendships in multiple other departments, including Classical Studies, Romance Languages, German Studies, Asian and Middle East Studies, and Slavic and East European Studies. Kata Gellen, Stefani Engelstein, Saskia Ziolkowski, Beth Holmgren, Shai Ginsburg, Ellen McLarney, William Johnson, Lauren Ginsberg, Erika Weiberg, Josh Sosin, Alicia Jiménez, Micaela Janan, and Kate Morgan all make my home institution a place where work can be truly a joy. I am also grateful to the many administrators at Duke whose support for my research enabled me to devote significant time and energy to this project, including Valerie Ashby, Gennifer Weisenfeld, and Sally Kornbluth, as well as Laurie Patton (who now leads my dear friends at Middlebury College) and Kevin Moore, whose sage council on navigating daily life at Duke was unerring, deadpan, and humane. I could not have written this book—​or taught classes, or raised children, or found the energy to get out of bed in the morning—​without the encouragement and support of too many friends to name. Maria Doerfler has been a second sister to me, as has Ellen Haskell; my cousin, Andrea Lieber, quite truly is the big sister I never had but always wanted; and Debbie Green remains my better half. Clare Rothschild and Meira Kensky kept me laughing, and laugh-​ crying, during some impossible days (and years), while Beth Posner kept me from sinking into myself. Meghan Pollard’s friendship has been a blessing—​a mom friendship that flourishes alongside the lifelong bond our little guys share. And Serena: a debt impossible to articulate, let alone repay; a gift of friendship and loyalty, laughter and ferocity, for which I am grateful not just every day, but every hour. As much as I owe to the communities of friends, colleagues, and collaborators who sustain me and nurture my work, I am also deeply indebted to my many teachers and mentors. I would not be here today without the example of my beloved Doktorvater, Michael Fishbane, both as a teacher

xii Acknowledgments and a scholar—​the model against whom I will always measure myself at every step, secure in knowing that he is not similarly measuring me. Nor could I have completed this project without the exacting training I received from Stephen Kaufman, whose student I am always so proud to be; it would be poorer had I not had a brief conversation with Steven Fine on Samaritan piyyutim that turned into a subsequent book on the topic, and a component of this project. When I read poetry, I also always wish myself in the company of Susan Einbinder, who never lost sight of the real human beings implicit in textual traditions, and who taught me to appreciate the poetry of “my people”—​Ashkenazi Jews—​even when its aesthetics were not my own. In the course of working on this project, I rediscovered my love of Roman theater and ancient popular culture, a topic in which I first seriously dabbled as an undergraduate student of David Fredrick at the University of Arkansas, with whom I read Plautus and Terence (and Anne Carson), and learned of the cultural context of ancient novels and their readers. Indeed, I can trace this project back even further, to my formative first year seminar on Roman comedy at Grinnell College with Dennis Hughes, who tasked our class with defending or refuting the hypothesis that the film Risky Business was a retelling of Plautus’ Mostellaria. I cannot remember what I argued then, but I know what I would argue now. This project has also benefited from what I learned from teachers, formal and informal, who welcomed me in more recent years: I am deeply honored by the collegial friendships of Paul Flesher, Wout van Bekkum, Joseph Yahalom, and Ruth Langer, who invited me as a very shy junior scholar into their circle and have allowed me to stay, now as a still shy, but somewhat older, scholar. And perhaps most profoundly, this project owes a debt to Peter Cole, who helped me recognize that translation—​a pragmatic necessity I approached with great reticence—​was itself a mode of performance, an insight that stands at the core of this project, in my mind. I regret that I cannot share this volume with teachers who left this world before it could see the light of day: Menachem Brinker, Tikva Frymer-​Kensky, and Joel Kraemer. Their fingerprints are upon every page, because they formed me into the scholar I am, and in their teaching offered me master classes in a form of performance essential to this volume. I also wish I could share this book with Kalman Bland, whose advice to let my next project find me, and to ignore the gremlins of imposterism, gave me the courage to wait until I knew this project was all I hoped it could be. Each one of these teachers opened doors

Acknowledgments  xiii and taught me to ask hard questions of myself and my material. The quality of the answers I attempt is, of course, not their responsibility, but mine alone. Of course, my first teachers were my parents, Mike and Eileen Lieber, and I remain eternally grateful for the gift of being born into a family where eye-​ watering laughter was valued alongside grades, high culture alongside the deliciously middlebrow, and books being the one thing we could always talk an adult into buying. The cluttered, intellectual, chaotic noise of Lieber-​dom did not become complete until the arrival of my sister Debbie (whose online chat is my writing-​day companion), and it has felt incomplete since the loss of our brother, Ken (whom I miss every day). Now with a family of my own, I can say that children have encouraged me to think about play, playfulness, and performance in whole new ways, and every page of this book was written or revised amid the joyful chaos of raising Julian and Daniel, each a dramatic actor in his own way. Yet if I have succeeded as a scholar or a mother, it was due in large part to the daily support and guidance of Judy Mehl—​the nanny who became Nana to my boys, and who was unflappable while I (how else to say?) flapped—​and Joyous Wells, whose flexibility and generosity enabled us to weather over a year of remote schooling. It is also a gift to parent “my” boys with their father, Norman Weiner, and his parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Families are who we make them, and I am grateful for all of mine. Finally, while this book (and its author) owes debts beyond reckoning to those listed here and those whose absence I will only realize too late, I dedicate this work to two figures to whom I owe particular thanks. The first is Elizabeth Clark: this project, in its scale and ambition (if not its execution), reflects a vision for the study of late antiquity and for being a scholar that I gained from the gift of being in Liz’s company from my arrival at Duke in 2008 until her death in 2021. I wish she had lived to see the publication of this book, so much a testimony to the intellectual and collegial atmosphere she fostered at Duke and in her home. Her memory is an enduring blessing, and a North Star guiding me. As much as Liz inspires me from the past, I am grateful to my partner, Scott Strain, for all that we were (and weren’t) in our youth, all we are in the present, and all that the future holds.

Abbreviations CAL CIG DJBA

Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon (online resource): cal.huc.edu Corpus inscriptionum graecarum. 4 vols. Berlin 1828–​1877 Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2002) DJPA Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine Period, 2nd ed. (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2002) DSA Avraham Tal, A Dictionary of Samaritan Aramaic, 2 vol. (Leiden: Brill, 2000) H-​R The Mekhilta, ed. Shaul Horovitz and Israel Avraham Rabin (Jerusalem: Bamberger and Ṿahrman, 1960) JPA Jewish Palestinian Aramaic (dialect of Aramaic language) JPA Poem # Text from: Shirat Bene Ma’arava (Jewish Palestinian Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity), ed. Joseph Yahalom and Michael Sokoloff (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1999 LCL Loeb Classical Library LOT Ze’ev Ben-​Hayyim, The Literary and Oral Tradition of Hebrew and Aramaic amongst the Samaritans, 3 vol. (Jerusalem: The Academy of the Hebrew Language, 1957–​1977) LSJ Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, Henry Stuart Jones, and Roderick McKenzie, A Greek-​English Lexicon, 9th ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996) Ma’agarim Historical Dictionary of the Hebrew Language (online resource): https://​maaga​rim.heb​rew-​acad​emy.org.il/​Pages/​ PMain.aspx O P. Maas and C. A. Trypanis, Sancii Romani Melodi Cantica: Cantica Genuina (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963) PG Patrologia Graeca PL Patrologia Latina T-​A Midrash Bereshit Rabbah, ed. Julius Theodor and Chanoch Albeck, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Wahrmann Books, 1965)

Prologue Choosing a Script and Learning Lines

But in an orator we must demand the subtlety of the logician, the mind of the philosopher, a diction almost poetic, a lawyer’s memory, the voice of a tragedian, and bearing like that of the consummate actor. Accordingly, no rarer thing than a finished orator can be discovered among the sons of men . . . —​Cicero, De Oratore 1.128

In the summer of 2015, archaeologist Jodi Magness and her team uncovered a number of remarkable mosaics adorning the floor of the fifth-​century ce synagogue at Huqoq, in the lower Galilee. Among the many images clustered in one panel were figures identified as winged putti (cupids) and what appear to be theatrical masks, both elements of iconography associated with the cult of Bacchus, patron of wine and theater.1 Putti and masks were common decorative motifs in the ancient world, and yet previously unattested—​and to a modern mind, wholly unexpected and even jarringly incongruous—​in a synagogue.2 What could theatrical imagery, especially elements associated

1 This portion of the dig has not yet been formally published but is discussed in an official press release of the University of North Carolina: https://​coll​ege.unc.edu/​2015/​07/​2015-​mosa​ics-​find/​ (accessed June 10, 2022). This article describes a scene that has strong links to theater and performance: “New digging reveals that the inscription is in the center of a large square panel with human figures, animals and mythological creatures arranged symmetrically around it, Magness said. These include winged putti (cupids) holding roundels (circular discs) with theater masks, muscular male figures wearing trousers who support a garland, a rooster, and male and female faces in a wreath encircling the inscription. Putti and masks are associated with Dionysos (Bacchus), who was the Greco-​Roman god of wine and theater performances, she said.” 2 It bears remembering that the identification of images is hardly a simple matter, let alone understanding the significance such visuals may or may not have had for the community. See Steven Fine’s analysis of the interpretation of symbols in Art and Judaism in the Greco-​Roman World: Toward a New Jewish Archaeology, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), esp. pp. 198–​207.

Staging the Sacred. Laura S. Lieber, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780190065461.003.0001

2 Prologue with “pagan” religious practices, have to do with the sacred rites and rituals of the most quintessentially Jewish of buildings? Or does our surprise at these figures in such a context reveal more about our own preconceptions and prejudices about categories of “sacred” and “profane”—​biases rooted in a deep cultural suspicion of theater as deceptive and its denizens as licentious? Could it be that putti and theater masks would seem conventional, unremarkable if aesthetically pleasing decorations to the Jews whose bodies and voices filled this space in antiquity? Perhaps theater and related spectacles were so ubiquitous that imagery from that milieu had become commonplace, simply part of a larger culture that could be incorporated into synagogue decorations, an indication—​whether intentional or unconscious—​that the Jews were thoroughly at home in and at ease with late antique culture, including its culture of performance. The Huqoq mosaics offer a visual suggestion of how theater may have permeated sacred spaces; likewise, literary works also bear witness to this synthesis. A liturgical poem by the great hymnographer of Constantinople, Romanos the Melodist, brings the world of the theater into the Christian sanctuary, through words rather than images: It is good to sing psalms and hymns to God, and to wound the demons with reproaches; they are our enemies forever. What do we mean by this “wounding”? Whenever we make a comedy of [χωμῳδοῦμεν, “we ridicule”] their fall, rejoicing. Truly the devil bewails whenever in our assemblies we represent in tragedy [τραγῳδῶμεν] the “triumph” of the demons.3

The poet here explicitly evokes the paired icons that even today constitute a visual shorthand for theater and entertainment—​the twinned masks of comedy and tragedy, the two major modes of performance—​and he does so

3 Text from P. Maas and C. A. Trypanis, eds., Sancti Romani Melodi Cantica: Cantica Genuina (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 81 (henceforth “O”); this text is O #11, strophe 2. On the language of comedy and tragedy, see Grosdidier de Matons, Romanos Le Melode: Hymnes, 5 vols (Paris: Cerf, 1967–​1981), 3:57, and the discussion in Derek Krueger, Writing and Holiness: The Practice of Authorship in the Early Christian East (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 167–​168.

Prologue  3 in an explicitly, emphatically religious context. Of the theater-​based imagery in this poem, Derek Krueger observes: While the invocation of comedy and tragedy in this stanza are not evidence of presentation in the form of a play, the language of the theater reveals an explicit understanding of liturgy as performance, as reenactment with the power to reproduce the results of the original. By singing the fall of the devil, the devil falls once again; the service itself parries the enemy.4

Romanos assumes, without preamble or expression of self-​consciousness, that his listeners are well acquainted with the world of theater: its plots, conventions, and dynamics; and, furthermore, its power. Song, theater, acting, performative re-​enactment: the lines distinguishing liturgical performance from the world of popular (“secular”) entertainment seem blurry indeed. Images such as the actors’ masks uncovered at Huqoq visually demonstrate the interpenetration of theatricality and monotheistic religious ritual in late antiquity, even as liturgical texts articulate the connection or take it for granted. Indeed, while these two examples are unusually explicit in merging sanctuary and stage, affinities between various forms of public entertainments and worship can be easily teased out, in large part because performance as a mode of engaging in the public realm was, itself, omnipresent. Theater and public oratory (particularly declamation), in all the diversity of their styles and performative settings, constituted and shaped baseline elements of the common culture of the ancient world: tragic plots drew on the canon of great literature, while orators alluded to famous and infamous figures and scenes; actors and orators attracted celebrity and scandal, both fame and infamy; actors’ techniques informed the most skilled of public orators, the politicians. And religious performers—​including homilists and hymnographers—​absorbed both a sense of effective techniques and performative convention. Preachers and liturgical poets in antiquity were well aware of the commonalities connecting their work to other forms of performance, even if they were not uniformly at ease with the comparisons. As Basil of Seleucia, writing in the fifth century, observed in the opening of his homily on Lazarus: Were someone to say that the Church is a theater (θέατρον) common to both angels and men, he would not be mistaken. It is a theater in 4 Krueger, Writing and Holiness, 168.

4 Prologue which Christ is praised both by invisible and visible nature, a theater in which the Lord’s miracles are woven together for our ears as delightful hymns . . . 5

In a world saturated with performance, the church—​or, by extension, the synagogue—​triumphs over theater by excelling at theatrical arts, hymns among them. All performances were not equivalent, however, either in the details of delivery or (perhaps even more significantly) in their social location and cultural esteem; in particular, the popularity of theater did not signify universal respectability. Orators, reflecting the biases of cultural elites, expressed ambivalence when reminded of how much their profession resembled that of actors and how greatly their craft benefited from a study of the stage. Religious authorities, for their part, railed against attendance at popular, public entertainment, seeing its performances as seductive, impious falsehood—​literal hypocrisy, as the Greek term for actor was hypokrite. Orators and preachers wished to borrow the effectiveness and popular appeal of theater but to evade its associated whiff of disrepute. And yet, the sheer popularity of theater manifests not only in literature but also in infrastructure. The appearance of theatrical images within a synagogue and mention of them in a Christian hymn simply underscore the pervasive presence of spectacle in late antiquity and manifest in visual form the very real synergy among different forms of performance. In the ancient world, as today, audience appeal was essential; like actors in the theater and orators at the rostrum, homilists at the pulpit could only succeed if people came to hear them. And if actors and orators knew how to attract an audience, hold their attention, and energize their participation, even as that made them rivals to religious forms of spectacle, it meant that they had tools worth using. Theater and other forms of performance in late antiquity were ubiquitous, both too commonplace and too popular, for anyone—​least of all anyone in the business of persuasion—​to ignore. Liturgists and their communities may well have taken the performative elements of prayer and ritual in their houses of worship for granted, both because they reflected a way of connecting speakers and audiences that would have seemed natural and because the absence of such things would have been conspicuous (and possibly off-​putting). But those same elements of live, 5 Basil of Seleucia, “Homily on Lazarus, 1,” in Mary B. Cunningham, “Basil of Seleucia's Homily on Lazarus: A New Edition BHG 2225,” Analecta Bollandiana 104 (1986), 178. I am indebted to Georgia Frank for this reference. See discussion in Chapter 1, (p. 43).

Prologue  5 in-​the-​moment drama, re-​enactment, and ritual can be among the hardest for us to recover from the written traces that have survived the centuries and come to us. This study attempts to recover and reconstruct the atmosphere that the people of late antiquity did not even necessarily notice, the air they rarely realized they breathed. For the purposes of the present study, I define “late antiquity” in the Levant and Eastern Mediterranean world as the late third through early seventh centuries ce: a period loosely bounded by Constantine on one side and the Caliph on the other. Christian emperors in Constantinople held political authority, but in the far southern and eastern provinces, late Roman Hellenistic culture continued to provide a common cultural baseline. Indeed, while phrases such as “the Christianization of the Empire” and “the period of Muslim rule” suggests epoch-​shifting breaks and clear chronological delineations—​moments with clean and legible “before” and “after” significance—​from the perspective of daily life lived and popular culture produced and consumed, the experience would have been largely one of continuity.6 As such, the approach to the history of this period must be one that accounts for continuity across religious identities and commonality over time as well as space. Theatrical performances and declamation were crucial components of this late antique culture. Social elites were trained to deliver speeches in competitive settings, and theatrical performances were ubiquitous. Both orators and actors relied on the classical canon as sources of plots and characters, whether in detail or as cultural shorthand, but by late antiquity, the performances were not those of “classical” Greco-​Roman theater; the most popular theatrical performances were mime and pantomime. In pantomime, especially, the classical corpus was streamlined, distilled, perhaps distorted excerpts from the classical canon, while the set pieces associated with mime constituted a comedic canon of their own. Such performances were, in the eyes of many of the literati, vulgar and base, or at the very least faint shadows and pale imitations of the originals. The plays these performances offered consisted of excerpts from canonical works—​racy, bloody, dramatic, or funny highlights—​performed by actors (masked or unmasked) and dancers, 6 Among the works addressing the subtleties of such “epochal shifts,” see Michael Penn, Envisioning Islam: Syriac Christians and the Early Muslim World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), a work itself shaped by important re-​examinations of the narrative of “the parting of the ways” between Judaism and Christianity (e.g., Adam H. Becker and Annette Y. Reed, eds., The Ways That Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages [Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2003]).

6 Prologue often with scandalous props and striking physical mannerisms. So distinctive were the conventions of these performances that mythic scenes in mosaics can often, upon closer examination, reveal themselves to be images of the stage. Orators and homilists, for their part, understood and acknowledged that their audiences knew this informal “canon” as mediated by public performance. Theaters shaped and taught traditions even as those who spoke to the people about sacred traditions drew upon ideas and techniques learned in the performative world. Of course, much of what we know about theater in late antiquity comes from sources critical of it: professional orators (politicians and lawyers) and religious authorities. Each party had its own reasons for denigrating theater. Orators resisted the comparison of their profession to theater, for what might be described as issues of class distinction: the former possessed family connections, formal education, aspirations to power, and pretenses of refinement, all of which the latter was presumed to lack. Actors, speaking broadly, were dismissed as mastering artificial “techniques” in service of frivolity while orators possessed “skill” and “talent,” employed for public good. And yet, as we will see, famous actors and dancers were lauded for their gifts, and elite public speakers certainly were keenly aware of how effective theatrical techniques could enhance their own performance. Not only did public speakers acknowledge their own appreciation for actors’ methods for getting and holding attention but they also advised their students to study the same. Religious authorities regarded public entertainments (including theater and games) and their denizens as leading virtuous communities astray, as luring them away from sacred service to debased entertainment and even idolatry; at the very least, such spectacles encouraged the pious to associate with the impious and seduced them to their frivolous and insidious ways. By late antiquity, opposition to theater, and public entertainments more broadly, gave prominent authorities in Jewish, Christian, and civic circles a common antagonist. Entertainers responded in kind, adding elements to their works that mocked their opponents, thus confirming for the orators, preachers, and politicians the correctness of their opposition. When political and ecclesial authority converged, with the promulgation of the Council of Trullo in 691–​ 692, conventional theater was (at least in theory) banned. We may think of theater as a literary form—​we read the plays of Sophocles and the comedies of Plautus, and we study the writings of Aristotle and Cicero about theater—​but monumental structures bear witness perhaps even more

Prologue  7 eloquently, and more evocatively, than texts. In Roman towns, throughout the Empire, theaters, often still visible today, were ubiquitous, emblems and necessary elements of culture. These structures—​surprisingly capacious venues suggestive of significant attendance—​can be found in cities large and small, no matter what the majority population of the area was. The seating capacity of these venues bear mute but eloquent witness to the popularity of these entertainments: they could accommodate significant percentages of an entire population. Furthermore, beyond the tangible infrastructure of performance, we know that both theater and religious ritual often spilled out into the streets, in the form of spontaneous or orchestrated processions.7 The ubiquity of theater means that it shaped—​consciously or unconsciously—​ not only the writings that would become the popular bedrock of the liturgical worlds of Judaism, Samaritanism, and Christianity but also the spaces in which they were performed: theaters, or technologies developed to improve purpose-​built performance sites, influenced the architecture of some religious spaces.8 If theater was liturgy’s rival, then one way for prayer to succeed was to borrow a page from the orators and co-​opt theater’s most successful strategies and tools. 7 Both Tertullian (De Spec. 7; LCL 250, pp. 248–​250) and The Life of Pelagia describe the processions associated with spectacles. Tertullian writes, “The pomp (procession) comes first and shows in itself to whom it belongs, with the long line of images, the succession of statues, the cars, chariots, carriages, the thrones, garlands, robes. What sacred rites, what sacrifices, come at the beginning, in the middle, at the end; what guilds, what priesthoods, what offices are astir—​everybody knows in that city (i.e., Rome) where the demons sit in conclave (see Rev. 18:2).” The Life of Pelagia offers an even more detailed description: “Now while we were marveling at his holy teaching, lo, suddenly there came among us the chief actress of Antioch, the first in the chorus in the theatre, sitting on a donkey. She was dressed in the height of fantasy, wearing nothing but gold, pearls and precious stones, even her bare feet were covered with gold and pearls. With her went a great throng of boys and girls all dressed in cloth of gold with collars of gold on their necks, going before and following her. So great was her beauty that all the ages of mankind could never come to the end of it. So they passed through our company, filling all the air with traces of music and the most sweet smell of perfume. When the bishops saw her bare-​headed and with all her limbs shamelessly exposed with such lavish display, there was not one who did not hide his face in his veil or his scapular, averting their eyes as if from a very great sin” (PL 73, 664b–​665a; translation from Benedicta Ward, “Pelagia, Beauty Riding By,” in Harlots of the Desert, a Study of Repentance in Early Monastic Sources [Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, Inc., 1986], 67). 8 Epiphanius, the Bishop of Salamis, wrote in the fourth century, “There is also a place of prayer at Shechem, the town now called Neapolis, about two miles out of town on the plain. It has been set up theater-​fashion, outdoors in the open air, by the Samaritans who mimic all the customs of the Jews” (Panarion 80.1.5; Reinhard Pummer, trans., Early Christian Authors on Samaritans and Samaritanism [Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2002], 132–​133). The steps outside the synagogue at Chorazin (built in the third century ce, destroyed in the fourth, and rebuilt in the sixth) are themselves suggestive of theater and may indicate an exterior communal space; see Z. Yeivin, The Synagogue at Korazim; The 1962–​1964, 1980–​1987 Excavations, Israel Antiquities Authority Reports (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2000), and discussion in Steven Fine, Art and Judaism in the Greco-​Roman World: Toward a New Jewish Archaeology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 92. This structure is discussed in Chapter 5.

8 Prologue If the comparison of hymnody to theater and other forms of entertainment seems jarring—​even today, comparing a religious ritual to a theater performance can be taken as offensive, indicating superficiality or a lack of commitment9—​it may be in part because of the success of the anti-​theater polemic by religious authorities in late antiquity. To be sure, theater, oratory, and liturgical poetry served different purposes and appealed to distinctive constituencies by means of particular conventions. Differences in function and setting granted, approaching hymnody—​here understood as the communal performance of song in religious settings and as part of statutory liturgies and rituals—​through the lens of engaging performance helps modern readers recover and appreciate subtle elements of these works that no doubt contributed to the development and popularity of these publicly performed and communally engaging works.10 By viewing hymns, from their composition to their delivery, through the lens of “religious theater,” I intend to evoke neither the ancient Greek origins of theater in the Dionysian cult nor the medieval productions of religiously themed mystery plays; rather, I wish to focus on the looser but still useful idea of “theatricality” as a way of understanding the performer–​audience dynamic that is so essential to liturgical ritual broadly conceived. Indeed, the need to capture and hold an audience’s attention, to engage and entertain, creates a common ground among all the diverse modes of performance considered here: theater, oratory, and hymns. The concept of “theatricality” also provides a deep contextual basis for discussing religious works that differ significantly in terms of structure, theological orientation, and even language. The content of the vessels may differ substantially, but the vessels themselves—​constructed from societal norms of what constitutes appealing

9 See the discussion, with significant resonances for late antiquity, in Jeanne Halgren Kilde, When Church Became Theatre: The Transformation of Evangelical Architecture and Worship in Nineteenth-​ Century America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 10 The term “hymn” is used in this volume in a fairly expansive sense, in order to accommodate the range of poetic genres in multiple languages; other authors use the term in a more limited sense, and the challenges of nomenclature reflect larger trends in studies of the history of liturgy and an increasing appreciation among Christian and Jewish historians for the fluidity of religious ritual, scripting, setting, and so forth. For an overview of the challenges of nomenclature and life setting, written with regard to a single poet but easily applicable beyond, see Gerard Rouwhorst, “The Original Setting of the Madrashe of Ephrem of Nisibis,” in Let Us Be Attentive! Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of the Society of Oriental Liturgy (Prešov, Slovakia), 9–​14 July 2018, ed. Harald Buchinger, Tinatin Chronz, Mary Farag, and Thomas Pott (Münster, Germany: Aschendorff, 2020), 207–​223. Robert Taft notes the popularity of psalmody and singing, observing that “the laity were more enthusiastic for the psalmody than the clergy” (Through Their Own Eyes: Liturgy as the Byzantines Saw It [Berkeley, CA: InterOrthodox Press, 2006], 57).

Prologue  9 entertainment and efficacious ritual—​come from the same workshop and can bear the weight of significant comparison.11 For the purposes of this study, religious performance—​specifically hymnody, although homilies, too—​constitutes a third mode of “theatrical” public entertainment, alongside oratory and theater. Composers of homilies and hymns employed techniques held in common with “civic” orators, and public actors may reflect highly intentional and conscious compositional and performative decisions by the poets as skilled, professional artisans in their own right. It is possible that some of the poets examined in this study possessed formal education in the techniques of performance and oratory—​schooling in the wisdom of the progymnasmata, handbooks of oratorical training composed in antiquity and used long after. But key to my inquiry is the idea that the ubiquity of performance and its conventions rendered it legible to all, whether formally educated or not. Indeed, we must recognize that we have no explicit evidence of hymnographers possessing “professional training”—​that is, education specifically in the composition and performance of hymns—​and it is possible that liturgical poets benefited from the hymnographic equivalent of “a good ear”—​that is, their compositions may reflect less formal and more intuitive understandings of modes of communication—​one acquired through careful attention to the exemplars in daily life and an instinct for what was effective rather than a specific curriculum and exercises practiced in the classroom. Then as now, ideas about effective ways of speaking can be gleaned informally, through attentiveness to the kinds of communication in one’s midst and an instinctive understanding of what techniques work. The progymnasmata themselves can be understood to emerge from a dynamic between practitioners and theorists: the handbooks distill insightful observations about effective rhetorical techniques into discrete, practicable exercises that serve to train public speakers to impress their audiences. Audiences, in turn, learn from witnessing these examples (and perhaps practicing themselves, if they received some education) how they are best entertained and engaged; similarly, orators studied actors and actors critiqued orators, all as professionals consciously refining their craft and as practitioners moving between the 11 Wout J. van Bekkum addresses the early stages of Jewish poetic idiom and its social context, with astute awareness of early Christian parallels, in his short, elegant article, “Qumran Poetry and Piyyut: Some Observations on Hebrew Poetic Traditions in Biblical and Post-​Biblical Times,” Zutot 2 (2002): 26–​33.

10 Prologue roles of performer and audience.12 Through these organic “feedback loops” of practice and experience, aesthetics were continually refined, and a kind of performative literacy, by which tones, postures, and gestures were understood, was acquired. While less systematic and perhaps more haphazard, self-​or lesser-​trained writers and speakers could achieve the same insights and refinements and bring them to bear when they were, themselves, in the audience. In short, we need not argue that every writer in late antiquity, every composer of hymns and poems, experienced formal rhetorical schooling in order to have a broad sense and sound intuition for how to make use of the techniques codified in the handbooks and conveyed through formal education. Informal education was everywhere. A word on nomenclature is important here: the present study uses the term “theatrical” to refer to an author’s evident awareness of audience engagement in a public venue. In many cases, the analysis teases apart three distinct threads integral to performance, examining them individually even as they entwine with each other: the author, who created the work (who may, in practical terms, be more than a single individual, particularly if scribes updated written texts to reflect later conventions); the performer, who translated the text into a living experience for listeners; and the audience, who not only witnessed the delivery but explicitly or implicitly offers feedback on its success or failure.13 This definition brings the rhetorical worlds of oratory and declamation into the discussion along with theater proper, and it encompasses both performative and receptive elements of a work—​ that is, the perspective of both actors and audiences, the persuasiveness of 12 Scholars in the field of Greek tragedy have broken important ground recently in the area of “choral mediation” in Greek tragedy. See, for example, the essays assembled in Marianne Govers Hopman and Renaud Gagné, eds., Choral Mediations in Greek Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); and in Joshua Billings, Felix Budelmann, and Fiona Macintosh, eds., Choruses, Ancient and Modern (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). See, too, Felix Budelmann, The Language of Sophocles: Communality, Communication and Involvement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), esp. Chapter 5, “The Chorus: Shared Survival” (195–​272); Simon Goldhill, Sophocles and the Language of Tragedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), esp. Chapter 7, “Generalizing about the Chorus (166–​200); and Claude Calame, La tragédie chorale: poésie grecque et rituel musical (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2017). 13 Every author has an audience in mind before he or she begins to write, and every work, when it is received, can be understood to undergo a kind of performance. What distinguishes “theatricality” from these related ideas is, in particular, the staged nature of the assumed performance—​ the significance of the gaze. On the importance of “the gaze” in religion, David Morgan, The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), esp. pp. 25–​115, is an essential starting point. Also note Shadi Bartsch, Actors in the Audience: Theatricality and Doublespeak from Nero to Hadrian (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994). This definition of “theatrical” distinguishes the theatricality of liturgical and para-​ liturgical works, which were in some sense “staged” from other forms of writing in antiquity.

Prologue  11 role playing and a common repertoire of characters, the language of the body and importance of acoustics, and the reciprocity of voice and gaze.14 Viewed through this lens, the concept of theatricality offers a way of approaching religious performance with an eye toward successfully engaging the listeners. Performance constituted a common, “nonpartisan” element of late ancient culture—​neither high nor low, neither pagan nor Christian nor Jewish. A consideration of late ancient theatricality in general terms sheds light on the performative elements of specifically religious poetry and situates them not only within a specific religious context but more broadly as well. This study examines religious integration and internalization of widespread late ancient cultural practices and aesthetics. The liturgical context of the hymns makes them especially compelling to examine from the perspective of theatricality. Theatricality, as used here, refers to the dynamic of self-​consciousness between a performer and his audience, particularly an author or performer’s awareness of his audience’s gaze.15 In the context of ancient exegesis, it is useful to think of a continuum of performativity and theatricality: while liturgical poetry may be especially theatrical, homilies and sermons also display a concern for audience, as do prose prayers and antiphonal litanies. Every text does.16 Even a text read silently is, implicitly, performed, as readers encountering a written work in solitude imaginatively and unconsciously make decisions about how they see and hear voices and actions, becoming audiences to their own intuitive productions.17 14 Among recent works on the subject of theatricality, see esp. the volume Tracy C. Davis and Thomas Postlewait, eds., Theatricality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Davis and Postlewait resist offering any fixed definition of the term—​“the domain of theatricality cannot be located within any single definition, period or practice” (3)—​but in the introductory chapter (pp. 1–​ 39) provide a fine, concise history of various meanings of the term. 15 For an initial consideration of the performative elements of early piyyut, see Laura S. Lieber, “The Rhetoric of Participation: The Experiential Elements of Early Hebrew Liturgical Poetry,” Journal of Religion 90.2 (2010): 119–​147. More recently, see Laura S. Lieber, “The Play’s the Thing: The Theatricality of Jewish Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity,” Jewish Quarterly Review 104 (2014): 537–​572. 16 The idea that every text should be read as having an audience applies even if the only audience is an imagined one—​an ideal reader or listener in the mind of the author. Foundational in this regard is Wolfgang Iser, The Implied Reader (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974). Also see Robert deMaria Jr.’s essay, “The Ideal Reader: A Critical Fiction,” PMLA 93.3 (1978): 463–​474, which offers a useful history and overview of the concept and a presentation of how it manifests in the works of theorists including Frye, Culler, Fish, and others. 17 Modern readers have likely experienced the phenomenon of seeing a written work adapted for the screen, and the common response of judging that the adaptation looks or sounds “wrong,” even in cases where the original work does not indicate appearance or tone with any precision. The filmmaker or television director’s imagination—​visual, acoustic, and emotional—​has brought the text to life in a way that does not align with another individual’s unspoken, interior “staging.” See Timothy L. Hubbard, “Some Anticipatory, Kinesthetic, and Dynamic Aspects of Auditory Imagery,” in The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Imagination (2 vols.), ed. Mark Grimshaw-​Aagaard, Mads

12 Prologue Throughout this volume, one particular facet of a common late antique culture is fundamental: the pervasiveness of performance. The present study builds upon and expands the recognition that Jews, Christians, and Samaritans in late antiquity lived alongside and among each other, with common public spaces and diverse sites of interchange—​a shared civic infrastructure.18 Within these shared spaces emerged common aesthetics and practices, including those of performance. Indeed, so ubiquitous was performance—​all the world truly was a stage—​that it can be considered a defining aspect of late antique culture. Reading liturgical works through the lens of performativity integrates religious experiences into the wider society and its norms while providing additional data for cultural historians, by demonstrating that yet another matrix of spaces provided venues for energetic and creative theatricality. A cultural foundation of performance awareness constitutes a deep substrate of communal assumption and commonality that unifies not only the literary traditions of late antiquity but also the routine, lived experience of being Jewish, Samaritan, or Christian in this pivotal time period when all three traditions were developing striking and enduring new forms of creative self-​expression. It is at this moment—​specifically, the period beginning in the fourth century ce—​that we witness the sudden flowering of rich literary traditions across all three communities: the Hebrew poetry of Yose ben Yose, the Samaritan Aramaic poetry of Marqa, and the Syriac Aramaic poetry of Ephrem. And it is, likewise, in late antiquity—​in the sixth century ce—​that major poets including Romanos, Yannai, Eleazar ha-​Qallir, Narsai,19 and Jacob of Sarug flourished. By and large, poets have been studied within the confines of their religious affiliations: Romanos has been studied through the lens of Ephrem and the Church Fathers, and Yannai in light of Yose ben Yose

Walther-​Hansen, and Martin Knakkergaard (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 149–​173. In the same volume, also note the essay by Marco Pellitteri, “The Aural Dimension in Comic Art,” 511–​548. 18 Raimo Hakola provides an excellent survey of recent treatments of this topic, from both literary and material perspectives, in “Galilean Jews and Christians in Context: Spaces Shared and Contested in the Eastern Galilee in Late Antiquity,” in Spaces in Late Antiquity: Cultural, Theological and Archaeological Perspectives, ed. Juliette Day, Maijastina Kahlos, Raimo Hakola, and Ulla Tervahauta (London: Taylor and Francis, 2016), 141–​165. 19 Narsai, a figure increasingly understood as important but whose works (primarily metrical homilies [memre]) remain understudied, compared with Ephrem and Jacob of Sarug. See, however, the recent volume Aaron M. Butts, Kristian S. Heal, and Robert A. Kitchen, eds., Narsai: Rethinking His Work and His World (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2020). For those who wish to explore his works in translation, see R. H. Connolly, The Liturgical Homilies of Narsai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1909).

Prologue  13 and rabbinic writings. Rarely have these poets been studied as culturally specific instantiations of a widespread hymnographic phenomenon that crosses confessional and linguistic boundaries.20 And yet, the endeavor to link the poets and their writing to each other in a deeply comparative way—​to discern points of contact, connection, influence, or inspiration—​must be done cautiously, and with awareness of the cultural dynamism that works such as these texts manifest. Any attempt to pull out distinct threads of influence that yoke one poet or type of poetry to another suggests that one could unravel the poems back to a point, or points, of origin. To presume “an origin” would, however, obscure or even suppress the breathtaking complexity of each body of writing as approached within its own tradition, on the one hand, and deny the importance of the shared cultural background common to all these bodies of writing, on the other. Rather than looking to establish a common vorlage or prototype of hymn—​thereby implicitly crediting a single poet, tradition, location, or community with ownership of the entire enterprise—​this project seeks to understand the common soil from which these distinctive blooms emerged, into a riotous garden filled with wildflowers of song. Poets writing within Jewish, Christian, and Samaritan traditions produced remarkable bodies of poetry in a range of languages, including Hebrew, Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, Samaritan Aramaic, Syriac, and Greek. The forms of composition ranged from the simple alphabetical acrostic to extended verse homilies to symphonic, multi-​movement cycles. They wrote for major holidays and weekly Sabbaths, on the lectionary and on thematic topics. We know less than we would like of how these works were performed in the churches of late antiquity, and even less of Jewish and Samaritan synagogues, but we have no doubt that they were tremendously popular across the board. This project seeks to explore from a broad cultural perspective what techniques the poets used, or could have used, to help popularize and publicize their compositions. The expansive scope of this volume speaks to the ubiquity of performance in late antiquity. In this volume, I draw liturgical poetry by 20 Previous generations of scholars often sought to discern directions of influence, either arguing that Jews adopted the aesthetic conventions of the majority Christian population, or that Christians borrowed from Jewish models. See the discussion in Hayyim (Jefim) Schirmann, “Hebrew Liturgical Poetry and Christian Hymnology,” Jewish Quarterly Review 44.2 (1953): 123–​161. A recent exception would be Ophir Münz-​Manor, “Liturgical Poetry in the Late Antique Near East: A Comparative Approach,” Journal of Ancient Judaism 1.3 (2010): 336–​361. Also note the discussion of comparative work in the important review essay by Wout J. van Bekkum, “The Hebrew Liturgical Poetry of Byzantine Palestine: Recent Research and New Perspectives,” Prooftexts 28.2 (2008): 232–​246.

14 Prologue poets of the three monotheistic traditions of the late antique Eastern Mediterranean—​Jews, Christians, and Samaritans, writing in Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, and Jewish Palestinian Aramaic—​together and analyze them, at times quite speculatively, through the lens of theatricality and in terms of audience engagement and participation.21 This study takes seriously the importance of the performer to the experience and meaningfulness of hymnody. We may identify the performer initially as the poet who composed the work, even as we recognize that the role would later be filled by a liturgist or cantor—​meaning that we must be careful not to conflate author and actor. Indeed, while the liturgical performer functioned in a fashion akin to other public performers, all of whom strove to conjure imaginative experiences—​meaningful, entertaining, edifying, or transformative—​in the minds of their audiences, the interpretation of the religious performer, who generally did not author his words, may arguably more closely resemble the performance of the actor than the skilled extemporaneity of the orator, although all forms of performance no doubt relied on elements of improvisation. Hymnists, like orators and actors, were keenly attuned to those whose eyes and ears they sought to attract; similarly, all three kinds of performers addressed crowds accustomed to constituting an audience. Viewing the performed experience of hymnody through this lens allows us, in turn, to appreciate the task of the poet-​performer as both a vector for conveyance of sacred tradition and its values to a congregational audience whose attention he seeks to hold, views he hopes to shape, and sympathies he strives to elicit. The concept of theatricality draws our attention to a range of subjects, from how biblical stories were adapted to the liturgical stage, much in the way that the classical works of Greco-​Roman antiquity were themselves popularized in this late antique period, to the adaptation of physical techniques and material structures to augment the ability of performers to engage their audiences. Specific techniques associated with both oratory and acting in antiquity will offer concrete means for elucidating the affinities of liturgical presentations and other modes of performance: indications of

21 I would note that despite the breadth of this volume, it nonetheless does not extend into the realms of Latin poetry or into the hymnic traditions of Manichaeism—​both arenas that promise to be fruitful areas of further study. With regard to the latter, from an analytical perspective that suggests the affinities of that poetry for the works studied here, see Jae Hee Han, “Once Again He Speaks: Performance and the Anthological Habit in the Manichaean Kephalaia,” in the Journal of Ancient Judaism 14.2 (2021): 435–​470.

Prologue  15 direct address, for example, and apostrophe, as well as the creation of character through speech (ethopoeia); and appeals to the audience’s senses, including vivid descriptions (ekphrasis), a technique especially popular in antiquity. A serious consideration of performance also demands that we make the difficult leap to imagining the world beyond the page. While late antique hymnody has come down to the present primarily in textual form, the written word constitutes something quite remote from the actual experience these scripts reflect. We will thus attempt to consider more speculative but recognizably essential elements of these works’ reception, including ways in which liturgical poetry could have borrowed from the gestures and body language of oratory, mime, and pantomime, and how poets may have used the physical spaces of performance and accelerated changes visible in the archaeological record. Given this volume’s emphasis on techniques of delivery and experience, the narrative, exegetical, and theological content of the poems—​precisely those places where poets most frequently stress the distinctiveness of their community, its traditions, and beliefs—​receives less emphasis. The stress on performance should not be understood as negating or obscuring the particularity and particularism of these works; indeed, the differences among poems are often easier to discern than commonalities, whether we consider the specific liturgy in which a work was embedded, distinctive motifs and images of significance to a community, or the language of composition. It is precisely because the differences—​linguistic, confessional, and ritual—​among these works are so readily apparent that the deep, structural, societal commonalities are so easily overlooked. By reading late antique hymnody in the matrix of the wider culture—​by teasing out these subtle, deep points of contact among varieties of performance—​we not only appreciate overlooked aspects of these poems, facets that barely leave traces in the written record, but also begin to understand performance-​ oriented culture itself. While this volume is about hymnody, it is also about much more than hymns.22 22 Eva von Contzen, writing about Middle English mystery plays, notes, “In the anonymous Wycliffite Treatise of Miraclis Pleyinge [ca. 1400—​the oldest work of theater criticism in English], the author admits—​his profound criticism of miracle plays notwithstanding—​that these plays are highly effective because they are so interactive and immediate; in his terms, they are ‘quick’ in contrast to ‘dead’ books, which can merely be read but lack the experiential dimension of theatre” (“Embodiment and Joint Attention: An Enactive Reading of the Middle English Cycle Plays,” in Enacting the Bible in Medieval and Early Modern Drama, ed. Eva von Contzen and Chanita Goodblatt [Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2020], 43).

16 Prologue

Choreography: Movement through the Volume Every topic studied in this volume is treated in two parts: the first section establishes the relevant cultural matrix, as recoverable from literary and material sources, which shaped particular elements of performance, and then sketches out the broad context in which a particular aspect of hymnody emerged and flourished; the second reads examples of liturgical poetry through that cultural lens, using specific works to illustrate how liturgical poetry can be more fully understood when examined as a facet of that larger societal matrix. Multiple poems from diverse backgrounds provide the case studies and generally share thematic or exegetical affinities that lend the analysis additional coherence. The study of each topic begins with a presentation of classical and late antique materials intended to provide more than casual background; literary works and material artifacts, read together, serve to establish the significance and pervasiveness of ideas and practices, or the depth of thought given to implementation of otherwise theoretical elements of performance, pedagogy, and aesthetics. A grounded cultural reading of religious poetry requires careful articulation of culture, and so I present the treatments of these selected phenomena in some depth, in an effort to contextualize not only the liturgical poems but the broader aspects of their performance—​conceptual, rhetorical, performative, and experiential—​as well. The treatments do not constitute complete micro-​histories of oratory and theater in their literary, material, and monumental manifestations but establish a sufficiently robust sense of context that enables specific aspects of the religious poems to be teased out and clearly discerned. The poems presented in the second part of each topic’s treatment derive from multiple linguistic and religious sources. While they often share a common theme or biblical passage as an anchor for comparison, they primarily serve to illustrate the diversity of poetic manifestations of broader aesthetic and performative possibilities. These specific works are chosen both to demonstrate a range of poetic crystallizations of the broader cultural phenomena with which poets and their congregants would have been familiar and to display the breadth and diversity of the poetic corpora themselves. In almost every case, poems from all the corpora (Jewish, Samaritan, and Christian) provide examples of phenomena. This survey of hymnody highlights specific ways in which poets and their audiences related to

Prologue  17 communal conventions, but without obscuring the distinctive elements—​ formal, linguistic, and theological—​of each work. In some cases, the poems present fairly direct “translations” or applications of ideas and concepts from the worlds of oratory and theater, albeit in distinctly religious or ethnic settings and languages; in other cases, the connections to general concepts may be more subtle—​rhetorical techniques that align with what we know of performance and delivery, but at the level of resonance or affinity. In such instances, late antique culture may help us understand how a given work “made sense” in terms of societal proclivities; in some cases, what we can reconstruct of the common culture of the period may simply help us imagine a range of plausible, but not required, performative techniques. The analysis articulates deep structural commonalities of the type often obscured by the overt differences—​chronological, linguistic, contextual, and confessional—​ that often serve to compartmentalize these compositions. This study does not intend to minimize or diminish the intriguing questions that emerge from examining these poems against each other, in their own individual contexts, nor does it seek to obscure the distinctive elements of the religious traditions and communities, or the tremendous variety of literary styles in which they wrote. It does, however, stress positive affinities across genres, languages, and communities in order to illustrate the arguments in favor of some kind of broad, common late antique culture in which Christians, Jews, and Samaritans all lived, largely unselfconsciously; in doing so, this study expands the way these poems can be understood, and helps modern readers, so far from the embodied energy of these works as performed, discern subtle but critical features of these works that may have been at least in part responsible for their widespread popularity. It does not cast shade on other modes of analysis but simply highlights a common substrate of concerns and techniques that unifies the distinctive modes of writing. This holistic approach allows us to appreciate distinctive elements as tesserae—​sparkling, individual gemstones—​that, when read together, coalesce into a textured but coherent mosaic of culture. Given the sweep of this volume and its inclusive ambition, I have limited the specific bodies of poetry studied to those that are most accessible to the widest audience, although I have also striven for as much diversity as possible within those limits. The poems examined here by no means exhaust the corpora even on a single topic; instead, they illustrate ranges of possibilities and modalities. By and large, the chosen texts reflect “major” composers or bodies of work within the traditions, as discerned by prominence in liturgical

18 Prologue rites and surviving manuscript records.23 The increased availability of liturgical poetry in translation has facilitated the integration of poetry into a variety of studies, including comparative analyses that cut across linguistic, stylistic, and confessional boundaries in order to focus on thematics, aesthetics, and—​as in the present study—​performance. The poets studied in this volume constitute a roster of the most illustrious writers in the genre during the pivotal centuries of their emergence and development. They are, to use Saadia Gaon’s term, “the fathers of liturgical poetry” (‫)אבות הפיוט‬, regardless of religious affinity.24 The authors whose works provide the exemplars in this study include the major poets of the “early” period (roughly the third–​fourth centuries ce), specifically the Jewish liturgical poet (‫ )פייטן‬Yose ben Yose; the Samaritan poets Amram Dare, his son, Marqe, and his grandson, Ninna ben Marqe; and the Christian hymnist Ephrem the Syrian, who composed both hymns and metrical homilies. We will also attend to works by poets from the “later” portion of this formative period (the fifth–​early seventh centuries ce), including the Jewish poets Yannai and Eleazar ha-​Qallir (also known simply as “Qallir”); the great poet of Constantinople, Romanos the Melodist; and major Syriac-​ language hymnographers Narsai and Jacob of Sarug.25 Not every work can be attributed to a named author, of course, and we thus also will examine anonymous works, including the body of Jewish Aramaic poetry and ancient poems for Yom Kippur, as well as pseudonymous works, such as Syriac works on the Binding of Isaac (the Akedah) attributed to Ephrem. The dating of anonymous works can, of course, be particularly challenging—​and I would not disagree that the dates ascribed to the Jewish and Samaritan poets are themselves not fixed with certainty. We can, however, be confident that these works represent formative voices within their traditions in this pivotal

23 From the perspective of literary history, this decision reflects the influence of these poets within their respective traditions; from a practical perspective, it enables the study to draw on works available in English translation and thus lowers the barriers of entry for readers into the body of material studied here. 24 Saadia ben Joseph ha-​Gaon, Sefer ha-​Egron, ed. N. Allony (Jerusalem: Ha-​Akademyah ha-​ le'umit ha-​yisra'elit le-​mada'im, 1969), 154. The Egron is Saadia’s rhyming lexicon for use in composing piyyutim. 25 It bears noting that Jacob of Sarug and Narsai are best known for their memre, metrical homilies that are far more exegetical than the madrashe for which Ephrem is most famous (although Ephrem composed memre as well). Memre were likely recited or chanted rather than sung, but as performatively delivered homilies, composed in isosyllabic couplets, they still shed light on the topic of this study, although they were possibly less directly participatory than the madrashe, which included refrains.

Prologue  19 period of literary history, and most of them constitute works of enduring significance, some down to the present day. The genres in which these poets wrote differ greatly from each other, but certain commonalities can be discerned. Yose ben Yose’s poems for the High Holy Days (the shofar service and the rehearsal of the Temple sacrifice known as the Avodah), written in elegant, rhythmic, unrhymed Hebrew, bear a passing similarity to the memre by Ephrem (and, later, Narsai and Jacob), written in Syriac, and some of the longer works in Samaritan Aramaic and Jewish Palestinian Aramaic. At the same time, the brevity of many JPA poems, Samaritan hymns, and the Syriac genre known as madrashe highlight ways that shorter compositions, often governed by alphabetical acrostics, can resemble each other in at least broad compositional ways. The qerovot of Yannai and Qallir reflect a significantly more complicated aesthetic: units composed in different forms, often with end rhyme and intricate acrostics; these works do not resemble Romanos’ kontakia in any direct way, but they share with the melodist a general increased formal intricacy, one that makes more demands on the congregation in terms of elaborate refrains and opportunities to participate. For all their formal diversity, which spans qualities from prose-​like simplicity and regularity to ornate and intricate rhymes, meter, and acrostics, these works existed for a practical purpose: to draw congregations into liturgical rituals.26 As a consequence, throughout this study, we will attend to not only those elements of composition that reflect an author’s creativity and insightfulness but also those techniques that specifically engage the congregation, in both psychologically manifest (intellectual and imaginative) and physically expressive (vocal and gestural) ways. Individuals in late antiquity possessed what we might term a “participatory,” “performative,” or even “kinesthetic” kind of literacy—​Jonathan Culler’s idea of competence will prove useful.27 This deeply ingrained and finely tuned awareness by the

26 This expectation that congregations would participate in hymnic performance is not only reflected in the use of elements such as refrain but also explicitly acknowledged in places, notably in Niceta of Remesiana’s sermon known as De utilitate hymnorum (sometimes called De psalmodiae bono), in which the author gives advice for how to avoid common pitfalls, such as singing out of tune, out of sync, or in a rote manner. This text is available in C. H. Turner, “Niceta of Remesiana II,” Journal of Theological Studies 24 (1923): 225–​252; for an English translation, see “Niceta of Remesiana: Writings,” in The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, vol. 7, trans. Gerald G. Walsh (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1949), 65–​76, and I am grateful to Georgia Frank for drawing my attention to the work. 27 See Jonathan Culler, Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature (London: Routledge, 1975), esp. Chapter 6, “Literary Competence” (131–​152).

20 Prologue audience of their own role to play within any performance can be subtle but often not difficult to tease out, at least as a possibility. The dynamic between poet-​cantor and congregation may, in some cases, have also been mediated by choirs, who would have stood in for or alongside the wider community. An awareness of and appreciation for the full participatory richness of the hymnic experience in late antiquity—​intellectual and emotional, but also spatial and sensory—​permeates the present inquiry, even as we recognize the challenges in reconstructing such intangible, often somewhat hypothetical, elements. The challenge of recovering the rich experience of performance from the traces they leave behind is hardly unique to late antiquity. Medievalists face similar obstacles, although they possess additional resources, such as illuminated prayer books and practical handbooks of liturgical customs that delineate norms and ideals.28 Speaking of his contemporary reconstructions of an eighteenth century Italian dance, choreographer Alexei Ratmansky described his work as “finding the little bits in the dust, and then placing them together to create a picture,” an effort the New York Times dance critic Marina Harss observes, “is not a science, after all, but an act of the imagination.”29 This language evokes the fragmentary composition of a mosaic: small bits assembled into a new whole, held together in part by the mortar of imagination, and at times the wish to see something that, by its very nature, is ephemeral. Even today, despite remarkable advances in technology, it remains a profoundly different, and vastly richer, experience to attend a performance in person. Any recording, audio or visual, cannot help but be a pale shadow of the transient wonder of being in the same space as performers, alongside other viewers, in a specific space, where the lights dim, scents waft, and sounds resound. What this study attempts to do is to recreate some sense of the possibilities—​to gather and experiment playfully with some of the little stones we do have from antiquity—​in order to discern what pictures our imaginations can bring into focus. And this effort matters precisely because theater and performance were so commonplace in late antiquity.

28 I owe my appreciation for the detailed descriptions of Ashkenazi liturgical customs, which specify the pauses to be made between stanzas, the volume, tone, rhythm, and the emphasis on certain words, to discussions by Meyrav Levy, as delineated in her forthcoming dissertation, “Ashkenazi Mahzorim as Generators of an Affective Experience” (University of Münster, Germany). 29 Marina Harss, “In ‘Harlequinade,’ Gestures Dance, and Dances Tell Stories,” The New York Times (May 30, 2018); https://​www.nyti​mes.com/​2018/​05/​29/​arts/​dance/​harle​quin​ade-​ale​xei-​ratman​sky-​ ameri​can-​bal​let-​thea​ter.html?searc​hRes​ultP​osit​ion=​1, accessed June 9, 2022.

Prologue  21 This volume moves from the concrete to the abstract, the relatively certain to the frankly speculative. It begins by examining the broad cultural context in which liturgical poetry emerged: a world of theater and oratory, but also homily, exegesis, and prayer. Once the stage is set and our sense of performance space established, we turn to those who bring the liturgical-​poetic experience to life: the authors who craft the words, and who orchestrate the experience; the performers who brought them to life; and the congregational audiences who received these words, joined in their performance, and preserved them as beloved rituals. We then move and consider the most “external” and among the more recoverable elements of the poems, the way they engage with the senses. From there, we turn to subtle, but essential, techniques of character creation, particularly the theatrical use of voice and speech-​in-​character. And finally, we turn to the least recoverable, but most tantalizing, aspects of performance, body language and physical staging: not only vivid imagery and appeals to senses, but also a sense of what could have been seen and how it might have been heard. Just as the poets invited their listeners to imagine a world they had never seen, this volume asks its readers to consider the dynamism of a world now silent but not inaudible, ephemeral but not beyond our reach. The mosaics in the synagogue at Huqoq, like Romanos’ references to comedy and tragedy, indicate with startling directness the affinities connecting theater and liturgy. The synagogue masks and Greek poems depict in explicit if distinctive ways the interpenetration of ritual and rhetoric in late antiquity, a resonance that lurks surprisingly near the surface of liturgical poems once we cast light upon the texts from the proper angles. We cannot recover what inspired the Huqoq artisans to select those images for the synagogue: Were the images in some sense so commonplace as to lack any forcefulness? Or do they suggest a particularly “entertaining” style of liturgy, a religious instantiation of an aesthetic of delight?30 Or were some members of the community affiliated with the theater as professionals? Nor can we state with confidence whether Romanos attended theater shows or held opinions about public declaimers of his day. Any hypotheses or explanations we may proffer—​many of them overlapping, none mutually exclusive—​remind us 30 Of particular importance with regard to the interplay between sacred space and aesthetics is the recent book by Sean Leatherbury, Inscribing Faith in Late Antiquity: Between Reading and Seeing (London: Routledge, 2019), and the online resource maintained by the Baron Thyssen Centre for the Study of Ancient Material Religion, housed in the Department of Classical Studies of the Open University in Milton Keyes, UK: https://​www.openm​ater​ialr​elig​ion.org/​resour​ces-​1/​2019/​7/​15/​ mosa​ics. The discussions in Chapter 5 will develop these ideas further.

22 Prologue how then, as now, people imbibe fundamental ideas about what is “normal” from the cultural ether in which they live and breathe. In late antiquity, theater was in the air, and performers—​actors and orators, high class and low, famous and infamous—​were ubiquitous, as were their audiences. And as a consequence, the techniques of other performers, particularly techniques affirmed by crowds as effective or appealing, crossed from the stage and the rostrum into the sanctuary. The implausible claim would be that liturgy did not reflect the widespread culture of performance and entertainment, not that it did.

1 Setting the Stage: Community Theater and the Translation of Tales Some dramatists write for the common people, and others for the elites, but it is not easy to say which of any of them succeeds in making his work suitable to both classes. Now, Aristophanes is neither pleasing to the masses nor tolerable for the thoughtful; rather his poetry is like a harlot who, passed her prime, takes up the role of a wife . . . For what reason, in fact, is it truly worthwhile for an educated man to go to the theater, except to enjoy Menander? And when else are theaters filled with men of learning, if a comic character has been brought upon the stage? —​Plutarch, Moralia: Aristophanes and Menander, §3

While he wintered in Antioch in 363, en route to Persia, the Emperor Julian composed a remarkably bitter satirical essay called Misopogon (“the beard-​ hater”).1 Although he claims that he has written the work in a spirit of self-​ mockery, the piece in fact blends imperial self-​justification with scathing critique of his host city. Julian describes the populace of Antioch as frivolous and irreverent, and disappointingly uninterested in his imperial agenda of classical restoration. While the emperor anticipated returning to the city after the Persian campaign—​he failed to anticipate his premature death—​the essay reads like a parting shot, and the city’s reputation as the capital of entertainment presents a primary target for Julian’s dyspeptic critique. Indicative

1 The text was composed in 363, the year of Julian’s death. On this text, see Joshua Hartman, “Invective Oratory and Julian’s Misopogon,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 57.4 (2017): 1032–​ 1057. Hartman offers an important rhetorical analysis of the piece as well as a concise summary of its major modern treatments. The title “beard-​hater” refers to the Antiochene’s dislike of the “philosopher’s beard” that Julian wore—​as commemorated by his visage on the coins from his reign—​ in a time when the fashion was clean shaven; throughout the essay, the beard represents Julian’s contempt for what he deems the superficiality of life in Antioch.

Staging the Sacred. Laura S. Lieber, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780190065461.003.0002

24  Staging the Sacred of the city’s licentious character, Antioch was (in Julian’s telling), “a prosperous and gay and crowded city, in which there are dancers and flute players, and more mimes than ordinary citizens”; a few lines later, he remarks how in “the market-​places and theaters, the mass of the people [show their pleasure] by their clapping and shouting.”2 Despite the exaggerations inherent in such a polemical treatise, the caricature works (or so Julian hoped) because it is rooted in something plausible. The people of Antioch reciprocated the emperor’s displeasure and expressed resentment for his judgmental austerity and his failure to appreciate their city’s charms: “By ignoring the stage and mimes and dancers,” Julian has the people say, “you have ruined our city, so that we get no good out of you except your harshness.” Julian harbored no illusions about their mutual dislike, but while his essay constitutes an extended scolding of the city, Julian nonetheless sketches a revealing portrait of Antioch. Julian’s Antioch is vibrant, noisy with performances and filled with performers; like modern New York or Los Angeles, it is populated by entertainers hungering for their big break and media critics offering unsolicited opinions. Performance could be spontaneous and unrehearsed; speaking to the people of Antioch, Julian recounts how “you abused me in the market-​ place, in the presence of the whole populace, and with the help of citizens who were capable of composing such pleasant witticisms as yours.” Julian’s antagonists came not from a professional class of performers but from a well-​ trained populace, a public quick to pick up on verbal play at their emperor’s expense. For all Julian’s expressed displeasure, his invective against Antioch and its citizens suggests something of daily life in late antiquity. Performers were everywhere, and every crowd was a nascent audience. As Julian notes, in a context in which everyone anticipates performance and any individual has the skill to perform, any location could become the set of a show. In antiquity, performers found their audiences in any number of places: theaters and markets, forums and private homes, temporary stages and purpose-​built structures, and functional clearings and magnificent edifices, some so thoroughly constructed that they can be visited today. To this list of “secular” or “civic” public performance places, we should also add temples, churches, and synagogues. Indeed, sacred spaces and civic spaces were typically thoroughly entangled: temples were regular features in theaters and public squares, and much religious ritual took place in public streets and venues rather than being restricted to consecrated spaces or domiciles. Any 2 Julian, Misopogon §342B–​C (LCL 29, pp. 442–​445).

Setting the Stage  25 space where people (i.e., an audience, a default community) gathered had the potential to morph into a site of theatrical performance, whether the performer was an actor, orator, poet, or ritual performer; if the occasion were a sacred liturgy, then the stakes and command for attention could be that much increased. All any performer needed was something to perform, something that would appeal to listeners, gaining and holding their attention. Performers in the ancient world understood what the British stage director Peter Brook stated with regard to twentieth-​century theater: “I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.”3 A performer, through intent and action, can transform any space—​a street, a market square, a subway car, a sidewalk—​into a stage. And as soon as that transformation occurs, those in the performer’s vicinity find themselves changed from individuals going about their business into an audience. This was as true in antiquity as it is today. All this underscores a key point: potential performance spaces—​and thus the potential for performance—​could be found anywhere and everywhere. Most obviously, purpose-​built infrastructure for housing spectacles was ubiquitous in antiquity.4 In towns throughout the Roman Empire—​from England, the Balkans, and Spain to North Africa, Egypt, and the Levant—​the monumental remnants of theaters, amphitheaters, and racetracks constitute a commonplace. Such structures were not limited to major urban areas but can be found throughout the Romanized world, key elements of basic civic infrastructure. Nor did firm boundaries divide civic, religious, and domestic spaces, whether public or private. Theatrical performances could take place in private residences as well as in theaters, in marketplaces, town squares, and the streets; colorful mosaics not only captured the names and images of champion charioteers and their horses but also brought them into homes and civic spaces; household items including lamps and combs commemorate the dances of mimes, while funerary monuments recall the lives of famous pantomimes.5 Public oratory, likewise, could occur in a range of venues: it 3 Peter Brook, The Empty Space—​A Book about the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate (1968), 9 4 On spectacle in antiquity, see Christine Kondoleon and Bettina Bergmann, eds., The Art of Ancient Spectacle (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999). 5 The most comprehensive study of the visual representations of performance in antiquity is Katherine M. D. Dunbabin, Theater and Spectacle in the Art of the Roman Empire (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 2016). Of particular note are the images from Noheda villa (in Turkey) that Dunbabin uses throughout the volume. Dunbabin notes that in the eastern region of

26  Staging the Sacred could enliven an intimate gathering of educated and wealthy elites, draw a diverse crowd on the steps of a temple, or engage a transient audience from an elevated platform. Declamation could be forensic in service of a client, or staged for its own sake in the context of an oratorical competition. In both cases, speech resulted in “winners” and “losers.” Like theater and oratory, religious rituals emerged from and built upon the substrate of public display, with processions and conflicts spilling from sanctuaries into the streets and drawing the public into sacred spaces. The ubiquity of purpose-​ built structures, constituting visible traces of a performance-​ saturated culture, merely hints at the far vaster range of spaces and occasions when performances took place. Space constitutes the exoskeleton of performance, the structure that supports human bodies as instruments of storytelling, exhortation, and persuasion. Just as performance spaces (purpose-​built or improvised) were ubiquitous, diffuse repertoires of narrative traditions and performative practices provided a ready repository of plots, characters, and tropes, all translated into dynamic, ever-​changing contexts and conventions. These familiar narratives were, in turn, animated by performers and audiences who shared an understanding of how to respond to their prompts, how to bring them to life, and respond to their actions, even as each performer inflected his telling with distinctive shades and nuances, meanings and mannerisms.6 If we are able to understand this vibrant and lively aspect of late antique society, we will be able to appreciate how a societal milieu saturated with theater

the empire, domestic depictions of spectacle shift from images of theater in the second and third centuries ce to circus races (including images accompanied by acclamations of victory) and mythological motifs that blend games and narrative (236–​239). For a thorough study of visual art in religious contexts in late antiquity, Sean Leatherbury, Inscribing Faith in Late Antiquity: Between Reading and Seeing (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), offers a sophisticated and detailed analysis. 6 Writing of Greek antiquity but in a way that applies far more broadly, Sarah Iles Johnston observes that “Greek audiences almost always consumed mythic narratives in an episodic way. . . . Most Greek listeners brought to these experiences a knowledge of the gods’ and heroes’ larger histories . . . the episodes that audiences heard were not so much out of order as they were focused on a discrete, gleaming moment in a larger divine or heroic career” (“How Myth and Other Stories Help to Create and Sustain Beliefs,” in Narrating Religion, ed. S. I. Johnston [New York: Wiley, 2017], 149). A useful work on the relationship between antiquity and its past is Tim Whitmarsh, Beyond the Second Sophistic: Adventures in Greek Postclassicism (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2020). While Whitmarsh focuses on the reception of Greek culture in the wake of the Second Sophistic, his insights can easily be extended to a variety of other contexts and textual corpora. The work of Gregory Nagy also proves useful here; see his volume Pindar’s Homer: The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), and also, Nagy, Poetry as Performance: Homer and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

Setting the Stage  27 and spectacle colored religious oratory, rhetoric, and ritual, and even scriptural interpretation. In this chapter, we will begin with an examination of the everyday presence of world of theater and theatricality in late antiquity, including its physical infrastructure, its productions, its entanglement with officialdom, and its material traces. Once a sense of the ubiquity and diversity of performative modes of display is established, we will then turn our attention to how traces of such practices can be discerned within the specific contexts of the three religious traditions under scrutiny in this study, in the writings of Jews, Samaritans, and Christians. The material world of performance in late antiquity constitutes a key part of the backdrop against which we must see the emergence of liturgical poetry across religious traditions; it shaped not only what was performed but also how it was seen, heard, and engaged. At the same time, each tradition came to modes of performance bearing its own distinctive literary traditions: stories, themes, motifs, and tradition of exegesis that emerged within religious communities at this time and often permeated beyond the bounds of any one tradition. These tradition-​specific elements help us to discern and understand novel narrative and dramatic elements of hymns, and to understand why the shared affinity for theater may at first be difficult to discern. Scholarly efforts to trace and record literary connectivity within and among literary works constitutes the bulk of footnotes in printed editions of antique hymns. Researchers have painstakingly traced vast networks of allusions, quotations, and echoes, both aesthetic and utilitarian, among these liturgical poems and the larger body of sacred texts and traditions coalescing in late antiquity, and thus they articulated the affinities between hymns and scriptural readings, homilies, exegetical writings, and other literatures. Such analysis reveals how poetry is grounded in specific religious traditions and communities and suggests influences across traditions, as well; but the focus is largely concrete—​words, phrases, specific motifs—​ and literary. The ability of liturgical compositions to generate so much data simply in the course of articulating their content had a consequence of diverting attention from more amorphous concerns, including the dynamic energy of how they were actually experienced, and how those experiences may have reflected common aspects of culture, despite significant and meaningful differences among communities. These two elements of performance—​space and content, or more precisely, venue and canon—​must be approached together in order to understand how and why hymnody emerged when it did and how it acquired

28  Staging the Sacred the forms it took. Performance, including both declamation and theatrical shows, constituted a prominent feature of late antique culture; audiences, as part of this culture, understood the conventions of delivery—​including their own role—​and were familiar with the contours of the stories that structured any given piece. Modern scholars need to recover an awareness of physical staging possibilities and, even when little can be reconstructed, remain attuned to its significance in order to understand how audiences responded to performers, and how performers interacted with audiences. An awareness of the physical aspects of staging and delivery complements literary analysis, which often focuses on what was performed. Both the concrete (literary and structural) and the dynamic (active, embodied) aspects of performance are crucial to the phenomenon, but the ephemeral, kinetic, sensory elements—​precisely because they leave so few traces behind—​are far harder to reconstruct. Finally, the ways in which actors and orators adapted and deployed motifs from classical dramas and comedies offers a new way of understanding how liturgical poets related to their own “antiquities”: scriptural materials and exegetical traditions. If we view liturgical poetry as a form of late antique theater, we can see how canons of sacred scripture and interpretation could easily play the role in religious services played by classical works of Greek and Roman theater in late antique stagecraft. Religious performance, including liturgical poetry—​ the new form of expression that appeared suddenly the third century ce across religious traditions—​was one facet of the dynamic world of theatrical, performative creativity in late antiquity.

A Heritage of Theater A love of spectacle and creativity in its execution long predates late antiquity. The Hellenistic origins of drama and theater are consummately entertaining but also religious, as they emerged out of religious rituals of Athens in the fifth century bce.7 But the appetite for entertainment was both durable and omnivorous, so while Greek theater—​its conventions and plots—​ persisted, it thrived alongside and in various ways blended with other styles

7 For a recent, thorough, and multivalent account of the history of Greek theater, see the essays collected in Eric Csapo and Margaret C. Miller, eds., The Origins of Theater in Ancient Greece and Beyond: From Ritual to Drama (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

Setting the Stage  29 of performance, such as Etruscan theater, Persian dance, and Roman mime.8 The Roman Republic saw the development of spectacular entertainments, including gladiatorial battles, hunting spectacles, and chariot races; it witnessed a renaissance of comedic creativity, as demonstrated by the works of Plautus and Terence; and it raised the skills of legal and political oratory to a competitive art form. Greek theater (especially tragedy) remained a cultural touchstone and provided a library of canonical plots and figures, but it was thoroughly assimilated to Roman and provincial tastes, and in the provinces temporary stages provided venues before permanent structures were built—​indeed, even Rome lacked a permanent theater until the theater of Pompey was built in 55 bce, modeled on structures Pompey saw in Greece.9 The Roman Empire continued this legacy of performance and augmented it with new (or newly popularized) forms of theater, particularly mime and pantomime.10 Actors, orators, and their audiences, for all their heterogeneity in terms of formal education, shared a common facility with and fluency in the classical canon, particularly the plots of Greek tragedy and Roman comedy. Despite very real differences in education, opportunities, experience, and skill determined by economic and class position, members of late antique society shared a common cultural foundation, a “curriculum” of mythological tropes, literary set piece scenarios, and typological characters. Performers of any social class, and regardless of objectives or specific setting, shared the pressure and energy of delivering their performance before a critically engaged and sophisticated audience, of role playing with a keen awareness of 8 See the discussion of Etruscan theater and its connection to mime and pantomime in Robert L. Maxwell, “Quia Ister Tusco Verho Ludio Vocahatur: The Etruscan Contribution to the Development of Roman Theater,” in Etruscan Italy: Etruscan Influences on the Civilizations of Italy from Antiquity to the Modern Era, ed. John Franklin Hall (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University, 1996), 267–​286. Also note the discussion in Catherine Edwards, The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 98–​ 136, Chapter 3, “Playing Romans: Representations of Actors and Theatre.” Edwards offers a particularly fascinating discussion of the role that perceived foreignness played in Roman ambivalence toward theater. On Persian dance and spectacle, see Barbara Kaim, “Women, Dance and the Hunt: Splendour and Pleasures of Court Life in Arsacid and Early Sasanian Art,” in The Parthian and Early Sasanian Empires: Adaptation and Expansion, ed. Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, Michael Alram, Touraj Daryaee, and Elizabeth Pendleton (Oxford and Philadelphia: Oxbow, 2016), 90–​105. 9 In addition to providing stability of venue, permanent structures also served functions such as formalizing and concretizing social hierarchy. For a discussion of the significance of Pompey’s theater and the complex significance of Roman infrastructure in this period more broadly, see Amy Russell, The Politics of Public Space in Republican Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). 10 See Margaret Bieber, The History of Greek and Roman Theater (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961), 227–​253. With regard to late antiquity, note Ruth Webb, Demons and Dancers: Performance in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008).

30  Staging the Sacred the audience’s gaze and their expectations of skillful delivery. This dynamic, reciprocal, and knowing sense of “role playing” between performer and audience constitutes what we can, as a shorthand, label theatricality.11 An appreciation for the techniques of effective performance, for self-​conscious and self-​aware participation in “theater” (of stage, street, or sanctuary), could be considered one of the essential elements of a broad, diffuse late ancient culture. A “theatrical” performance requires two key elements: (1) a stage (formal or improvised, physical and tangible or simply conceptual), which in turn creates an awareness of, and distinct spaces for, performer and audience, and (2) some form of script or performative scaffolding. Works staged in theaters—​including purpose-​built structures, temporary stages, the private homes of the wealthy, and improvised spaces in the streets and markets12—​ were presumably quite diverse in both the nature of their “production” and their content and would have varied depending on occasion, venue, capability, and taste. The same diversity holds true for oratory, which could take place in a range of venues, for the benefit of diverse constituencies, and serve a variety of purposes. Public performance as a general social practice, rooted in the classical canon, was so pervasive and such an important element of common culture in antiquity that Augustine (in his own homiletical performance) could refer to a motif from the Aeneid and gloss it with a reference to the stage: “Almost

11 This is not to imply that other forms of literature lack performative elements, particularly when their original orality is considered. Recent decades have witnessed a renewed interest in the rhetorical elements of rabbinic texts (see, for example, Martin Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism 200 BCE to 400 CE [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001]). Serious interest in this approach to rabbinic writing dates back to the mid-​twentieth century and the works of such scholars as Saul Lieberman (Greek in Jewish Palestine/​Hellenism in Jewish Palestine [New York: JTSA, 1994, a single-​volume reprint of works originally printed in 1965 and 1962, respectively]) and David Daube (author of, e.g., “Rabbinic Methods of Interpretation and Hellenistic Rhetoric,” Hebrew Union College Annual 22 [1949]: 239–​264). These works responded to nascent interest on the part of New Testament scholars in the Hellenistic nature of certain rhetorical elements of Christian writings. Where the present study innovates is in its attention to liturgical poetry, a genre that retains a strong affinity for its lived, performative setting. Liturgical poems, while also presenting issues pertaining to life setting, permit a more direct assumption of an audience’s presence (their “gaze”). That said, the work done here anticipates the reconstruction of a kind of “rhetorical-​ performative continuum” connecting works of different genres that nonetheless share essential rhetorical techniques. 12 See Shaun Tougher, “Having Fun in Byzantium,” in A Companion to Byzantium, ed. Liz James (Oxford: Blackwell, 2010), 135–​145. While Tougher focuses on the Christian context, we can certainly imagine that wealthy Jews (e.g., those in Sepphoris) and Samaritans would have had the capability to host events similar to those of their Gentile neighbors, should they have had the desire; the appreciation of Jewish elites for the visual culture of their larger environs suggests other shared aesthetic sensibilities.

Setting the Stage  31 all of you know this story . . . but few of you know it from books, many from the theater.”13 Imperial authority recognized that theater, in particular, was essential to the creation and diffusion of a common culture throughout the empire. As Dunbabin notes: There seems to have been an entire imperial system, at least by the early third century, dedicated to training imperial slaves and freedmen as pantomimes and sending them out to the provinces. The emperors were concerned of course about the entertainment of the populace. . . . But it may be suggested also that they recognized the contribution that such performances could serve in knitting together the multifarious and multilingual peoples who composed the Roman Empire.14

Theater, both a reflection of and mechanism for transmitting culture and creating a sense of common identity, was not only ubiquitous, but also recognized as such. The conventions of theater, in turn, colored other kinds of performance, even those that disavowed actors and their trade. The common schematic history of theater in late antiquity follows a simple outline that focuses on the two popular genres of performance, mime and pantomime. Classical comedies, according to this simplified sketch, were supplanted by mime, performed by men and (scandalously) women who were unmasked but employed props (clubs, leather phalloi), often with risqué or even violent plots derived from daily life and quotidian figures, such as the enduring and ubiquitous “adultery mime.”15 Tragedy, in turn, gave way to pantomime, performed by a single performer (called a “pantomime” because he or she played “all the roles”); this individual dancer changed masks as he changed roles, and while rhythm would have been important, he spoke no lines; instead, the performer relied upon gesture and body language to create character, while a chorus or narrator voiced the content of the story and provided musical accompaniment.16 As tidy and roughly useful as this 13 Augustine Serm. 241.5.5 =​PL 38.1135–​1136. 14 Dunbabin, Theater and Spectacle, 109–​110. This anecdote also indicates the complex relationship between education and performance, as slaves would hardly have had the rhetorical education assumed by elites, and yet received very targeted, “vocational” instruction in some manner. 15 On the popular genre of adultery mime, see esp. R. W. Reynolds, “The Adultery Mime,” Christian Quarterly 40.3–​4 (1946): 77–​84; and the remarkable mosaic that seems to depict a scene discussed in Dunbabin, Theater and Spectacle, 120–​123. 16 Of interest here is the essay by Helen Slaney, “Seneca’s Chorus of One,” in Choruses, Ancient and Modern, ed. Joshua Billings, Felix Budelmann, and Fiona Macintosh (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 99–​116. In her analysis of the political significance of a shift from the collective to the individual (as echoing and aestheticizing the consolidation of imperial power), Slaney

32  Staging the Sacred scheme is, reality was more complex, even if the historical picture, as is so often the case for this period, must be reconstructed out of scanty evidence, literary and material, that bring with them their own challenges as sources for reconstructing a culture.17 Scholars have nonetheless been able to assemble a picture that encompasses the range of roles (from daily life and the classical canon, comedic and dramatic) common to theater and to articulate the importance of body language (stance and gesture) in delivery. We will see how these elements, in turn, translate easily to the realm of liturgical performance. Although we cannot escape the challenges posed by our sources, both literary and material, in terms of reconstructing the details of performance in antiquity, thanks to the recovery of new artifacts and to sophisticated modes of reading texts, objects, and visual evidence together, we are able to discern a general picture more clearly. It has long been known that mime constitutes one of the oldest forms of performance in classical theater, with its origins in ancient Greece, and that it remained popular throughout antiquity. In antiquity, it bears remembering, this nomenclature lacked precision; the term “mime,” in practice, described a variety of entertainers rather than a single, specific kind of performance.18 But despite its imprecision, the use of the term in diverse sources indicates the prevalence of performance styles that earned the label. As Benjamin Hunningher notes: The Roman stage was ruled by the mime, who presented an extremely varied art, both in the time of the emperors and before it. In the Greek theater, too, his domination had been virtually unlimited, for the Golden Age of tragedy and comedy had not, after all, lasted long. All over the ancient world these comedians, cittern-​players, clowns, dancers, and prestidigitators grouped under the name of mimes had made an increasing claim upon the theater.19

notes, “[M]‌any of Seneca’s choral lyrics lend themselves to pantomime” (115), an indication of the slippage and fluidity of appeal among genres and modes of performance. Seneca’s choruses could be performed by a group but were just as effective as solos. 17 See Webb, Demons and Dancers, for an extensive discussion of the performance of mime and pantomime. 18 The term “mime” comes from the Greek μιμέομαι (“to imitate”), where the term “actor” derives from the Latin agere (“to do, make”). Both acknowledge the idea of artifice essential to performance. A similar evolution, in reverse, occurs with a Greek term for actor, “hypocrite”—​ὑποκριτής (hupokritēs), “one who responds,” viz., a chorus member or orator (as in Aristophanes, The Wasps, 1279; Plato, Symposium, 194b; or Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.2.9—​that comes to mean “fraud, phony.” 19 From Benjamin Hunningher’s classic study, The Origins of the Theater (New York: Hill and Wang, 1955), 64.

Setting the Stage  33 Pantomimes, in turn, were so popular, and so influential, that they were credited with inspiring political instability; their social power and sway rivaled more explicitly competitive and overtly politicized entertainments such as chariot races.20 The popularity of mime, pantomime, and related forms of performance in late antiquity did not constitute an innovation of form or practice but, rather, a recalibration of public preference. Their prominence may also reflect the endurance of popular forms of performance over the centuries, albeit varieties that rose and fell in the consciousness of those who recorded its presence. The renown (fame or infamy) of these performers, attested through the controversy they generated and adoration they received, is incontrovertible; actors and athletes were even the subjects of elaborate mosaic tributes and expansive epitaphs.21 Performers coming from or aspiring to the upper echelons of society—​orators and, to some extent, homilists, who employed the tools of rhetoric in part to indicate their own learning and to signal respectability to their listeners—​had no choice but to engage with their popular counterparts and the trends they set. In practical terms, the combination of respect for skill and the appeal of fame often blurred, or threatened to blur, the boundaries of social hierarchies.22 20 See W. J. Slater, “Pantomime Riots,” Classical Antiquity 13.1 (1994): 120–​144. Also of central importance are the studies by Alan Cameron, Circus Factions: Blues and Greens at Rome and Byzantium (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976), and Charlotte Roueché, Performers and Partisans at Aphrodisias in the Roman and Late Roman Periods (London: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, 1993). 21 Lavish mosaics commemorating theatrical and athletic performances and specific performers can be found throughout the empire, from Spain, to North Africa, and Antioch, as well as locations such as Pompeii. See Dunbabin, Theater and Spectacle, and Dunbabin, “Athletes, Acclamations, and Imagery from the End of Antiquity,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 30 (2017): 151–​174. The language of epitaphs also offers important testimony to the fame of performers; see the discussion in Edith Hall, “The Tragedians of Heraclea and Comedians of Sinope,” in Ancient Theatre and Performance Culture around the Black Sea, ed. David Braund, Edith Hall, and Rosie Wyles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 45–​58 and Webb, Demons and Dancers, 146–​147. See also discussion in this chapter. 22 While the upper echelons of society received far more extensive formal education than their actor/​dancer counterparts, we should note that the popularity of entertainers enabled movement up the social ladder (the biography of Empress Theodora offers the most dramatic example). Legal history reinforces the impression of a long, complex entanglement among the political and entertaining classes. The Lex Roscia Theatralis of 67 bce reserved the first fourteen rows of seats for members of the equestrian class, provided the individuals had not themselves appeared in the arena or on the stage—​itself a telling indicator of fluidity between the “theatrical” class and the “oratorical” class, underscored by Augustus’ prohibition against the sons and grandsons of senators and equites from the stage. See Elizabeth Rawson, “Discrimina ordinum: The Lex Julia Theatralis,” Papers of the British School at Rome 55 (1987): 83–​114, and D. H. Berry, “Equester ordo tuus est: Did Cicero Win His Cases because of His Support for the Equites?,” Classical Quarterly 53 (2003): 222–​234. Also note the scene depicted in Quintilian (first c. ce): “A man who had performed before the praetor in his private garden, but had never appeared on the public stage, took a seat in the first fourteen front rows. The accusation is: ‘You exercised the profession of actor!’ The rebuttal is: ‘No, I did not.’ The question is: ‘What is meant by “exercising the profession of actor”?’ If he is accused under the theatre law, the

34  Staging the Sacred A popular preference for “new” (some—​including the Emperor Julian—​ might say, “diminished” or even “degenerate”) styles of performance led to the updating of the classical corpus in its presentation while preserving its content. Classical mythology, often filtered through sources such as Aristophanes and Menander, furnished many popular mime plots over the centuries; pantomime, as a tradition rooted in tragedy, drew even more heavily on the mythic canon. Lucian (second century ce), in his remarkable—​and complex—​defense of pantomime, urges those wishing to become actors to know the whole of Homer, Hesiod, the classical poets, and above all, the Greek tragedians;23 after all, he asserts, “the plots (hypotheseis) are the same for both.”24 Indeed, classical tragedies were still staged in late antiquity, just not necessarily in their entirety; as Bieber writes: “While [new] historical plays were seldom written [after the first century ce] and tragedies often declaimed only in detached scenes or detached roles lacking in continuity, the pantomime with its continuous plot became the real heir of tragedy.”25 Just as today one may refer to a pair of doomed lovers as “Romeo and Juliet” while possessing only a vague familiarity with the Shakespeare play, the scripts of classical tragedy may have become less familiar, but the characters and plots persisted. Simply put, we would be mistaken to assume that the ascendency of one form of entertainment (e.g., mime and pantomime) necessitated the abandonment of another (classical comedy and tragedy), or that boundaries distinguishing genres were rigidly defined or policed. As C. P. Jones observes: If there was in any sense rivalry between legitimate theater and such forms as mime and pantomime, it led to no clear-​cut victories, no clean sweep of the less popular forms from the stage; and if the other forms were more popular, it does not follow that they were necessarily vulgar or uneducated. A social historian of the year 4000 would be unwise to infer that Kiss Me

rebuttal will come from the defendant; if he has been thrown out of the theatre and brings an action for injuries, the rebuttal will come from the accuser” (Inst. Or. 3.6.20 [LCL 125, pp. 56–​57]). 23 On Dancing §61 (LCL 302, pp. 261–​265); this treatise in general offers a wealth of insight into pantomime. On Lucian’s treaties, see Karen Schlapbach, “Lucian’s on Dancing and the Models for a Discourse on Pantomime,” in New Directions in Ancient Pantomime, ed. Edith Hall and Rosie Wyles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 314–​337. 24 On Dancing §31 (LCL 302, pp. 242–​243). 25 Margarete Bieber, The History of the Greek and Roman Theater, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), 227. But note Clifford Ashby’s critique of Bieber’s legacy in his Classical Greek Theatre: New Views on an Old Subject (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999), 139–​146.

Setting the Stage  35 Kate had driven The Taming of the Shrew from the stage; that Verdi’s Otello and Falstaff represented an unmistakable decline in taste; or that only “the small circle of the educated” watched Shakespeare in the Park.26

In short, in late antiquity, the most famous, dramatic, and sensationalist individual scenes from classical dramas were performed as freestanding pieces. This selective adaptation aesthetic reflects not a narrowing of performance styles but a greater diversity of occasions when performances were staged, in a wider array of settings and for expanded and more varied audiences.27 The popularization of theater may have meant a greater quantity and variety of theater rather than a debasement of cultural treasure. Lucian, in his treatise On Dancing, valorizes pantomime precisely because it can be understood as demanding facility in all the other forms of art one might encounter: Dance is not one of the facile arts that can be plied without pains, but reaches to the very summit of all culture, not only in music but in rhythm and metre, and especially in your own favourite, philosophy, both physics and ethics. To be sure, Dance accounts philosophy’s inordinate interest in dialectics inappropriate to herself. From rhetoric, however, she has not held aloof, but has her part in that too, inasmuch as she is given to depicting character and emotion, of which the orators also are fond. And she has not kept away from painting and sculpture, but manifestly copies above all else the rhythm that is in them.28

The task of actors is not lesser than that of an orator or indeed any other artist: dance, according to Lucian, embodies the strengths and eloquence of all the other artforms, including painting, sculpture, and music. It is a synthesis of visual eloquence as well as literary erudition, and the complex richness of dance reveals the interdependence of these various kinds of performances upon each other. Accomplished dancers displayed mastery of a demanding, if not conventionally elite, curriculum.

26 C. P. Jones, “Greek Drama in the Roman Empire,” in Theater and Society in the Classical World, ed. Ruth Scodel (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 48. 27 See Blake Leyerle, Theatrical Shows and Ascetic Lives: John Chrysostom’s Attack on Spiritual Marriage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 20–​31. 28 On Dancing §35 (LCL 302, pp. 246–​247).

36  Staging the Sacred The common cultural touchstone implicit in the idea of canon was essential to public performance, whether highbrow or low, and regardless of communal affiliation. As Martin Jaffee writes with regard to the place of the “classical” canon in the practice of oratory, in his study of its influence on prose rabbinic writings: What made an oral presentation elegant was its ability to cite or allude to well-​known classical texts in the process of the speaker’s development of his own thought. The orator’s persuasive power was in part bound up with the weight of classical diction he could support without apparent effort . . . 29

Classical education emphasized the rote memorization of texts in order to equip speakers with the raw material for crafting innovative speeches, just as today a speaker will deploy Shakespeare, Frost, or (indeed) the Bible in order to imbue remarks with substance and gravitas or quote the Simpsons or Seinfeld as a kind of shortcut to a knowing laugh. In this regard, orators shared much of their curriculum with actors, and both kinds of performers relied on widespread communal familiarity with canonical characters and motifs as an integral component to their success—​a familiarity taught by the theater and orators as well as assumed by them. A shared literary canon constitutes part of the raw material for creativity within the culture, whether that creative expression takes place on the stage, before a jury, or in a homily. Writing of a period when public theaters were still thriving, despite official disapproval, George Kennedy reminds us that declamation was still practiced in Gaza in the sixth century, and probably in Constantinople as well.30 The oratorical traditions of the Greco-​Roman world persisted even as they adapted to the new realities, tastes, and aesthetics of late antiquity.31 Liturgical poetry, so deeply invested in techniques of composition and delivery that arose in the context of theater and oratory, can be seen as one essential vector for the continuation of these art forms.32 29 Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth, 129. 30 See discussion in George A. Kennedy, A New History of Classical Rhetoric (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 271. 31 The understanding of genre in the study of theater in antiquity can be akin to that of modern literary studies of prose, in which the label “novel” has proven useful in analyzing classical literature, despite the absence of that term from ancient literary theory. See Joseph Farrell, “Classical Genre in Theory and Practice,” New Literary History 34 (2003): 383–​408. 32 Indeed, the oral nature of written scriptures—​what the rabbis refer to as “the Written Torah”—​ has recently been a topic of renewed appreciation. See esp. Rebecca Scharbach Wollenberg, The People of the Book without the Book: Jewish Ambivalence Towards Biblical Text after the Rise of Christianity (PhD diss.: University of Chicago, 2015), and Wollenberg, “The Dangers of Reading

Setting the Stage  37

Infrastructure and Obstruction In order to appreciate why “theater” constitutes an appropriate, even essential, lens for examining late antique hymnody, we must understand how thoroughly theater and related modes of performance permeated society in this period. It was not only the idea of theater and spectacle that was so prominent in late antiquity; a robust infrastructure existed to support such performances. Indeed, the widespread presence of theaters, and by extension theatricality and performance, in the ancient world constitutes a major component of the physical legacy of antiquity. As Mary T. Boatwright notes, “Theaters were considered essential to any self-​respecting city in the Roman empire.”33 She underscores the point, writing: The assembled evidence strikingly indicates that theaters were much more important in the Roman world than they are in our own. Theaters were religious structures yet they were also secular buildings built precisely to showcase a range of public spectacles that quickly expanded from tragedy and comedy to include scenic plays and ballets, musical and athletic festivals, gladiatorial and wild beast fights, and aquatic displays.34

We have material remains of theaters from throughout the Roman Empire, including in those areas of the empire where Jewish, Christian, and Samaritan communities predominated; the first Roman-​style theaters and odeums (music halls) appeared in the Near East in the first century bce, and so far thirty-​nine have been excavated in the area spanning from Petra in the south to Cyrrhus (modern Syria) in the north.35 Theaters at Sepphoris and Tiberias could seat roughly 4,500 spectators, while those in Caesarea and Scythopolis could seat at least 6,000 and perhaps as many as 10,000, a number exceeding the population of most cities.36 The theater excavated in Neapolis (modern

as We Know It: Sight Reading as a Source of Heresy in Early Rabbinic Traditions,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 85.3 (2017): 709–​745. Also note William Graham, Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 33 Mary T. Boatwright, “Theaters in the Roman Empire,” Biblical Archaeologist 53 (1990): 185. 34 Boatwright, “Theaters in the Roman Empire,” 184–​185. 35 Alexandra Retzleff, “Near Eastern Theatres in Late Antiquity,” Phoenix 57, no. 1/​2 (2003): 115–​138. 36 Boatwright, “Theaters in the Roman Empire,” 191, estimates that the theater in Caesarea could seat 10,000. The more conservative numbers appear in Mark Chancey, Greco-​Roman Culture in the Galilee of Jesus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 112–​113. These theaters are small in comparison with some Roman venues, such as the hippodrome of Antioch, which could seat 80,000,

38  Staging the Sacred Nablus), a Samaritan population center, dates to the second century ce; it could seat 6,000–​7,000, making it one of the largest theaters in Palestine, and it remained in active use until the seventh century.37 New construction of theaters flourished through the second century ce, and the fifth and sixth centuries witnessed the restoration and refurbishment of existing theaters.38 The prominence of theaters helps contextualize the pervasive influence of theatricality far beyond the confines of the literal stage. As Peter Brown notes, pondering the size and ubiquity of these performance spaces: These gigantic meeting places would not always have been full. Those at major provincial capitals had room for visitors from neighboring cities and, even, for the villagers of the region. Yet seated row upon row in this manner, the theater crowd was the city. It was at the theater that the Antiochenes made their wishes known to the governors by means of carefully orchestrated acclamations. Their occasional stony silence was enough to cause an unpopular governor to turn pale with anger and anxiety.39

Theaters were key elements of civic infrastructure; as Brown expresses it, such spaces were essential to the city and, broadly speaking, expressive of the idea of “citizenship” within the culture. The public assemblies enabled by these structures and the performative dynamics among the audiences and performers defined communal culture in many ways. As popular as purpose-​built theaters were, performances took place in a terrific variety of venues, any place where performers could gain public attention. And just as performance penetrated a variety of public spaces, its content lent color and interest to a variety of domestic spaces. The use of imagery from the worlds of theater and athletics in artwork decorating homes, baths, and other locations signifies the ubiquity, pervasiveness, and

the theater of Epheseus, which seated 24,000, and a stadium by the city walls of Aphrodisias in Caria, which seated 30,000. 37 See I. Magen, “The Roman Theatre in Shechem,” in Zev Vilnay’s Jubilee Volume, ed. E. Schiller (Jerusalem: Ariel, 1984), 269–​277 [Hebrew]. 38 This renaissance of theater in late antiquity coincides with a period when the imperial authorities were taking increasingly aggressive measures to purge traditional civic festivals of polytheistic elements; as Retzleff notes, “Public festivals continued to be produced in the fourth and fifth centuries, but an effort was made to remove cultic elements and to make theatre a desacralized event” (Retzleff, “Near Eastern Theatres in Late Antiquity,” 133). These “secularized” theaters would have been that much more attractive to a Jewish audience. 39 Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 84–​85.

Setting the Stage  39 importance of these pursuits, far beyond “diversions” or “entertainments.” We find images from the classical canon—​quite possibly scenes of theater performances of canonical myths and dramas—​decorating the homes of the wealthy, as well as depictions of athletic games, combat spectacles, and champion charioteers. Both a love of theater and specific spectacles are thus recorded in elaborate, expensive, and permanent detail.40 Plays and games were also commemorated in artifacts available to the masses, allowing them to travel into their homes with them, in portable form. Cheap souvenirs sold at festivals and shrines near theaters (dating to the third to fourth c.) depict scenes from tragedies and attest to the popularity of these storylines, and similarly, domestic objects—​not only vases but also combs and dainty pyxides, some presumably intended to appeal to women—​drew adornment from these popular theatrical motifs.41 It is worth noting that images from mythology, scripture, and entertainments are often intermixed; indeed, a mosaic, sculpture, or fresco depicting a scene from mythology, the Iliad, or Greek tragedy (at times integrated with explicitly Christian or Jewish iconography) is as much a scene of theater as an allusion to a literary corpus.42 Material and visual arts, theatrical performances, and literary works drew on the same common canon.43 For all its popularity, authorities in antiquity often viewed theater and related performative phenomena with a jaundiced eye; a dislike of contemporary theater may be one of the few things rabbis shared with Christian clergy, 40 The bibliography on mosaics, including those depicting games and entertainments, in late antiquity is vast. Of particular relevance to the present study, see Katherine M. D. Dunbabin, Mosaics of the Greek and Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), and her more recent volume, Theater and Spectacle; Christine Kondoleon, Domestic and Divine: Roman Mosaics in the House of Dionysos (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1995); Stine Birk, Troels Myrup Kristensen, and Birte Poulsen, eds., Using Images in Late Antiquity (Oxford and Philadelphia: Oxbow, 2014); Lisa Nevett, Domestic Space in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Sebastiana Nervegna, “Greek Culture as Images: Menander’s Comedies and Their Patrons in the Roman West and the Greek East,” in Ancient Comedy and Reception: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey Henderson, ed. S. Douglas Olson (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014), 346–​365; and Luke Lavan, “Social Space in Late Antiquity, “ in Objects in Context, Objects in Use: Material Spatiality in Late Antiquity, ed. Luke Lavan, Ellen Swift, and Toon Putzeys (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 129–​158. 41 See Pat Easterling and Richard Miles, “Dramatic Identities: Tragedy in Late Antiquity,” in Constructing Identities in Late Antiquity, ed. Richard Miles (New York: Routledge, 1999), 107. 42 In addition to the works cited earlier, see Stine Birk, Troels Myrup Kristensen, and Birte Poulsen, eds., Using Images in Late Antiquity (London: Oxbow Books, 2014); Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Mosaic Pavements: Themes, Issues, and Trends (Leiden: Brill, 2009); Lee Levine, Visual Judaism in Late Antiquity: Historical Contexts of Jewish Art (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012); and Steven Fine, Art and Judaism in the Greco-​Roman World: Toward a New Jewish Archaeology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 43 For a discussion of the tensions between the urge to accommodate majority cultures and to resist them, see also Seth Schwartz, Were the Jews a Mediterranean Society: Reciprocity and Solidarity in Ancient Judaism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010).

40  Staging the Sacred and Church leaders held in common with Emperor Julian, although for vastly different reasons. Julian lamented what he perceived as the loss or debasement of the high classical traditions of Hellenism, and he regarded the popularity of mime and pantomime as reflecting this devaluing of serious culture. Popular entertainment was, in short, not pagan enough for Julian. Among Christian and Jewish leaders theater was equally frowned upon, but for different reasons. They viewed public entertainments as too tethered to paganism, too gleefully violent, and too impious, particularly given actors’ proclivity for pointed mockery of Christians and Jews. Audiences’ reputations for hooliganism and rioting (often with a political tinge) only intensified both clerical and imperial anxiety.44 Although Theodosius I (347–​395 ce) was a patron of the theater and the Empress Theodora (500–​548 ce) performed as an actress before her imperial marriage, as early as the fifth century ce, the Church—​influenced by anti-​ theatrical rhetoric from Church Fathers—​had excommunicated all mimes. In 692 ce, the Council of Trullo (Canon 51) banned (at least in theory) all forms of theatrical entertainment, including mimes, pantomimes, hunting games, and dancing on stage. While, to quote Richard Beacham, even after the Trullan Council “it seems likely that in some form ‘the dance went on,’ ”45 this ruling makes a significant public statement. The official stages of Constantinople, Rome, and beyond were, if not darkened, substantially dimmed. Yet synagogues and churches, with their rituals, homilies, and liturgies, became—​despite the articulated tensions with the theater—​the primary heirs of much of the ancient performative world.46 44 On the complex relationship between the Church and theater, in addition to Leyerle and Webb, see Christine C. Schnusenberg, The Mythological Traditions of Liturgical Drama: The Eucharist as Theatre (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2010), as well as her sourcebook, The Relationship between the Church and the Theatre (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1988), and Donnalee Dox, The Idea of the Theater in Latin Christian Thought: Augustine to the Fourteenth Century (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004). Rabbinic opinions are conveniently synthesized and summarized in Ze’ev Weiss, Public Spectacles in Roman and Late Antique Palestine (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), and Loren Spielman, Jews and Entertainment in the Ancient World (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2020). 45 Richard C. Beacham, The Roman Theater and Its Audience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 153. The eleventh-​century cathedral of St. Sophia in Kiev depicts the hippodrome in Constantinople and includes figures of clowns or jesters as well as musicians and acrobats; the twelfth-​century canonists John Zonaras and Theodore Balsamon refer to the continued existence of mimes. 46 For a study of the tensions between ritual and drama as categories in late antiquity, see Leyerle, Theatrical Shows and Ascetic Lives. Also useful is the second chapter of Andrew Walker White, “The Artifice of Eternity: A Study of Liturgical and Theatrical Practices in Byzantium” (PhD dissertation, University of Maryland, 2006), pp. 46–​91, as well as White’s monograph, Performing Orthodox Ritual in Byzantium (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). My thanks to Kevin Kalish for introducing me to White’s work.

Setting the Stage  41

Community Theater Speaking of late antique liturgy as a kind of “theater” makes conceptual sense, because of both the performative affinities under examination here and the fact that religious theater was, in fact, a commonplace: it was preceded by Greek and Roman theater, which integrated religious ritual, and succeeded by religious dramas such as medieval mystery plays. Less commonly considered is the fact that the physical spaces in which religious ritual took place were, themselves, constructed as performance spaces.47 The synagogue bimah and its counterpart, the Byzantine Christian ambo (in Syriac, bema), was a raised platform that served as the primary focal point in the sanctuary. These spaces resemble in every practical way a stage: their function was to facilitate both visual and acoustic perception, and thereby to support successful delivery of the performer’s material, whether a spoken homily or a sung hymn. Some synagogues seem to have employed “theater-​style” (i.e., amphitheater) seating, a resemblance noted by Epiphanius, who described a Samaritan synagogue as built “theater-​fashion outdoors in the open air, by the Samaritans who mimic all the customs of the Jews,” a style referenced in two inscriptions from Berenice that describe Jewish communal buildings as “amphitheaters.”48 In Christian churches, specific architectural features reflect the use of choirs and various forms of antiphonal performance. Of particular importance is the general impression that Jewish, Christian, and Samaritan spaces, both civic and religious, served a variety of communal functions in late antique society, functions commonly associated with theaters in other contexts. Just as markets could be sites for religious performances and forums for theater as well as oratory, churches and synagogues functioned as communal spaces appropriate to host a variety of gatherings, including public meetings and communal meals.49 In smaller 47 See discussion in Chapter 5. 48 Discussed in Spielman, Jews and Entertainment in the Ancient World, 90. Also note the exterior step structures outside the synagogue at Chorazin; while analysis of synagogue use in antiquity has focused on synagogue interiors, exterior spaces such as courtyards and amphitheater-​like steps suggest other possible activity venues. (On the Chorazin synagogue generally, see Z. Yeivin, The Synagogue at Korazim; The 1962–​1964, 1980–​1987 Excavations, Israel Antiquities Authority Reports [Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2000] and Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeology in the Land of Israel [Leiden: Brill, 1988].) 49 Indeed, the use of both synagogues and theaters for hosting large gatherings lies behind a passage in the rabbinic text Avot de-​Rabbi Natan 21 (Schechter, ed., 37, 43) in which synagogue (one not following rabbinic practices) is glossed as “theater,” based on the fact that both are meeting places (‫)כנסיות‬. See discussion of this passage in Spielman, Jews and Entertainment in the Ancient World, 230–​232.

42  Staging the Sacred communities, or less-​wealthy locales, it seems particularly plausible that a single structure would have served multiple purposes, constituencies, and audiences. In this sense, synagogues and churches may reflect a flexibility of use similar to that of “civic” venues—​streets, markets, and public squares—​ which themselves often integrated religious elements but became hospitable locations for planned or spontaneous performances. Indeed, as official opposition to theater strengthened, activities previously located in those venues would naturally have moved to religiously sanctioned sites.50 This blurring of boundaries and constituencies reflects the ubiquity of performance as well as the importance of intent, and a population attentive to the numerous occasions when the need to constitute an audience—​a specific kind of audience, for a precise function—​might arise. The audiences, like the spaces, were multifunctional: able to enjoy theater, respond to a speech, and affirm a liturgy, as the occasion and their role required. We find evidence for the vibrancy of synagogue life in Chrysostom’s (no doubt exaggerated but nonetheless revealing) accusation: But these Jews are gathering choruses of effeminates and a great rubbish heap of harlots; they drag into the synagogue the whole theater, actors and all. For there is no difference between the theater and the synagogue. I know that some suspect me of rashness because I said there is no difference between the theater and the synagogue; but I suspect them of rashness if they do not think that this is so.51

In a location as energized by performance and theater as Antioch, it is hardly surprising that even a reputation for putting on a good show would attract Christians as well as Jews to a synagogue. For Chrysostom, the external “show” of synagogue activities, religious or otherwise, posed an existential danger to superficial Antiochenes: synagogue spectacles would lure outsiders in and then seduce them to Judaizing behavior. In late antiquity, individuals undertook every action with an awareness of the fact that it would be viewed; Chrysostom accused the Jews of profaning 50 Spielman notes in regard to the Jewish context, “As the church came to eclipse the theater as the central urban institution in the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries, the importance of the synagogue as a communal meeting place for Jews must also have increased” (Jews and Entertainment in the Ancient World, 235). 51 John Chrysostom, Adv. Jud. 1.7; translation from John Chrysostom, Discourses against Judaizing Christians, The Fathers of the Church 68, trans. Paul W. Harkins. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1979), 9.

Setting the Stage  43 the Torah with theater, but he, too, sought to draw listeners to his speeches and keep them for his message.52 Whether the assumed audience was worldly or (in the case of the deity) otherworldly, those speaking within the sanctuary felt the eyes of those who watched them. Ambrose’s praise of Pammachius, a senator turned monk who was eventually canonized, acknowledges this resemblance: “You give spectacles for the church; you are a candidate not for vainglory in the arena [i.e., the amphitheater] but rather for eternal praise.”53 The tools Pammachius acquired as a senator—​his sense of spectacle and performance—​he now puts to use in the service of God; nevertheless, the tools are the same. Basil of Seleucia acknowledges this affinity explicitly in the opening line of his homily on Lazarus: If someone said that the Church is a theater common to both angels and men, he would not be mistaken. It is a theater in which Christ is praised both by invisible and visible nature, a theater in which the Lord’s miracles are woven together for our ears as delightful hymns, for the bride of Christ rejoices, both singing and hearing of the works of Christ.”54

In this passage, Basil explicitly links hymnody—​the singing of religious songs—​with theater. His opening intends to shock listeners with the comparison between sacred worship and theatrical entertainment, but (the homilist argues) what distinguishes the two is not form but content. Church services are theatrical performances with Christ at center stage. The community—​ “the bride of Christ”—​is granted explicit permission to enjoy both hearing and actively participating.

52 For an analysis of the late ancient aesthetic of splendor in a religious context, including a discussion of the Ambrose quotation, see Lucy Grig, “Poverty and Splendour in the Late Antique Church,” in Poverty in the Roman World, ed. Margaret Atkins and Robin Osborne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 145–​161. More broadly, see Jaś Elsner, “Late Antique Art: The Problem of the Concept and the Cumulative Aesthetic,” in Approaching Late Antiquity: The Transformation from Early to Late Empire, ed. Simon Swain and Mark Edwards (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 271–​309. On the effects of intense self-​awareness in a social context highly invested in performance and spectatorship, John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: Penguin, 1972), remains a seminal classic. 53 Ambrose, Ep. 13.16; this passage is discussed in Lucy Grig, “Throwing Parties for the Poor: Poverty and Splendour in the Late Antique Church,” in Poverty in the Ancient World, ed. Margaret Atkins and Robin Osborne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 145–​161. 54 Basil of Seleucia, “Homily on Lazarus, 1,” in Mary B. Cunningham, “Basil of Seleucia’s Homily on Lazarus: A New Edition BHG 2225,” Analecta Bollandiana 104 (1986), 178.

44  Staging the Sacred Similarly, Tertullian admonished his congregation to seek religious alternatives to secular amusements in his remarkable treatise, “On the Spectacles”: These are the pleasures, the spectacles of Christians, holy, eternal, and free. Here find your games of the circus—​watch the race of time, the seasons slipping by, count the circuits, look for the goal of the great consummation, battle for the companies of the churches, rouse up at the signal of God, stand erect at the angel’s trump, triumph in the palms of martyrdom. If the literature of the stage delights you, we have sufficiency of books, of poems, of aphorisms, sufficiency of songs and voices, not fable, those of ours, but truth; not artifice but simplicity. Would you have fightings and wrestlings? Here they are—​things of no small account and plenty of them. See impurity overthrown by chastity, perfidy slain by faith, cruelty crushed by pity, impudence thrown into the shade by modesty; and such are the contests among us, and in them we are crowned, Have you a mind for blood? You have the blood of Christ.55

Tertullian constructs a piety that is equal to as well as an alternative to the popular games and spectacles. And he conveys his message by means of the vivid speech associated with skilled oratory.56 Nor was Tertullian the only early Christian author to draw on imagery from entertainment in his discussion of superior religious analogs. Chrysostom, in move resembling that of Tertullian, appeals to the spectacle of wrestling to convey the preparations for baptism and the efficacy of such training for the newly baptized in a homily delivered in 388 ce: Blunders in this wrestling school are not fraught with danger for the athletes. The wrestling is with men from the same school, and they practice all their exercises with their own teachers. But when the day of the games arrives, when the stadium is open, when the spectators are seated above the arena, and the judge of the contest is on hand, then must those who are

55 Tertullian, On the Spectacles §29 (LCL 250, p. 297). 56 It bears mentioning that Tertullian lived in North Africa (Carthage), and his work thus underscores the ubiquity of spectacle and performance and its usefulness as a rhetorical and cultural touchstone. For a compelling recent study of this figure, see David E. Wilhite, Tertullian the African: An Anthropological Reading of Tertullian’s Context and Identities (Berlin: DeGruyter, 2007).

Setting the Stage  45 slothful fall and leave the arena in deep disgrace, or be energetic and win the crowns and prizes. So also for you, these thirty days are like the practice and bodily exercises in some wrestling school. Let us learn during these days how we may gain the advantage over that wicked demon. After baptism we are going to strip for the combat against him; he will be our opponent in the boxing bout and the fight. Let us learn, during this time of training, the grips he uses, the source of his wickedness, and how he can easily hurt us. Then, when the contest comes, we will not be caught unaware nor be frightened, as we would be if we were to see new wrestling tricks; because we have practiced among ourselves and have learned all his artifices, we will confidently join grips with him in the combat.57

Chrysostom compares the newly baptized Christian men to wrestlers—​ describing how they strip and grapple, in robustly physical terms. When he speaks to the women, he similarly evokes the language of theater: The same analogy holds good not only in the case of the wars of this world, but also in the case of the games. Those who are going to be brought into the arena do not go down to the contests until the herald takes them and leads them around before the eyes of all, as he lifts his voice and says: “Does anyone accuse this man?” And yet this is no contest involving the soul, but a wrestling match of men’s bodies. Why, then, do you demand an accounting of the contestants’ free birth?58

The newly baptized perform for an audience of the heavenly hosts, who gaze upon them, angelic spectators marveling at the contest.59 Chrysostom invites his listeners, those on the cusp of joining the Christian community, to imagine themselves as performers attracting the most spectacular gaze.60 God, 57 Chrysostom, Instructions to Catechumens I.9.28–​29, trans. Paul W. Harkins (New York: Paulist Press, 1963), 140–​141. 58 Chrysostom, Instructions to Catechumens, II.12.33, trans. Harkins, 182–​183. 59 In GenR 77:3 (T-​A, 912), Jacob’s wrestling match with the angel by the Jabbok ford (Gen. 32:22–​ 33) is compared to an athlete wrestling in the arena, with the implication that the angels there, too, are witnesses. Similarly, angels watch the binding of Isaac and respond in horror in both prose midrashim and liturgical poems. 60 It bears mentioning that songs are associated with the heavens—​e.g., angelic choirs—​as attested already in Isa. 6, the passage that provides key liturgical phrases (the qedushah/​sanctus). We also find human singing associated with ascents to heaven in early Jewish mystical traditions, including the Apocalypse of Abraham 17. The sounds of singing, along with reciprocal gazing—​and, when offerings were made, the aroma of sacrifice—​all function as sensory links between terrestrial and supernal realms.

46  Staging the Sacred far superior to the cruel civic officials who oversee mortal games, is here called “the Judge of the games of piety.”61 Neither religiously justified opposition to theater nor the argument that piety can be a legitimate alternative to entertainment was an exclusively Christian endeavor. Jewish sources preserve an array of traditions opposed to the participation of faithful Jews in theater and games.62 Among these works, we find the peculiarly ambivalent tradition that abstaining from theatrical amusements and games will be rewarded in the World-​to-​Come with a spectacle that surpasses them all: the battle of Leviathan and Behemoth. This tradition, which appears most expansively in midrash Leviticus Rabbah, states: Rabbi Yudah ben Rabbi Shimon said: Behemoth and the Leviathan are [destined] to engage in a wild-​beast contest before the righteous in the Time-​to-​Come, and whoever has not seen the wild-​beast contests (‫)קניגין‬ of the nations of the world in This World will be granted the gift of seeing one in the World-​to-​Come. How will they be slaughtered? Behemoth will, with its horns, pull Leviathan down and rend it, and Leviathan will, with its fins, pull Behemoth down and pierce it through. The Sages asked: How is this a valid method of slaughter?! Have we not learnt the following in a Mishnah (i.e., m. Hul. 1:2): “All may slaughter, and one may slaughter at all times [of the day], and with any instrument except with a scythe, a saw, or teeth (i.e., a jaw cut out of a dead animal), because they cause pain as if by choking, or with a fingernail”? Rabbi Abin ben Kahana said: The Holy Blessed One said: Instruction (Torah) shall go forth from Me (Isa. 56:4), i.e. an exceptional temporary ruling will go forth from Me.63 61 Chrysostom, Instructions to Catechumens, II.12.35, trans. Harkins, 183. 62 For example, GenR 67:3 (T-​A, 756–​757) sees the creation of humanity with two feet as reflecting a pious–​impious binary: “With his feet he can go to the theaters and circuses (‫לבתי טרטסיאות‬ ‫)ולבתי קרקסיאות‬, while if he wishes he can go to houses of prayer and houses of study (‫לבתי כנסיות‬ ‫)ובתי מדרשות‬.” The impious structures (theaters and circuses) are presented as “houses” that compete with pious structures (i.e., synagogues and study halls). For a comprehensive treatment, see Spielman, Jews and Entertainment in the Ancient World. 63 LevR 13.3 (Vilna ed. 18b), translated by the author; see Michael Fishbane, The Exegetical Imagination: On Jewish Thought and Theology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 41–​55. In a similar vein, note the tradition in the same midrash (LevR 11:9; Vilna ed. 17a) that compares God to the primary performer—​the pantomime dancer—​leading this Israelite chorus: “In the time to come, the Holy Blessed One will lead the chorus (ḥolah/​‫חולה‬, circle dance) of the righteous, as it is written: ‘Keep her ramparts (ḥelah/​‫ )חילה‬in mind’ (Psa 48:14). It is written ḥolah (the exegete here lengthens the yod to a vav), (meaning) they will dance around Him like young maidens and point to Him, as it were, with a finger, saying, ‘This is God, our God, forever and ever; He will lead us ‘alamut’ (‘forever,’ or ‘maiden-​like’; Psa 48:15).” See discussion in Martin Jacobs, “Theatres and Performances as Reflected in the Talmud Yerushalmi,” in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-​Roman Culture, vol. 1, ed. Peter Schaefer (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr, 1998), 344.

Setting the Stage  47 This midrash depicts not an alternative to the animal fights of the ancient amphitheater, but its ultimate instantiation. The rabbis express discomfort with the violence, insofar as they have God issue an exception to the conventional rules of kosher slaughter to render the primordial animals fit for the sages’ dining. Even divine oversight (‫ )השגחה‬of kashrut is suspect. And yet, this spectacle is God’s (discomfiting?) gift to the pious.64 Theater’s foes and partisans shared common ideas of what audiences favored, and both understood the common tools of effective performance. Given that every performance and performer desires and even expects an audience, the rivalry among entertainers, orators, and liturgists was fruitful as well as impassioned; the competition for eyes, ears, and attention invited all parties to refine and improve their craft.65 Despite that Ambrose, Tertullian, Chrysostom, and the rabbis expressed unease with public amusements, they freely drew on the techniques of actors and orators as they competed for popular attention.66 An example of how religious authors recognized, however uneasily, the awareness that they needed to compete for audiences just as other performers did can be found in the liturgical treatment of the battle of Leviathan and Behemoth. This mythic trope from prose rabbinic writings became a subject for a dramatic piyyut by the great poet Eleazar ha-​Qallir: this specific vision of the World-​to-​Come, a pious displacement of the violent amusements of antiquity, rewarded those who attended the synagogue on the fast of the Ninth

64 Spielman brings together a variety of prose traditions on this theme in his discussion of the eschatological banquet (Jews and Entertainment in the Ancient World, 251–​255). 65 As Beacham states, “Christian polemicists saw both in the attitude of the rulers that at all costs the shows must go one, and in the veritable obsession with such diversions by the general population, irrefutable evidence of the moral collapse of paganism and its approaching destruction. Yet even in the Christian community, when the games were on the churches were deserted. Later, with barbarians literally at their gates, the public still mobbed the spectacles. In its resentment the Church conceived a hatred and horror of the theatre which endured for centuries, was reactivated in the Renaissance, and indeed, in some circles is still evident today” (The Roman Theater and Its Audience, 194). To be sure, religious institutions benefited from the understanding that certain forms of participation were necessary, as sacraments or commandments. And yet, persuasion to accept and adhere to such beliefs was itself important, whether keeping community members engaged or drawing in new believers, and appeals to hearts and minds prevented rituals from becoming hollow, rote performances. On the competitiveness of performers, see Ruth Webb, “The Nature and Representation of Competition in Pantomime and Mime,” in L’organisation des spectacles dans le monde romain. Entretiens sur l’Antiquité classique, 58, ed. Kathleen Coleman and Jocelyne Nelis-​Clément (Vandœuvres and Genève, Switzerland: Fondation Hardt, 2012), 221–​256. 66 Blake Leyerle describes Chrysostom’s popularity as a storyteller and orator in The Narrative Shape of Emotion in the Preaching of John Chrysostom (Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press, 2020).

48  Staging the Sacred of Av, on the stage of their imaginations.67 Through the performance of this composition—​a far lengthier and more detailed description of the event than what was offered in the prose midrash quoted earlier—​Qallir imaginatively transformed the synagogue into an amphitheater. He called on his community to envision, in extensive and vivid detail, the violent, gory conflict between the mighty but docile partisan of the earth (horned Behemoth) and the fierce, feisty representative of the sea (razor-​finned Leviathan), who battle as the epitome of air (the Roc-​like Ziz) looks on. The poem offers dramatic scene (what we see, in Chapter 3, is an example of ekphrasis) that synthesizes animal combat with gladiatorial sport. After expansively introducing the two creatures who are about to battle—​akin to the introduction of two boxers or wrestlers as they enter the ring—​the poet actively narrates how the two mythic monsters circle each other menacingly: And he [Behemoth] encircles him [Leviathan] with his horns, an expert fighter And the fish, facing him, is ready68 And he sharpens his fins again and again And he goes straight for the kill against him The one curves his horns towards the other The other lifts his fins in response (ll. 256–​261)

The poetic version of the battle ends in a somewhat different fashion from the version in Leviticus Rabbah. In the piyyut, the beasts described as “the three consolations” (l. 139) do not slaughter themselves; the poet avoids the anxiety of the cruel and bloodied arena, even if divinely sanctioned. Instead, in this poem God intercedes: And into their midst, He makes peace between them So that He may slaughter, prepare, and consecrate them And serve them as a meal to the faithful nation, And they will understand that they are not bereft, And they shall say, “Blessed is the Faithful One, For everything which He planned from of old, He has fulfilled it, at the end of time!” (ll. 262–​268) 67 A translation of the piece appears in Laura S. Lieber, “Theater of the Holy: Performative Elements of Late Ancient Hymnography,” Harvard Theological Review 108.3 (2015): 327–​355. The translations here are adapted from this essay, p. 355. 68 Or: “wheels to the right.”

Setting the Stage  49 The King halts the combat, slaughters the creatures Himself (rather than letting them slay each other), and then prepares the meal for His faithful ones Himself, in a scene that is both a display of divine power and generosity, and a softening of the brutality of the games rather than its accommodation. The final lines of the poem praise God for having woven this “counter-​spectacle”—​the divinely orchestrated games—​into the fabric of history. These texts promise a spectacle that will console the righteous, who have abstained from consuming spectacles; they do so by vividly describing the drama and violence of the scene. The poem, in particular, takes listeners “into the moment” with a vivid, you-​are-​there sense of the conflict, like a sportscaster narrating a fight. One key assumption of this study is that religious poetry from late antiquity was influenced, directly and indirectly, by ideas of what constituted effective and appealing performance in the larger society.69 These poems did not emerge spontaneously from the ether, nor did they evolve in some linear way from biblical traditions; poets composed these works to be performed in some kind of public venue, whether in a liturgical, para-​liturgical, or non-​ liturgical setting, and they did so in a manner that reflected cultural norms and values of the world in which they and their audiences lived.70 This is true despite the fact that rabbinic and patristic works are fairly uniform in their disapproval of theater and games.71 The idea that elements of the aesthetics and techniques of Roman spectacle would have penetrated into Christian,

69 On the importance of oratory, see Anthony Corbeill, Nature Embodied: Gesture in Ancient Rome (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), and Maud Gleason, Making Men: Sophists and Self-​Presentation in Ancient Rome (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). 70 Some poems, such as the qedushta’ot, which embellish the first three benedictions of the Amidah, undoubtedly reflect a liturgical setting. Other works, such as the Aramaic poems presented later, may have originated outside of a liturgical setting (as Joseph Yahalom and Michael Sokoloff argue vigorously; see Jewish Palestinian Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity [Jerusalem: Israel Academy of the Sciences and Humanities, 1999], 42) but were later adapted to a liturgical setting. It is also possible to imagine some of these works performed in a totally nonreligious environment, enjoyed by anyone for whom JPA was a vernacular language, while a para-​liturgical setting offers a hybrid model. At present, while specific life setting would influence details of the interpretation of these poems, the theatrical elements do not depend significantly on context, given the basic similarities of performance technique across venues. 71 For Christian ambivalence toward theater, which was complicated with the Christianization of imperial power and the need of the empire to maintain public entertainments, see Webb, Demons and Dancers; Leyerle, Theatrical Shows and Ascetic Lives; Dunbabin, Art and Spectacle in the Roman Empire; and Jaclyn L. Maxwell, Christianization and Communication in Late Antiquity: John Chrysostom and His Congregation in Antioch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

50  Staging the Sacred Samaritan, and Jewish consciousness is, however, hardly radical.72 Liturgical poetry may have been one mechanism by which rabbis appropriated elements of popular culture in order to bring Jews, enthusiastically, to the synagogue. Chrysostom and Tertullian, among others, would have sympathized with the rabbis’ dilemma, and Christian liturgy certainly suggests a similar strategy. We need not imagine that such decisions were even undertaken consciously but, rather, reflected the embeddedness of religious leaders in the same culture and norms as their congregants. Even communities sympathetic to the moral and aesthetic critiques of theater and “vulgar” entertainment valued homilists’ oratorical skills and found in sermons and hymns licit alternatives to otherwise appealing, but frowned-​ upon, diversions.73 Religious performance provided critics of theater a mechanism for engaging with elite culture and its values, including learned speech and graceful delivery, and it afforded their audiences an opportunity to appreciate skillful display and content without spiritual or cognitive dissonance.74 To some extent, religious authorities’ critiques of theater reflect an intensification of what we see among civic orators: they regard actors and spectacles not merely as vulgar but existentially dangerous, and where orators could find utility in actors’ techniques, we find no such self-​reflective (if perhaps grudging) appreciation in sermons, because such concessions would be entirely at odds with their own understanding of their craft. Nevertheless, those authorities most vociferously opposed to attendance at theaters (like orators) reveal familiarity with its activities and techniques: knowledge perhaps acquired directly, during wayward, youthful years, or indirectly, through second-​hand or peripheral encounters with spectacles or filtered through rhetorical education or experience.75 72 As Joshua Levinson notes, “Heinemann (in Public Sermons in the Talmudic Period) states categorically that the Jewish population preferred the synagogues to the theaters; I believe that internal and external evidence points in the opposite direction” (“An-​Other Woman: Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife, Staging the Body Politic,” Jewish Quarterly Review 87 [1997]: 276n24). 73 To make an analogy, the “cup” of entertainment was here filled with “kosher” wine. 74 In addition to the material cited in n. 41 of this chapter, see M. D. Herr, “Synagogues and Theaters (Sermons and Satiric Plays),” in Knesset Ezra: Studies Presented to Ezra Fleischer, ed. Shulamit Elizur (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi, 1994), 105–​119 [Hebrew]; Jacobs, “Theatres and Performances as Reflected in the Talmud Yerushalmi,” 327–​347; Gideon Bohak, “The Hellenization of Biblical History in Rabbinic Literature,” in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-​Roman Culture, vol. 3, ed. Peter Schaefer (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr, 2002), 3–​16. With an eye specifically toward liturgical poetry, see Jefim Schirmann in “The Battle between Behemoth and Leviathan According to an Ancient Hebrew Piyyut,” Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 13 (1970): 327–​369, and Joseph Yahalom, Poetry and Society in the Jewish Galilee of Late Antiquity (Tel Aviv: HaKibbutz HaMeuchad, 1999), 245 [Hebrew]. 75 Literacies of different kinds—​including performative skills and cultural knowledge, as well as the words of specific texts in oral tradition rather than in writing—​can be acquired without formal

Setting the Stage  51 In sum, experience with theater—​both its content and its performative practices—​was inescapable, a part of being socialized into late antique culture, and for many professions, such knowledge was essential. While religious authorities articulated discomfort with and even disapproval of theater, they were themselves nonetheless expected to be good speakers and performers; it is no accident that we still possess the eloquent sermons of John Chrysostom (i.e., “golden tongue”), and rabbinic sources specify that a prayer leader should be “skilled in chanting” and have “a pleasant voice” (b. Taan. 16a).76 To pass up on the utility of effective techniques of delivery and declamation, particularly when aspirationally elite models of public oratory resolved any potential dissonance or anxiety arising from a recognition of any explicitly theatrical frames of reference, would have been foolhardy. Religious performers did not need to acknowledge, or even recognize, the affinity of their craft for theater, not because they were hypocrites (the Greek term for actors!) but because its ubiquity rendered it invisible. While religious elites, like orators, distinguished between their edifying practices and the seductions of theater, accusations of theatricality were useful against one’s opponents. We see this proclivity in the writings of the Church Fathers, who condemn rabbis for behaving theatrically and who liken the synagogue to theaters, even as they critique their own congregations for a love of theater and shy away from discussions of their own performativity.77 In polemical discourse, “the theater becomes a marker of difference, of the other and competing culture”78—​pagan, Christian, Samaritan, or Jewish. The rhetorical deployment of theater by religious authorities against the

education narrowly understood. Rosalind Thomas has coined the term “multiliteracies” to describe the variety of skills that can be assembled within the capacious idea of “literacy” itself; see her essay “Writing, Reading, Public and Private ‘Literacies’: Functional Literacy and Democratic Literacy in Greece,” in Ancient Literacies: The Culture of Reading in Greece and Rome, ed. William A. Johnson and Holt N. Parker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 13–​45. For a useful analysis of early Jewish literacy, see Aaron Demsky, Literacy in Ancient Israel (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2012) [Hebrew], and William Schniedewind, How the Bible Became a Book: Textualization of Ancient Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 76 In addition to the Talmudic source, also note that the biblical phrase “your voice is sweet” (Song of Sol. 2:14) is glossed with “. . . in prayer” (e.g., Mekh. Besh. 2) or reference to singing in a liturgical context (e.g., SongR on Song of Sol. 2:14) or prayer (GenR 45:4). 77 For example, Jerome on Ezek. 34:31, as quoted in S. Krauss, “The Jews in the Works of the Church Fathers,” Jewish Quarterly Review o.s. 6 (1894): 234; and Chrysostom in Contra Iudaeos 1.2.7 (both these passages are cited and discussed by Levinson, “An-​Other Woman,” 276–​277). Note, too, that Jacob of Sarug (late fifth/​early sixth century) wrote five metrical homilies, On the Spectacles of the Theater (ed. and trans. C. A. Moss, Le Muséon 48 [1935]: 87–​112); these indicate that theater was an ongoing concern in the Syriac-​speaking world, as well. 78 Levinson, “An-​Other Woman,” 277.

52  Staging the Sacred institution, however, obscures the importance of theatrical techniques and rhetoric in the composition of works that were perhaps conceived of as rivals of or complements to “secular” entertainment.79 When Tertullian, Chrysostom, Ambrose, or the rabbis critique theater, they both display at least a passing familiarity with the world of spectacle and, even more importantly (if more subtly) reveal their own deep steeping in the performative world in which they lived. They created rival spectacles of their own. Only when others did it was it theater. Upon first read, early Christian writers—​ including Tertullian, Chrysostom, Jacob of Sarug, and others—​present themselves fairly uniformly as fierce critics of theater; they position themselves as rivals to the stage and speak of actors and theater as having the power to undermine piety and the Christian self.80 They regard the mimesis of mime and pantomime as a deceptive, even demonic illusion, a seductive path to dangerous falsehoods; this suspicion of theater represented in the way that one Greek term for actor—​ὑποκριτής (hupokritēs), “one who responds,” viz., a chorus member—​came by the Hellenistic period to mean “fraud, phony,” or (as the Greek came into English) “hypocrite” (and in some cases, a Jew).81 And yet, not only in homilies but also through hymnody, early Christian writers reveal how deeply they learned from theater and, more acceptably, from oratory, if not directly then indirectly, because of the inescapable ubiquity of such entertainments. If the impious, irreverent, even pagan stage was the competition, the church needed to beat entertainers at their own game. Harangues alone would not suffice to attract a sophisticated and skilled audience. From within the body of rabbinic writings, as in early Christian writings, we have tantalizing, if diffuse, references to elements of performance and, more broadly speaking, indications of ritual self-​awareness.82 Lee Levine 79 On the possible use of biblical motifs outside of what we might call “confessional theater,” see Charlotte Roueché, “A World Full of Stories,” in Transformations of Late Antiquity: Essays for Peter Brown, ed. Manolis Papoutsakis and Philip Rousseau (London: Routledge, 2016), 177–​185. Where Levinson argues for the appropriateness of the Joseph cycle for such a vehicle, Roueché has identified a grafitto from the theater at Ephesus, which she argues represents Tobit, another story that could easily have translated appealingly (with a combination of humor and gentle moralizing) to the stage. 80 Webb, Demons and Dancers, 197–​216, and Leyerle, Theatrical Shows and Ascetic Lives, 42–​74. 81 See LSJ s.v. ὑποκριτής, and note 18, above. The bibliography on the term “hypocrite,” given its importance in the New Testament, is voluminous. Among other works, see Margaret M. Mitchell, “Peter’s ‘Hypocrisy’ and Paul’s: Two ‘Hypocrites’ at the Foundation of Earliest Christianity?” New Testament Studies 58.2 (2012): 213–​234; Daniel Schwartz, “ ‘Scribes and Pharisees, Hypocrites’: Who Were the Scribes?” Zion 50 (1985): 121–​132 [Hebrew]; and Ellis Rivkin, “Scribes, Pharisees, Lawyers, Hypocrites: A Study in Synonymity,” Hebrew Union College Annual 49 (1978): 135–​142. 82 One of the most interesting and relevant recent articles on ritual theory in recent years is Michael Swartz, “Judaism and the Idea of Ancient Ritual Theory,” in Jewish Studies at the Crossroads of Anthropology and History: Authority, Diaspora, Tradition, ed. Ra‘anan Boustan, Oren Kosansky,

Setting the Stage  53 provides us with a succinct synopsis of the variety of strategies attested in late antique Jewish sources, primarily in regard to the techniques of preachers, but applicable to hymnographers as well: Since a synagogue audience may have been heterogeneous, including the more learned along with the less sophisticated, preachers were well advised to employ whatever rhetorical talents and techniques were at their disposal in order to gain and hold the entire audience’s attention. These might include humor, the use of anecdotes, and other ploys. Rabbi Judah I, for example, is said to have always waited for the audience to assemble before he made his entrance. Another way of engaging the congregation was to ask less important figures, often students, to deliver prefatory remarks; having been given a warm-​up, the audience was assumed to be primed for the keynote speaker. . . . We are told that audiences fell asleep at times, requiring the preacher to display ingenuity in regaining their attention.83

External sources underscore the affinity of the synagogue for theatricality. Jerome, writing polemically and echoing the critiques of Chrysostom in the East, implicitly reinforces the picture that emerges from rabbinic writings: “The [Jewish] preachers make the people believe that the fictions which they invent are true; and after they have, in theatrical fashion, called forth applause . . . they arrogantly step forward, speak proudly, and usurp the authority of rulers.”84 While he offered this observation as a sharp criticism of Jews and those seduced by their style of preaching, he recognized rabbinic sermons as a kind of performance, and an appealing one, at that. Similarly, by late antiquity, we find rabbinic authors unselfconsciously appealing to theatrical visuals in their presentations of biblical characters: David dances before the ark like a pantomimus; Jacob’s wrestling match with the angel is

and Marina Rustow (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 294–​317. In this essay, Swartz comparatively analyzes Mishnah Yoma and the Avodah piyyutim, noting that the piyyutim—​ due to their performance in the ritual context of the synagogue—​“create in the listener a kind of dramatic empathy with the high priest” (315). 83 Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue The First Thousand Years, Second Edition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 581–582. 84 Jerome, Commentary on Ezekiel, Liber 11, on Ezek. 34: qui cum populo persuaserint uera esse quae fingunt, et in theatralem modum plausus concitauerint, et clamores immemores fiunt imperitiae suae, et, adducto supercilio libratis que sermonibus atque trutinatis, magistrorum sibi assumunt auctoritatem (trans. from Samuel Krauss, “Jews in the Works of the Church Fathers,” Jewish Quarterly Review 5 [1893], 234).

54  Staging the Sacred compared to an athlete competing against the son of the king; and God acts the chorus leader of the righteous in the World-​to-​Come.85 Finally, rabbinic writings display a familiarity with the world of theater directly, as we see in the account of a scathing homily delivered by Yose of Ma’on in the synagogue of his Galilean village against Rabbi Judah the Patriarch—​a polemical, political use of oratory well attested in antiquity. In his defense of Yose of Ma’on, Resh Laqish drew out the subtext: Rabbi! We ought to be thankful to the heathens who bring mimes (‫)מומסין‬ into their theatres and circuses (‫ )לבתי טרטייאות ולבתי קרקסאות‬and amuse themselves with them, so that they should not converse with each other; yet Yose of Maon spoke words of Torah, and you become angry with him!86

The Patriarch objected to being the target of performative satire—​satire performed in a synagogue—​but Resh Laqish defends him by saying that while his technique was that of entertainers, Yose’s words were from Torah. The patriarch, Resh Laqish suggests, should display the same forbearance as a governor or emperor. The analogies here—​homilist and mime, synagogue and theater, patriarch and political power—​underline the argument in this volume, even as Resh Laqish suggests that the use of Torah renders what might otherwise be inappropriate practices and targets acceptable. We should not assume that use of theatrical skills and rhetorical techniques by homilists and hymnographers indicates that they possessed formal training in such arts. Some, like Augustine, may have had firsthand experience as spectators; a Babylonian tradition describes the sage Rabbi Shimon ben Laqish (the same Resh Laqish who defended Yose of Ma’on) as having been a performer of feats of strength or a gladiator.87 Others may 85 On David, see y. Sukkah 5:4 (24a) and y. San. 2:4 (20b); for Jacob as a competitor in the games, see GenR 77:3 (T-​A, 912); and on God as the lead dancer, see LevR 11:9 (Vilna ed., 17a), a passage quoted in n. 63 of this chapter. 86 GenR 80:1 (T-​A, 950–​953). For a discussion of the tradition, see, most recently, Weiss’ treatment of mime in Public Spectacles in Roman and Late Ancient Palestine, 120–​128. On GenR 80:1, Weiss writes, “Familiar with the nature of mime and the sociopolitical satire, Resh Laqish solicits the Patriarch, asking him to behave as the nations of the world would and forgive Yose of Ma’on, despite the criticism he aired in his sermon” (128). See also Herr, “Synagogues and Theaters (Sermons and Satiric Plays),” as well as the review and critique of Herr’s analysis in Spielman, Jews and Entertainment in the Ancient World, 237–​245. 87 See b. Git. 47a. The Hebrew term “‫( ”לודים‬Aramaic: “‫ )”לודאה‬is usually derived from the geographical designation, “Lydian/​Laodicean,” but it may be related to the Latin ludi, “games.” The term is generally taken to mean performer of some kind, or the support staff (trainers of gladiators, circus attendants, etc.), but it also could mean “bandit,” which suggests the suspicion with which such professions were viewed. See Sokoloff, DJPA, 278b, and Sokoloff, DJBA, 619b, and the discussion of this passage in Spielman, Jews and Entertainment in the Ancient World, 203–​209.

Setting the Stage  55 well have benefited from at least some formal rhetorical education and been trained in the skills associated with oratory. But good observers of the culture—​as anyone capable of making a career in a performative discipline would be—​could certainly have picked up the most important skills informally. Eli Rozick notes, “Dramatization and theatrical performance of a trope . . . requires neither professional actors nor an infrastructure of partnership between mimes and clergy”88—​meaning that we need not imagine a direct, explicit, or even conscious importation of techniques from the world of theater into the world of religious ritual. Instead, the world of theater and performance so thoroughly permeated late antique society, at all levels, that even in offering alternatives to its charms, religious figures reached for models of entertainment not as theater, per se, but as effective ways of engaging audiences for whom such entertainments were the norm. The sheer ubiquity of performance created within late antique society, including Jews, Christians, and Samaritans, an approach to religious canon and ritual that even those who rejected licentious theater and its pagan ways could not evade—​not if they wished to succeed.

From Scripture to Script Story is essential to theatricality. I use the term “story” here to describe a narrative’s plot, the interactions among characters (including, at times, the listeners) who populate the real or imagined stage. A lawyer arguing a case seeks to convince the jury of the truth of her story, just as an actor brings a traditional plot to life upon the stage. Story is in some sense the raw material of performance: never static, and a starting point rather than a conclusion. Stories are revised and reworked, over and over, made new with every retelling, every revision, every delivery. And implicit in the idea of “storytelling” are two parties, the storyteller and, to coin a phrase, the story told: performer and audience. To be sure, not every performance is narrative, but many are, and this is particularly true of liturgical works that themselves riff on stories familiar from scripture. While every form of writing can be mined for indications of its implied performance (actual or imaginary) and its audience reception, not every 88 Eli Rozick, The Roots of Theater: Rethinking Ritual and Other Theories of Origin (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2002), 100.

56  Staging the Sacred performance is theatrical; theatricality requires a distinctive awareness of performativity.89 Liturgical poetry—​regardless of the religious affiliation of its author—​provides a particularly overt location in which to find self-​ conscious theatricality in the context of Jewish, Christian, and Samaritan ritual.90 Not only do these texts reflect an author and presume an audience, but they also bear traces of the dynamics of active engagement that was essential to their appeal “in the moment,” the aesthetic of experiential delight. For all their diversity, liturgical poems—​particularly those that relate to scriptural narratives—​most directly translate the ideas of “canon” and “performance” that typified the late antique stage into the sacred spaces of Christians, Samaritans, and Jews. In particular, these poems frequently employ storylines from biblical tradition (often as dictated by the liturgical schedule of readings), embellish their versions with dramatic elements of exegetical or homiletical expansions, make frequent use of dialogue as well as choruses and choral responses, and suggest a physicality associated with performative delivery.91 Even the physical staging seems to have been influenced by theater, with buildings enhanced during renovation in ways that support performance, such as improved acoustics and sight lines.92 Whether presented as solo performances by an individual cantor or more elaborate choreographies involving multiple choirs, these works possess tremendous theatrical potential. In those cases where the physical structure of 89 For example, homilies, exegesis, and biblical translation (targum) also offered “performative” opportunities, as would the liturgy. A theatricality-​oriented approach to late ancient Jewish poetry brings these works into conversation with important contemporary trends in religious studies at a broad level (e.g., Morgan, The Sacred Gaze) as well as Christian hymnography. This further-​ranging conversation has already begun: Yahalom and Sokoloff note the similarities between the Aramaic poems and Syriac verse homilies and dialogue poems (Jewish Palestinian Aramaic Poetry, 20–​45), and Ophir Münz-​Manor offers a nuanced discussion of comparative hymnography (with a concise review of earlier work done in this area) in “Liturgical Poetry in the Late Antique Near East: A Comparative Approach,” Journal of Ancient Judaism 1 (2010): 336–​361. See, too, his earlier piece, “All about Sarah: Questions of Gender in Yannai’s Poems on Sarah’s (and Abraham’s) Barrenness,” Prooftexts 26 (2006): 344–​374. Also important are Richard Hidary, Rabbis and Classical Rhetoric: Sophistic Education and Oratory in the Talmud and Midrash (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), and Eden HaCohen’s essay on dialogue poems, “Studies in the Dialogue-​Format of Early Palestinian Piyyutim and Their Sources, in Light of Purim Expansions,” Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature 20 (2006): 97–​171 [Hebrew]. 90 As Spielman concludes, or even concedes, “In light of these observations about the performance value of piyyutim, Chrysostom’s claims about dragging ‘actors and the whole stage’ into the synagogue, though exaggerated, seem much less far-​fetched” (Jews and Entertainment in the Ancient World, 245). 91 On these aspects of classical piyyut, see Laura Lieber, “The Rhetoric of Participation: The Experiential Elements of Early Hebrew Liturgical Poetry,” The Journal of Religion 90.2 (2010): 119–​ 147. Specifically on dialogue as a feature, see Hacohen, “Studies in the Dialogue-​Format of Early Palestinian Piyyutim.” 92 See Chapter 5.

Setting the Stage  57 some synagogues (Samaritan and Jewish) had available “amphitheater”-​type seating (in the courtyard if not in the sanctuary), infrastructure materially reinforced the similarities between liturgy and theater; but, as we will see later in this volume, other religious structures, including synagogues and churches, also accounted for performer–​audience dynamics in their design.93 The affinities between space and text go beyond seating formations and into the very nature of delivery and the dynamics between performer and audience. Ancient exegetes (like their modern counterparts) were responsible to two primary constituencies: the text to be interpreted and the audience to be engaged. Beyond this baseline, we find tremendous variety; an author’s choice of text, his genre of self-​expression, and the compositions of his audience varied greatly. The focal text of the interpretation could be determined by lectionary or calendar, or freely chosen in response to a theme; genre possibilities ranged from popular homily to scholarly lesson to translation or liturgical performance. Audiences, for their part, could be congregations, real and physically present in the church or synagogue; an invisible deity, addressed with conviction in the reality of the divine presence; biblical figures, including ancestors or characters developed in later interpretations of scripture; a remote party, addressed as if in an epistle; or an ideal listener (individual or communal) who would only ever exist in the exegete’s mind. But the interpreter’s responsibilities to his two constituencies, to that which is taught and to those he is teaching—​reflections of his role as mediator between scripture and community—​define the exegetical task at its broadest level. Specific texts and audiences inflect any and every interpretation, but the overarching commitments of the exegete provide common ground for broad comparative analysis. By focusing on the ways in which various poetic exegetes addressed the challenges of and responsibilities to both texts and audiences, modern readers are able to discern significant points of commonality and distinctiveness across religious traditions on a deep, structural level.

93 On the physical similarities between amphitheaters and synagogues, see Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, 100, who notes that some synagogues may have been called “amphitheaters” due to the shape of the building and thus the seating arrangements employed; see, too, Reinhard Pummer, “Samaritan Synagogues and Jewish Synagogues: Similarities and Differences,” in Jews, Christians, and Polytheists in the Ancient Synagogue: Cultural Interaction in the Greco-​Roman Period, ed. Steven Fine (New York: Routledge, 1999), 118–​160, esp. pp. 110 and 134, where he discusses Eusebius’ statement that Samaritans imitated the Jews by building a synagogue “shaped like a theater and is thus open to the sky” (Panarion 80.1.5; trans. from Reinhard Pummer, Early Christian Authors on Samaritans and Samaritanism [Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2002], 132–​133).

58  Staging the Sacred Pantomime performances of antiquity typically featured excerpts from longer tragedies while mimes performed set scenes and stock characters from the repertoire of comedy. Given these orientations toward canon, pantomime actors-​dancers translated high literary plots and characters into a new aesthetic, but both mimes and pantomimes relied on the legibility of familiar elements, deployed in new or simply very effective ways, to engage their audiences. Similarly, orators—​including homilists—​frequently populated their speech with allusions to figures and episodes from the cultural canon (whether Homer, Sophocles, Ovid, or the Bible) in the course of their oral delivery.94 So, too, liturgical poets often present highlights from canonical narratives—​not the canon that would be “classical” in broader social discourse, however, but the canon that was held sacred in the specific location in which the compositions were performed, and familiar to the audiences for which these works were composed. Liturgical poems retell, relate to, or rely on biblical stories and characters, and the way these works translate the canon into a public-​performative venue helps us understand both how their listeners related to the original text and how, in very practical and concrete ways, liturgical poet-​performers knew and made use of the aesthetic and communicative conventions of the period, not out of an intentional desire to adopt “external” styles of composition but because such conventions simply seemed appropriately elegant and suitable, respectable and up to date. When viewed from up close, the liturgical poems composed by Samaritans, Christians, and Jews in late antiquity differ greatly from each other, in terms of not only theology and language, but also aesthetics, ritual setting, and even scriptural canon. Nor are the poems within traditions remotely uniform. There is no distinctive “Jewish” style of poetry versus “Christian” style, although the languages (Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac), liturgical context, and literary references (the presence of the New Testament, reverence for Mount Gerizim, etc.) make the author’s affiliation clear. The diversity of these poems and their constituencies does not constitute a barrier to comparative study, however, because if we pull back to a more distant perspective, one that recognizes the composite image that emerges from the many distinctive and discrete fragments, we become able to appreciate how each work 94 These “classical” instantiations of stories, for all their antiquity even in antiquity, themselves reflect riffs on motifs, characters, and plots familiar to the authors and readers. While some versions of stories may seem “definitive,” there is no tidy original version of the stories of the Trojan War, or Medea, or the biblical Flood. See Johnston, “How Myths and Other Stories Help to Create and Sustain Beliefs.” Every example of the story should be understood to be a “version” crafted for a specific rhetorical purpose and/​or audience.

Setting the Stage  59 represents a specific manifestation of the dynamic between specific community and larger culture. There is no single way in which liturgical poems relate to their own classical traditions or the conventions of their society, but broader commonalities of technique and tactic can be discerned. From many stones, a lovely mosaic. In the remainder of this chapter, we will consider four strategies by which poets navigated their responsibilities to both canonical texts and congregational audiences: (1) compression of story, in which entire narrative arcs are “staged”; (2) expansion of story, in which the gaps in narratives are expansively filled in; (3) invention of story, in which entire episodes are presented; and (4) elliptical narration, which may even be non-​narrative, but nonetheless powerful in terms of audience experience. The selection of poems examined here reflects the breadth of late antique hymnody; I have chosen specific Christian, Jewish, and Samaritan works in order to illustrate techniques that poets ultimately employ in distinctive ways but in service of common goals: engaging listeners, conjuring vivid imaginary experiences, speaking in memorable voices, and delighting audiences. In each section, the analysis juxtaposes pairs of poems (or pairs of collections of poems in some cases) in order to highlight different manifestations of similar compositional techniques, serving common performative ambitions. The strategies delineated here can be seen as the outlines of a picture, with the individual compositions discussed understood as tesserae within it. Each work is different but contributes to our understanding of the whole. Compression of Story: Liturgical poets approached scriptural tradition in a variety of ways. Most often, hymnists focus on specific episodes or images related to a lectionary or holiday, but they could also dramatize grand sweeps of history, fashioning vast narrative arcs into coherent, comprehensible “overtures” of theology and history. In such compositions, poets—​and those who performed their works—​select and amplify recurrent themes from the welter of tradition and in doing so craft scripts that deliver legible meaning. These works imbue what might otherwise seem a vast and eclectic body of traditions, characters, episodes, and moods with clean and comprehensible significance. When properly delivered, such works would not only resonate with listeners but also convey a message of unity and consistency, both vivid and memorable, and powerful for its clarity, with the length and variety of episodes and figures functioning not as clutter, but as evidence of a deeper truth. Congregations, through their vocal or emotional participation, affirm and internalize these thematically streamlined narratives.

60  Staging the Sacred To understand how liturgical poets distilled biblical traditions into vibrant hymnic performances, we must first pause to appreciate the centrality of scripture (as a text as well as a narrative) to liturgical works and, more broadly, religious ritual. The Torah—​the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, and the corpus that constitutes the complete scripture of the Samaritans, the first part of the Jewish Tanakh, and the initial portion of the Christian Old Testament—​narrates a sacred history that begins with the creation of the world and ends with the Israelites concluding their wanderings in the wilderness, standing on the border of the Promised Land. Subsequent books of the Jewish Bible—​Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings—​continue the historical narrative of conquest and settlement, state-​building, statecraft, and, at the end, catastrophic state-​collapse, as the Kingdom of Judah and its royal capital, Jerusalem, are destroyed by the Babylonians. The books of 1–​2 Chronicles conclude the Masoretic text but follow 1–​2 Kings in the standard Christian canon; these books rehearse much of this history in abbreviated form, while also extending the account into the Persian period and anticipating the restoration of Jerusalem and its Temple. Ezra and Nehemiah describe the challenges and promise of the return. In many cases, passages in prophetic works underscore, harmonize, and nuance the pictures in the historical books. The Bible’s narrative scope is cosmic, spanning the entire history of the world and humanity as its authors understood it; it is also a voluminous and detailed body of writings that often argues with itself over both what happened and why. None of the religious communities examined here read their complete sacred canon in order in the context of liturgy: the Samaritans read clusters of verses (called qatafim) as abbreviations of entire books; Jews in the Galilee read the complete Torah over the course of three to three-​and-​a-​half years, along with portions from the Prophets (haftarot) and selections from the Writings (including the five scrolls, or megillot); and Christian churches employed a lectionary that stressed continuity across scriptures but struggled in antiquity with their relationship to the Old Testament—​and thus Jews—​ as most dramatically evidenced by Marcion and the ultimate rejection of Marcionism as heresy.95 The unabridged historical narrative, from creation to restoration, exceeded capacity of the liturgical year, let alone a single ritual occasion. And yet, it is clear that the broad contours of the history and many 95 The vehemence of this rejection, and complexity of the challenge Marcion presented, are both evidenced by Tertullian’s five-​volume polemic, Contra Marcion.

Setting the Stage  61 of its key players—​including extra-​biblical figures and episodes whose roots lie in parabiblical traditions and exegesis—​were familiar to the listeners. The ease with which poets and homilists allude to events and figures indicates that such knowledge could be assumed. Despite the obvious impracticality of ritually reading the entirety of scripture, the desire for symbolic completion was an enduring impulse. Just as importantly, scripture offered liturgists irresistibly compelling source material: a dramatic sweep of history, rich with vivid episodes and figures against a backdrop of intrinsic meaningfulness. Singling out key moments, characters, and voices allowed poets to highlight the inherent drama of the sacred text, with its vivid appeals to eye, ear, and mind. The desire to convey the whole, but in brief, distilled stories to a dramatic essence and, in some ways, amplified their dramatic potential by compressing the actions and actors in rapid sequence across the stage of sacred history. Religious communities developed various strategies for reading synopses or précis of the whole, paraphrases that drew forth particularly illustrative and illuminating contours of magisterial texts and highlighted both theological and dramatic content. The Samaritan qatafim reflect one version of this desire for totality: the abridgment of the whole Torah, through a book-​by-​ book digest. In the Jewish and Christian Bibles, we find a tradition in the book of Nehemiah that on the first day of the seventh month—​that is, what would come to be known as Rosh Hashanah—​Ezra the scribe, a second lawgiver, read “the scroll of the Teaching of Moses” (‫ספר תורת משה‬, Neh. 8:1) to the people. The pivotal scene, a communal rededication to Torah, suggests that Ezra read “the scroll” in its entirety—​often understood to be the Torah as a whole, but more plausibly a digest of some sort, or a version of the book of Deuteronomy, understood (as its Greek name indicates) to be a retelling of the Torah. Within the book of Psalms, Psalms 104–​106 can be read together as a kind of poetic synopsis of Israelite history, from the creation to the restoration.96 Finally, the apocryphal book of Ben Sirach (Sir. 42:15–​50) likewise recounts the majesty of creation and then (starting in Sir. 44) recounts the glorious ancestors of Israel, culminating in praise of the High Priest of Sirach’s time, Simon ben Yochanan (Onias in Greek) and, liturgically significant, a final benediction. 96 Aharon Mirsky constructs a lineage of the Qedushta that originates with these psalms; see Aharon Mirsky, HaPiyyut (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1990), 86–​92.

62  Staging the Sacred These last two examples, from Psalms and Sirach, may be regarded as the prototype for one of the earliest and most dramatic genres of synagogue poetry, the Avodah piyyutim composed for recitation on Yom Kippur afternoon. These poems rehearse the history of the world, beginning with the story of creation, and culminating in the priestly rituals of the Day of Atonement as liturgically reimagined in a Temple-​less world.97 At the same time, the Book of Chronicles offers another model for rehearsing sacred history, and that book itself became the subject of a Jewish Palestinian Aramaic poem. The texts will offer two different models by which poets could integrate the sweep of history into liturgical performances, each with the goal of constructing a specific kind of experience for the congregation. Avodah piyyutim, composed for recitation in the afternoon Avodah liturgy of Yom Kippur, are among the oldest forms of Jewish liturgical poetry. The earliest examples of the genre most likely date to the fourth or even third century ce and include works by the great preclassical poet, the first payyetan whose name we know, Yose ben Yose.98 These works take as their starting point the sacrificial worship (avodah) described in the Torah (Lev. 16): the ritual, which cannot be completed in the absence of the Temple, is conceptually fulfilled through its retelling, with embellishments taken from the rabbinic text of Mishnah Yoma.99 The poets prefaced their rehearsal of priestly ritual with a historical synopsis, spanning the creation of the world to the erection of the tabernacle. Within the poem, the poets embed the ritual of confession that, according the rabbis, the High Priest offered in the sanctuary. Upon the recitation of this confession—​the priest’s words voiced by the prayer leader—​the assembled community would both prostrate themselves and recite a doxology to be uttered upon hearing the divine name. A brief examination of two Avodah poems gives a sense of the ambitious scale of these poems and illustrates how content aligns with performance, especially in terms of setting: the first is an anonymous, very early

97 This hypothesis is first articulated by Cecil Roth in “Ecclesiasticus in the Synagogue Service,” Journal of Biblical Literature 71 (1952): 171–​78; see also Aharon Mirsky, Yosse ben Yosse: Poems, 29–​30. 98 Michael D. Swartz and Joseph Yahalom, Avodah: Ancient Poems for Yom Kippur (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2005). Of special interest is the poem “Emet Mah Nehedar,” which takes as its models Ben Sirach’s praise of High Priest Simeon ben Yochanan/​Onias in Sirach 50 (343–​347). Also see Michael D. Swartz, “Rhetorical Indications of the Poet’s Craft in the Ancient Synagogue,” in Beyond Priesthood: Religious Entrepreneurs and Innovators in the Roman Empire, ed. Richard L. Gordon, Georgia Petridou, and Jörg Rüpke (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), 231–​251. 99 On the topic of Mishnah and the construction of ritual imagination, see Naftali S. Cohn, “The Complex Ritual Dynamics of Individual and Group Experience in the Temple, as Imagined in the Mishnah,” AJS Review 43.2 (2019): 293–​318.

Setting the Stage  63 proto-​Avodah poem (ca. third c. ce); the next is the earliest true Avodah piyyut (ca. fourth c. ce). The theatricality of these poems is implicit in the way they distill biblical narratives such that they highlight the priestly threads of narrative tradition, which they amplify through resonances with the visual choreography of their liturgical settings. In the first poem, the composition sets the stage for a liturgical rite that it does not script. In the second work, biblical depictions of theologically charged but enigmatic rituals and ornate, elaborate priestly vestments become the raw material for poetic imaginings. The pivot to the performative is most obvious in the latter portion of poems, where the Mishnaic rituals of the High Priest and liturgical words of atonement are embedded, but this explicit climax builds upon the cues and clues laid out from the beginning. The anonymous poem, “Atah Barata,” is an early work (ca. third c.), and it appears to have functioned as a preface to an Avodah ritual rather than a complete Avodah itself; it does not include the script for the priestly ritual but presents a history that spans creation of the world to the institution of the Aaronide priesthood. It begins, “You created /​the entire world /​with great intelligence You established it /​in love and mercy” (Stanza 1); it ends, “As a substitute for atonement /​You informed [Aaron’s] sons /​so that they might serve before You /​following his example” (Stanza 22).100 In the intervening nineteen stanzas (the poem is an alphabetical acrostic), the poet summarizes the story of creation of the world and the people Israel: the generations of Adam, the Flood, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Levi, and Aaron. The movement of the poem is thus from the universal to the highly particular: from the nations to Israel, and within Israel to the line of the High Priest. The stated audience of the poem is not the congregation but the deity (“You”), and the second person address positions the poet at the interface where God and people meet. The creation narrative thus situates the people and the deity within the story, establishing a relationship, and orients them intellectually and conceptually—​imaginatively—​toward the powerful ritual moment at which words substitute for sacrifice and each individual acts as his own high priest. The poem sets the stage and brings the community—​now active participants—​into the drama. Where “Atah Barata” concludes just prior to the narration of the Avodah ritual, the early anonymous work “Atah Konanta ‘Olam Me-​ Rosh” presents the priestly ritual as well and is thus likely the earliest

100

Translations from Swartz and Yahalom, Avodah, 44, 50.

64  Staging the Sacred example of a true Avodah piyyut.101 It is also significantly longer than “Atah Barata”: the earlier work consists of a single alphabetical acrostic and thus had twenty-​two stanzas; this poem consists of a far more elaborate triple acrostic: it runs alef to tav, then tav to alef, and then alef to tav again. The opening stanzas, addressing the deity directly as did the previous work, rehearse the creation narrative in Genesis 1: “You established /​the world from the beginning /​You founded the earth /​and formed the creatures” (Stanza 1). The work then moves relatively quickly through the creation of Adam and the expulsion from Eden, the generation of the Flood and Noah, the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob); Jacob, in turn, is recalled as the father of the twelve tribes, but only the tribe of Levi is described in detail—​indeed, while he mentions Amram, he does not mention Moses, only Aaron. All this historical recapitulation takes place within the first sixteen stanzas of the poem; the remainder of the poem—​by far the majority of its length—​focuses on the priesthood and its rituals, and the Avodah rite of Yom Kippur in particular. The impression of the poem overall is best described as “imagistic.” Its concise, detailed, episodic rhetoric, reinforced by the use of energetic eponyms (e.g., Abraham is “the slaughterer of the lamb” in l. 93, and Miriam is “the drumming maiden” in l. 115), and its deployment of the strongly visual imagery of the priestly vestments from the biblical source material all appeal strongly to the visual imagination. The Avodah piyyutim construct what might be called “theater in the mind.” Each of these poems exemplifies how poets create within conventions, and while they vary in scale, they belong unmistakably to the same genre in which sweeping historical arcs are composed out of energetic, vivid phrases evoking precise figures, moments, and scenes. Similarly, as works composed for performance in the context of a liturgy that remembers—​and imaginatively re-​ enacts—​the High Priest’s actions on the Day of Atonement, the episodes and eponymns all revolve around priestly themes and motifs. The language of sacrifice colors scenes of sacrificial drama, whether it is Noah after the Flood, Abraham on Mount Moriah, or the priest in the Holy of Holies. Each composition selectively emphasizes themes and motifs to stress this latent potential of the biblical text, drawing out and dramatizing those threads of tradition that most vividly align with the performative moment.102 Given the clear and 101 Ibid., 69–​93. 102 We should note that three Avodah piyyutim are attributed to Yose b. Yose, each one distinctive in its treatment of the topic.

Setting the Stage  65 straightforward linear narrativity of these works, listeners were free to attend to each poem’s details, able to appreciate and envision the clarity of its dramaturgy, seeing the Temple cult not in reality but as a thrumming baseline of sacred history, still ongoing in their minds if not before their eyes. Indeed, for all the richness of the content of these poems and the distinctive ways in which they shape biblical traditions, we can only understand how these poems work as liturgy, and how liturgy constitutes a kind of sacred theater that appeals to the senses and amplifies delight, if we consider the dynamic relationship between performer and congregation than animates these works. The poet moves the people from being audience to actors, easing them onto the stage, as it were, such that they are together, part of a single chorus, when they bow and utter the doxology. From a narrative perspective, the Avodah poems offered poets a fascinating challenge: the formula of rehearsing history, from the creation to the establishment of the tabernacle and, ultimately, the present moment. In many cases, the poet had four lines, or eight, or twelve to convey all the drama of key narrative moments from the sacred history of the community. Furthermore, the genre offers a flexible framework through which the boundaries between past and present are collapsed. Following a truly cosmic opening—​the creation of the cosmos—​the poet constricts his focus to be ever narrower, and as spatial scale magnifies, the temporal framework slows, and visual details become ever denser, until the listeners find themselves standing in the past, or the past embedded in the present. Contextualized by this hymn, when the congregation prostrates together with the prayer leader, they step into the shoes of their own ancestors and pray alongside them, in a tabernacle and Temple long gone. They stand alongside the High Priest, abled by the poetry to visualize themselves as part of the awe-​inspiring biblical-​rabbinic scene. Where a homily might exhort such an approach to ritual, midrashic ritual—​with its self-​conscious exegesis and distance from ritual—​cannot close the gap between past and present in the same way as liturgical poetry. In hymnography, the author crafts an immersive experience; he does not merely describe ritual but navigates his listeners into its midst. We find a different web of relationships among narrative, ritual, and audience in the Jewish Palestinian Aramaic poem that elaborates upon the conclusion of Chronicles. Chronicles, a lengthy rehearsal of Israel’s history from creation of the world to the edict of Cyrus permitting the exiles’ return to the Promised Land, is conventionally the last book in the Jewish Bible, but this canonical ordering seems to be Babylonian in origin, and given this poem’s Palestinian dialect, we cannot assume that the poem marked the conclusion

66  Staging the Sacred of the Tanakh as a whole.103 Chronicles’ language is often liturgical, but it is rarely a text that takes a star turn in exegesis; a tradition in LevR 1:3 attributes to Rav the statement, “The book of Chronicles was given only to be expounded midrashically.”104 The book’s narrative compression aligns with the topic at hand, but it is an unlikely text for poetic embellishment. We do not know with any certainty what inspired the composition of a poem that celebrates Chronicles (and, by extension, the Bible in toto); it is not associated with any particular liturgy or rite. While we cannot posit any specific ritual context, it stands to reason that it marked an occasion when the book itself was read, for an idiosyncratic reason or to mark the conclusion of the Bible as a whole. The JPA poem is a Qillus (praise poem), and it is simple in form, like many JPA poems: rhymed bicola built on a basic alphabetical acrostic frame.105 Unlike the Avodah poems, this work does not depict any identifiable ritual, let alone draw the community into ritual practice. Instead, it offers a digest of the biblical text that is, itself, a distinctly ideological synopsis of Israel’s history.106 This poem’s connection to Chronicles is unmistakable; it is not simply a retelling of the people’s sacred history: it begins not with the creation story of Genesis 1 but with the lineage of Adam, just as 1 Chronicles 1 does, and it concludes by quoting the final verse of the final book of the Jewish Bible (2 Chron. 26:23), Cyrus’ decree of restoration. The composition’s overall structural scheme is clear, although the pacing of its execution is uneven: it lists Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mehalalel,

103 See b. Baba Batra 14b–​15a, in which the position of Chronicles at the end of scripture is mentioned in a baraita. Notably, however, in the Aleppo and Leningrad codices, Chronicles begins the Writings, the third section of the Tanakh, rather than concluding it. An obscure medieval text by Joseph ha-​Qostandini, Adat Devorim (“A Swarm of Bees,” copied by a certain Judah b. Jacob in 1207 ce), explains the difference in order in terms of geography: Palestinian communities placed Chronicles at the beginning of the Writings, while Babylonian Jews (in the Diaspora) located it at the end. On Adat Devorim, see Steven Bowman, Jews of Byzantium, 1204–​1453 (Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 1985), 217–​218, and Nicholas de Lange, “Hebrew Scholarship in Byzantium,” in Hebrew Scholarship and the Medieval World, ed. Nicholas de Lange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 31. 104 LevR 1:3 (Vilna ed. 2a). The poem can be found in Yahalom and Sokoloff, Shirat Bene Ma’arava (Jewish Palestinian Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity), ed. Joseph Yahalom and Michael Sokoloff (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1999) #44; English translation available in Laura S. Lieber, Jewish Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity. Translations and Commentaries. Cambridge Genizah Studies Series, vol. 8 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 154–​157. For background on Chronicles, see the comprehensive overview in Sara Japhet, I and II Chronicles: A Commentary, Old Testament Library (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993). 105 The letters shin and tav are doubled; the full poem has 52 lines. It is also worth noting the similar, slightly less comprehensive JPA poem (JPA Poem #26), for Purim, which retells the history of Israel from the time of Abraham to the present. 106 The JPA poem that retells the Book of Ruth (JPA Poem #10) exemplifies the same phenomenon on a smaller scale—​although the poems are of approximately the same length.

Setting the Stage  67 Jered, and Enoch and then skips to the “seed of Abraham” (l. 14); after a brief reference to “sages and levites” (l. 16), it quickly moves on to David, then backtracks to Saul, and then returns to David and Solomon—​with a particular focus on the founding of the Temple. The poet then rapidly chronicles the divided monarchy, moving from Rechaboam, Abijah, and Asa, then to Jehoshaphat and Hezekiah, and finally to the destruction of Jerusalem. The final stanza leaps to the present and petitions God to “raise up now (another) Cyrus” (‫)תלה כורש כדון בעלמה‬, culminating in the quotation of 2 Chronicles 36:23 (in its original Hebrew). What makes this erratic pacing charming rather than amateurish is the sense of performative patter that the text creates. In the fourth stanza, the poet writes, “For each of them was a scholar and a sage /​(but) I am (already) on the fourth letter! //​And who can recite the praise /​ of Enoch, who is seventh?” (ll. 8–​9). He continues, “Lo, I began by arranging /​the deeds of every single generation!” (l. 10). It is as if the poet belatedly realizes he has lingered too long on the opening lines of the poem—​the initial generations of humanity, which occupy only the first seven words of 1 Chronicles—​and abruptly quickens the pace. He excuses himself by noting the marvelous accomplishments and attributes of the ancestors—​ he mentions, as an aside in lines 12–​13, that the genealogies of Chronicles are famously opaque and thus fruitful for interpretation—​and then proceeds to skip over the actual patriarchs.107 Likewise, after describing Solomon’s dedication of the Temple, our poet writes, “The histories of the rest of the kings /​ let me bring forth in short order” (l. 36). Again, the poet breaks the fourth wall, confessing to the listeners that he has gotten caught up in the delights of remembering the Temple—​and the joy it brought the people—​ and now, noticing the time, must hustle to get back on schedule. The poet’s tone is knowing and intimate, with a first-​person voice that is maintained throughout, and he draws his listeners in not so much to the performance as to his own charming interiority. Where the Avodah poems, responding to their liturgical station, stressed priestly ritual, this composition displays a keen awareness of textual and ritual performance, which may suggest something of its own performative context: it links “priests and wise men /​in abundant interpretation” (l. 107 Line 13 reads, “They had to bring forth /​four hundred (camel) loads (of interpretation to make sense of it),” with “it” being Chronicles. This line depends on b. Pes. 62b, “Rami the son of Rav Judah said: Since the day that the Book of Lineages was hidden, the strength of the Sages has been impaired and the light of their eyes has been dimmed. Mar Zutra said, Between ‘Azel’ (1 Chr 8:38) and ‘Azel’ (1 Chr 9:34) they were laden with four hundred camels’ worth of exegetical interpretations!”

68  Staging the Sacred 17) and credits “prophets and sages of old” with adding the cantillation marks to the text, which they “recited according to their order /​without interruption” (ll. 18–​19). David’s skill as a singer is highlighted, and the Levites are likewise singled out for their music; the dedication of Solomon’s temple was celebrated by “all Jerusalem assembled” (l. 35). The destruction of Jerusalem is remembered by song, as well: “Singers, male and female /​began to lament /​pronouncing eulogies /​dirges and lamentations” (ll. 46–​47). For all its brevity, the poem displays a liveliness and sense of its own place in a long line of Jewish performances. Its techniques, however—​particularly the narrator’s intrusions into his narration—​reflect an awareness of Greco-​Roman theatricality that goes back to Greek New Comedy and the Roman comedies of Plautus, and Terence.108 Each of the poems addressed here “theatricalizes” the sacred canon, both through narrative and presentation. The Avodah poems distill cosmic history to essential points that are depicted with dynamism and in visually evocative detail. Their vividness amplifies the resonant setting of the Yom Kippur liturgy: the occasion encourages participants to fill the ritual moment with intentionality (kavvanah) and significance; the poems suggest a mechanism by which such imagination could be constructed. This liturgical imperative accounts for its heightened stress on rituals of sacrifice and atonement, and the centrality of the priesthood, even in its functional absence. At the same time, Avodah poems shift their frames toward the end, so that the community becomes part of the performance: theater becomes liturgy, and spectators become participants. The JPA poem, by contrast, theatricalizes history by engaging the listeners into the challenges of condensing history to its essentials. The pretense of the poem is that the poet struggles to review the entire span of history from Adam to Cyrus (to the present); he winkingly engages his listeners as he navigates, not entirely successfully, the challenge he has set out for himself. Where the Avodah poems are rich with participatory drama, the JPA poem tempers its earnest hopes for restoration—​for a new Cyrus—​with knowing humor. Expansion of Story: Some hymns, like the Avodah poems, derive their performative energy and drive by distilling sweeping dramas that spanned 108 See Mathias Hanses, The Life of Comedy after the Death of Plautus and Terence (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2020); the second chapter, “Roman Comedy in Ciceronian Oratory” (pp. 123–​200), is of particular interest to the present study. See also Peter Brown, “Terence and Greek New Comedy,” in A Companion to Terence, ed. Antony Augoustakis, Ariana Traill, and John E. Thorburn (West Sussex, UK: Wiley and Sons, 2013), 17–​32.

Setting the Stage  69 centuries of history into vividly compressed, pixilated stories. These compositions offer listeners narrative arcs that culminate in the integration of the community into the historical drama, through the construction of embodied ritual or the articulation of inward expressions of yearning. The momentum of such works carries the listeners into the story, with the vivid imagery lending the experience a concrete vitality that is amplified by the power of ritual. On other occasions, however, hymnographers take precisely the opposite tack: they slow down the pace of biblical narrative and dwell in the imaginatively amplified details of an expanded story. They invite their listeners to join them as they bring a scene to life, to join them as they pause the rush of narrative and linger within a scene that the poet puts on vivid display for their consideration. As a compositional technique, this poetic “filling of gaps” is more common than the sweeping historical overviews. In part, the popularity of the style highlights a point of contact between liturgical poetry and other forms of exegesis and interpretation, from works such as the retold Bible of Jubilees to the expansive insertions in the Aramaic translations and homiletical and exegetical writings ranging from sermons to literary midrash. But it also aligns with the importance of performativity unique to liturgical poetry. It resembles the way orators were taught to declaim, particularly through its use of the technique of “speech-​in-​character.”109 Similarly, the creation of dramatic “scenes” rooted in sacred source material recalls set pieces familiar from theater. Hymns that expand upon biblical tradition infuse traditions of exegesis with those of theater. We also will see how techniques from theater—​ particularly discourses in which characters in the hymns narrate events and let the community see the scene through their eyes—​can be understood as models for the spectators, indicating for members of the congregation how they should respond to and understand the scene that has unfolded before their eyes. I have selected three works to exemplify the potential of this compositional technique: one by the Syriac Christian poet, Jacob of Sarug; another by the Christian poet Romanos, who wrote in Greek; and a final example a Hebrew poem by the Jewish hymnographer, Yannai. The three texts not only expand upon biblical narratives but also do so by focusing on women, a category of character often relatively marginalized within the scriptural corpus but important as a vehicle for conveying emotion and the human perspective

109

“Speech-​in-​character”—​ethopoeia—​is the topic of Chapter 4.

70  Staging the Sacred in the context of performance. Women, so much less likely to speak in sacred scripture, are often given magnificent voices in the liturgical poems, where they speak not only for tradition, but for the community. Women provided a lens through which the community—​male and female—​could see themselves: weaker than God and awaiting enlightenment, but gifted with powerful voices. And because women so often occupy the margin of the story, they provide an easy point of identification for the listeners, who can imagine themselves as standing alongside these other figures, seeing what they see as the performer’s mediating voice brings the entire scene to life. Finally, the presence of women in these poems reminds us that women were present in the congregations, as well. Jacob of Sarug’s memra (Homily 46) elaborating on the account of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman (John 4:1–​42) is lengthy (over 650 lines) but not formally complex.110 In the biblical episode on which this memra is based, Jesus has left Jerusalem and, on his way back to the Galilee, he pauses by Jacob’s Well in the city of Sychar in Samaria. While he lingers by the well, a Samaritan woman comes to draw water, but when Jesus asks her for a drink, rather than comply, she interrogates him: “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (John 4:9); the text goes on to gloss her question by noting the antipathy of Jews for Samaritans. In the verses that follow, Jesus and the Samaritan woman converse, and he offers her the gift of “living waters”—​religious truths—​which quench thirst far more lastingly than physical water from any literal well. Jesus then demonstrates knowledge of the woman which she recognizes as prophetic, and he, in turn, reveals himself—​for the first time—​to be the Messiah. The disciples return to Jesus while the woman goes to bring news of the Messiah’s arrival to her town. The unit ends with the Samaritan community affirming their belief in Jesus’ identity as the Messiah, as they tell the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world” (John 4:42). Based on their recognition of Jesus’ divinity by the Samaritan woman and her community, this story comes to presage the concept of “the church of the

110 For the text and translation of this composition, see Jacob of Sarug, Jacob of Sarug’s Homilies on Women Whom Jesus Met, ed. and trans. Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Sebastian P. Brock, Reyhan Durmaz, Rebecca Stephens Falcasantos, Michael Payne, and Daniel Picus (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2016), 51–​123. This text resembles, and perhaps builds upon, Ephrem’s Hymns on Virginity #22–​23. Jacob’s memre are composed in isosyllabic couplets of 12 +​12 syllables and were likely recited—​perhaps with dramatic flair—​rather than sung.

Setting the Stage  71 Gentiles”—​a church distinct from Judaism emerged from the wisdom of a double outsider, a Samaritan woman. Jacob’s metrical homily follows the contours of the biblical source closely. It expands on the passage but frequently integrates quotations from John 4 directly, and his expansive use of dialogue in the poem reflects the prominence of discourse within the gospel narrative. What Jacob adds is literary and theological framing, and elaborate detail. In a fashion reminiscent of what we saw in the JPA poem on Chronicles, earlier, Jacob’s self-​aware treatment of his genre is particularly striking. In lines 23–​56, he explicitly acknowledges that he is composing a memra (even personifying it: “the memra is moved to speak with great love” [l. 56]) as a means for conveying divine teachings. He thus expands the biblical account in order to draw out and articulate larger truths, which he teaches through hymnody. Jacob even interrupts his own narrative to marvel at the woman and the story he recounts: “Who showed you? . . . Who revealed to you? . . . Who announced to you? . . . Tell me, O woman, who told you that the messiah is coming?” (ll. 344–​349). The poet speaks on behalf of, or in the place of, his listeners. Perhaps more startling is the fact that the woman then answers him: The scriptures announced to me about His revelation And by His heralds His coming was made known to me; The great Moses depicted His image in prophecy, And He clearly taught us that “the Messiah is coming” (John 4:25)” (ll. 351–​354).

The poet here integrates the woman’s speech from the biblical text into his own dialogue. Whereas in the biblical text, she speaks to Jesus, now those same words address Jacob, and are “overheard” by the community that is privy to his musing. The poet has intruded into the biblical story, and the woman has broken through the fourth wall and spoken back to him. The poet is the instrument not only of theology but also performance.111 In this homily, the poet plays on metaphors of water for life, truth, salvation, and learning throughout. As in the biblical text, the poem draws a consistent contrast between the physical water the woman can offer with the spiritual succor Jesus can give. The historical framing embeds the narrative in the sweep of biblical prehistory, with the Samaritans representing

111

See discussion in Jacob of Sarug’s Homilies on Women whom Jesus Met, 52.

72  Staging the Sacred the children of Adam; the woman—​her voice, significant in the biblical text, is augmented even further—​is presented as articulate, intelligent, and savvy. Jacob describes her as “wise,” “perceptive,” “learned,” “rational,” “discerning,” and “blessed” (among other attributes). She asks productive questions and seeks true understanding. In the memra, Jesus speaks at great length and with pedagogical sophistication: he moves from the bodily to the spiritual, from assertion to discernment, and from prophecy to fulfillment.112 Jacob even calls her “a perceptive woman disciple” (l. 278) and depicts her as a woman both bold and eager for truth. Throughout the memra, the poet carefully integrates quotations from the biblical source, as already indicated in the previous example, where the woman’s words in John 4:25 are recontextualized to speak to the poet. While the poet expands greatly on the biblical text, he does not significantly change the plot or any features of his source material. The woman in John displays intelligence and interest and speaks with a respected voice among her people; so, too, in this poem, only even more so, and at greater length. The biblical passage suggests a familiarity with Hebrew scriptures and biblical traditions, so Jacob develops what is latent within the text when he characterizes her as a scholar, displaying knowledge of Jacob, Moses, the prophets, and the Torah. Similarly, John 4 presents her as a compelling voice among her people, persuasive and respected; Jacob expands but does not invent her role as a teacher and preacher among her community. Only in the poem’s conclusion (ll. 611–​652) does Jacob of Sarug depart from the obvious sense of the text and its conventional lines of interpretation, in that he hears in John 4:42 a rebuke of the woman and a dismissal of her as arrogant and self-​important. They do not need her, as Jesus has revealed himself to them directly. Anticipating this conclusion, Jacob’s depiction of the woman changes in the final sections, and he paints her as pompous and pretentious. This sudden re-​evaluation of the previously lauded woman comes as something of a shock; modern scholars wonder if the pivot toward negativity represents Jacob’s own discomfort with such a strikingly empowered, articulate, and independent female figure whose freedom from patriarchal restraint may have alarmed the male authority figure. It is worth noting that in his treatments of this same pericope, Ephrem did not see the need to offer 112 For a reading of this dialogue as a form of classroom disputation, rooted in Platonic models and Neoplatonism, see Adam Becker, Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom: The School of Nisibis and Christian Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 22–​40.

Setting the Stage  73 such a line of interpretation, perhaps because he wrote for a choir of women. For Jacob, however, it seems that the Samaritan woman was a woman with just a bit too much voice. Our next liturgical poem comes to us from Constantinople. This work, “On the Nativity: Mary and the Magi,” ranks among Romanos’ best-​known kontakia, one that brought him to fame in antiquity. The poem is based on the text of Matthew 2:1–​14, in which the wise men from the East—​the Magi—​seek out “he who has been born king of the Jews” (Matt. 2:2, RSV). The relevant verses (Matt. 2:11–​12; RSV) state: And going into the house they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.

Notably, the biblical text does not recount any conversation that may have transpired between the Magi and the mother of God. That absence of content proves an inviting gap for Romanos to fill. His kontakion of twenty-​four strophes imagines a rich conversation that took place, quite literally, between the lines of scripture. Romanos delights in creating a sense of immediacy. In the first strophe, he invites the community to join him in imagining the scene; it is not merely a fancy, but something he will show them, and they will see: Bethlehem has opened Eden, come, let us see; We have found delight in secret, come, let us receive The joys of Paradise within the cave. There the unwatered root whose blossom is forgiveness has appeared. There has been found the undug well From which David once longed to drink. There a virgin has borne a babe And has quenched at once Adam’s and David’s thirst. For this, let us hasten to the place where there has been born A little Child, God before the ages.113 113 The text is O #1 (1–​ 9); a translation is available in Ephrem Lash, On the Life of Christ: Kontakia (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 3–​12. See also Thomas Arentzen, The Virgin in Song (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 120–​163.

74  Staging the Sacred The lines are ambiguous; do we imagine here that the poet speaks in the voice of the Magi, as they converse with one another? Does he speak for the Magi, addressing the congregation as witnesses? Or does he speak in his own voice, as a contemporary of his community, inviting them to step back in time with him, as it were, to witness a pivotal episode in a treasured sacred story? In the end, a meaningful distinction may not exist among these possible perspectives; the Magi, occupying a place of both wonder and intimacy, both model audience behavior and stand at the threshold of the fourth wall, integrating the listeners into the moment. Regardless of the speaker’s voice, the congregation transitions from audience to witnesses and participants.114 The poet’s language beckons to the people, twice repeating “come, let us . . .” (δεῦτε +​first-​person plural aorist subjunctives) at the beginning of the strophe and again at the end, with an appeal addressed to them: “let us hasten” (ἐπειχθῶμεν). He then describes in vividly visual detail the tableau they should envision in their minds: the new mother talking to her infant, pondering the miracle of his conception and birth. The Magi interrupt this tender and intimate moment, expressing their own, far more theological and scholarly wonder at the sight they behold. Mary, rather than responding to their intrusion directly, continues to speak to her baby in Strophe 6, exclaiming to him in wonder, “The kings of the East /​seek your face!” She continues to speak to the infant of her pride despite humiliating circumstances, saying, “I hold you as a treasure” (Strophe 7)—​a critique of the gifts brought by the foreign kings. Jesus, speaking into his mother’s mind, instructs Mary to let the Magi enter (Strophes 8 and 9). The Magi enter and upon seeing Joseph there, engage Mary in a dialogue about Jesus’ conception and Joseph’s role in the family (Strophes 10–​12), after which the Magi narrate their own journey, physical and theological (Strophes 13–​15). Mary then asks the Magi how they avoided Herod, and they respond, “we did not avoid him, we mocked him” (Strophe 16); they then elaborate on

114 A similar and perhaps even more striking modeling of behavior by biblical characters occurs in Romanos’ second poem, “On the Nativity: Adam and Eve and the Nativity” (O. #2), in which Adam and Eve are roused from eternal sleep by the sound of Mary’s lullaby for Jesus. The sound of Mary’s singing summons the ancestors, much as the sound of hymn singing would have compelled the attention of listeners. The poet uses language that specifically evokes liturgical singing in describing Mary’s lullabies: he says she “sang hymns” (ύμνολογούσης; Strophe 3) and calls her voice “a (musical) instrument” (ὂργανον; Strophe 5). For the text in English, see J. H. Barkuizen, “Romanos the Melodist: ‘On Adam and Eve and the Nativity’: Introduction with Annotated Translation,” Acta Patristica et Byzantina 19 (2008): 1–​22; as well as Carpenter, Kontakia of Romanos, Byzantine Melodist, translated and annotated by Marjorie Carpenter, 2 vols. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1970), I:15–​21.

Setting the Stage  75 their exchanges with Herod and the Pharisees and their desire to behold the baby rather than return to Persia—​expanding on the terse exchanges in Matthew 2:3–​9 (Strophes 17–​19115). After a brief narrative interlude, the Magi present gifts to Mary (Strophe 21), who then presents them to Jesus, along with her own expressions of piety (Strophe 22–​23). The poet gives Mary the final words of the poem, a prayer for redemption and of thanksgiving for the gifts of the Magi, which will sustain the Holy Family in their flight to Egypt (Strophe 24). There is much one could say about this hymn from the perspective of delivery, character creation, techniques of ekphrasis, use of dialogue, staging, and rhetoric. It is a sparkling gem of a composition, with something to attract every eye. But read through the lens of how theater in antiquity related to its canon, what stands out here is the inventiveness of the scene in toto. The hymn is a singular, carefully imagined, and crafted episode, with speech, action, emotion, humor, and gravitas; the poet sets a stage for his listeners and leads them onto it, and then they bear witness to the exchange that is not recorded in scripture, but for which there is room between the words and verses for it to have taken place. Where the biblical text moved rapidly through events, the poet slows down and creates a rich, tenderly imagined moment. A sense of the theatrical lingers over both exemplars of “expansionary” hymns examined so far. Romanos’ Magi seem ready to be scandalized by Joseph’s presence in the manger, but his Mary is more than capable of responding to their concerns. Where Romanos found Mary a compelling figure precisely because she was a silent, if not blank, slate for his creativity, Jacob of Sarug took not only inspiration but precise language from the New Testament’s account of the Samaritan woman. Similarly, the idea of a woman’s voice was compelling to the Jewish poet Yannai, in our last “expanded narrative” text. Yannai found a productively provocative muse in the figure of Sarah from Genesis 16 (one of Mary’s models of motherhood in the Romanos hymn). While Romanos’ Mary in “On the Nativity” articulates fairly orthodox theology, and the Samaritan woman of Jacob’s homily

115 Readers relying on Lash’s translation should note that Strophe 19 is absent from his edition; the Greek text is available in P. Maas and C. A. Trypanis, Sancti Romani Melodi Cantica: Cantica Genuina (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), 7. In the missing strophe, the Magi describe how the star guided their way, and the hope of seeing God satisfied and nourished them. The strophe concludes with the Magi saying, “For we yearn to behold, to worship and praise /​A little Child, God before the ages.”

76  Staging the Sacred exemplifies philosophical sophistication and spiritual intuition, Yannai’s Sarai expresses a simmering, grieving, frustrated rage.116 Yannai takes his inspiration for this qedushta from Genesis 16:1–​2, in which Sarai, resigned to barrenness, instructs Abram to have intercourse with her handmaiden, Hagar. Unlike the voluble Samaritan woman, or the nearly silent Mary of Matthew 2, Sarai speaks to Abram in Genesis 16:2, if only briefly; the text offers no sense of her interiority, emotions, or tone, or her thought process before or after her vastly consequential decision. Any reader, implicitly and unconsciously, or self-​consciously and intentionally, colors her delivery and hears it as inflected with some kind of emotion. It is Sarai’s unspoken inner life that Yannai wishes to explore in this poem. This poem, in keeping with the genre conventions of the Qedushta, consists of nine distinctive units that follow a predictable pattern; it interweaves the week’s Torah portion with the first three blessings of the Amidah, the main statutory prayer of the synagogue service. In Unit 1, Yannai narrates Sarai’s experience from an external perspective, as an observer: evoking the Song of Songs, he compares Sarai to a trapped dove and a locked garden. He tells us she is wise, prayerful, and righteous—​but unheard. In Unit 2, the poet grants the matriarch a voice (in anticipation of her speech in Genesis 16:2, the intertext that concludes the unit): Sarai expresses disappointment in herself, anger at Abram (with whom she will not be intimate until after this experiment concludes), and wrenching grief—​even as the poet anticipates her eventual joy. Yannai reminds his listeners that he, and they, share a perspective and knowledge that Sarai lacks. In Unit 3, Yannai pivots and expands not the plot of the text but its significance through a figurative reading: Sarai should be seen not simply as an ancestor, but as a symbol of Zion. She is a woman forlorn and grieving but, despite appearances to the contrary, she is nonetheless destined for renewal and rebirth. The first verse of the haftarah, Isaiah 54:1, quoted as the intertext for the unit, underscores his reading. Yannai, like a midrashic exegete, fills the lacuna in Genesis 16 through the use of a text from afar, and by doing so, he underscores that like Sarai, Zion will yet be a joyful mother. The past encrypts a message to the present. With Unit 4, the poet returns to Sarai’s voice, and he gives full expression to her 116 See Ophir Münz-​Manor, “All about Sarah: Questions of Gender in Yannai’s Poems on Sarah’s (and Abraham’s) Barrenness,” Prooftexts 26.3 (2006): 344–​374, and Laura S. Lieber, “Stage Mothers: Performing the Matriarchs in Genesis Rabbah and Yannai,” in Genesis Rabbah in Text and Context, ed. Sarit Kattan Gribetz, David M. Grossman, Martha Himmelfarb, and Peter Schaefer (Berlin/​New York: De Gruyter, 2016), 156–​173.

Setting the Stage  77 bewilderment and frustration. He frames her recourse to Hagar as a concubine as a form of medical diagnostic: Which member of the couple, Sarai or Abram, is infertile? The unit ends with her plea to God that she may, herself, yet bear a child, for Hagar’s fertility will implicitly indict the matriarch. Unit 5 approaches Sarai and Abram as partners and makes clear that their childlessness is God’s will: God has made her barren, temporarily, lest she grow haughty (perhaps thinking herself Abram’s equal?). Yannai here subtly indicts God for what can only be seen as divine callousness: Sarai is kept from motherhood until that moment when God decides to relent; her grief colored with justified anger and dignified pride, she remains unbent. In Unit 6—​the most expansively narrative unit of a qedushta—​the poet returns to exposition, underscoring the suitability of Abram and Sarai for each other (they were meant for each other before their births) but also giving the clearest voice yet to her distress. Sarai is “despondent” and “shattered” even as she is “righteous” and “honored”; she is a “princess” and “wise,” but her emotions are turbulent: She suppressed her wrath and restrained her anger She cast no evil eye upon her maid Her jealousy consumed her heart, in her sorrow, Though she would have a reward for her labor Her spirit ached in her anguish Until at ninety she was granted relief She heard her maid’s taunt but kept silent.

Yannai’s Sarai feels an anger deepened precisely because she cannot express it. In Genesis 16:1–​2, when Sarai arranges Abram’s liaison with Hagar, Sarai’s mental state is unstated, but Yannai takes us into her mind and heart: jealousy eats her from within; her spirit aches with longing; she tolerates Hagar’s haughtiness in crushing silence. Indeed, Yannai does not here address Sarai’s eruption of anger at Abram (Gen. 16:5), but only the internal experiences that preceded it, a shift in focus that increases his listeners’ sympathy for the matriarch and her actions. Throughout this unit the poet acknowledges that Sarai will be vindicated and granted her heart’s dearest wish, the child Isaac. But the poet’s foreknowledge cannot bring the matriarch comfort. The centrality of Sarai is underscored by the phrase “And Sarai” (‫)ושרי‬, which opens every stanza. The final extant poem, Unit 7, returns to Sarai’s voice, offering a litany of Sarai’s grief, although it cuts off halfway through, after twelve lines

78  Staging the Sacred (it is built as an acrostic, extant from alef to lamed). The community likely added their voices to Sarai’s through the recitation of the fixed phrase “lo, please” (‫​—)הנה נא‬repeated at the opening of every stich. A petition, repeated twenty-​two times, becomes a heartfelt, communal plea to be remembered. The remainder of Unit 7, as well as Units 8–​9, are not extant. The genre of the qedushta works against the more straightforward, linear storytelling we encountered in Romanos. Qedushta’ot are composed out of diverse formal units, in patterns that interweave intertexts and liturgical phrases, and often loop back to revisit and reinforce key images, ideas, themes, and phrases. We thus hear of Sarai’s anger, but only later hear her express it in her own voice. We are privy to her grief but also to God’s decision to relent. Yannai’s response to the biblical text reminds us that Sarai’s silence in Genesis, and the biblical narrator’s silence about her emotional life, creates room for later interpreters, including our poet, to explore the scene imaginatively. Yannai has space to wonder what she said, how she said it, and what she chose to leave unsaid, and he shares that vision with his community in a form akin to a miniature drama that gains energy from the pathos of the narrative, the human desires motivating celebrated ancestors, and the desire to have their own prayers heard as Sarai’s were—​even as the complex emotions of living are recognized and voiced. The scriptural canon provided the poet a powerful, compelling scenario: a woman asking her husband to have sexual intercourse with her own handmaid, a decision made in response to deep frustration born of years of childlessness and grief. The poet took that opening as an opportunity and crafted a powerful and unexpectedly complicated, real voice for his congregation to hear and, through the brief allegory of Unit 3, understand was acceptable for them to own. Looking at these three poems as a group, several observations stand out. We can see how Jacob essentially expanded, unit by unit, an already dramatic and dialogue-​filled biblical passage. Every added element built on material latent within the scriptural source, but the poet played knowingly with his own literary artifice and wrote himself into the drama. Romanos, in turn, created a consciously theatrical moment for his congregation: he established a scene, populated it with characters, orchestrated their encounter, and reproduced their dialogue. He invites the listeners in, like a welcoming personified Prologue.117 Finally, Yannai obeys the structural constraints of his genre but 117 Greek and Roman theater featured robust prologues. The explanatory opening that gives listeners a backstory and context is credited to Euripides; it was widely adopted and appeared in Roman theater, as well, as in Plautus’ comedy, Rudens. It remained a feature of medieval mystery plays

Setting the Stage  79 nonetheless finds within the space afforded by his predetermined lection and the themes and voices of the liturgy a new and powerful—​and feminine—​ voice. Her voice, furthermore, enables the congregation to express a welter of complex emotions indirectly, insofar as her grief and anger is also Zion’s—​ and thus theirs. What these three works, memra, kontakion, and qedushta, share is their recognition that something the source text has left unsaid offers the poet an opportunity to use his imagination and craft a scene to share with his listeners. Between the words of scripture, within the white spaces, lies not only an empty canvas but also a vacant stage. The poet steps onto it, but he is not alone, for he brings the congregation along with him. Invention of Story: “Compressed stories” distill sweeping histories to their essential narrative arcs, yielding works of vast scope that locate the congregation and their ritual experience within a vividly conjured cosmic history. “Expanded stories” exploit openings in extant sacred writings and insert within familiar stories now details and depth, inviting listeners to slow down and consider what sacred texts have left unsaid and unimagined. “Invented stories” go further than “expanded stories,” in that they present listeners with imaginative new scenes that are legibly anchored in more familiar elements but go beyond what any canon might contain. This category is comprised of works that are narrative, insofar as they tell a story, and while they may draw their inspiration and even their characters from scripture—​not simply theological lessons in poetic form, for example, or hymns composed to celebrate life cycle events—​they go well beyond the canon in terms of inventiveness. These works can be understood as the “jazz riffs” on biblical themes and ideas in the loosest but perhaps most evocative sense, with additional coloring contributed by prose traditions of exegesis and homiletical interpretations. These poems would appeal to listeners not for how they relate to tradition, but for their inventiveness, and for the way these poems could touch on other aspects of listeners’ experiences, helping them to think not only about the distant past, but also about times and experiences closer to their present. Examples of this form of hymnographic inventiveness can be found in the poetry of any of the traditions examined here and, like the prose traditions of and was particularly revived in Elizabethan times. See Michael Ingham, “‘Admit Me Chorus to This History’: Shakespeare’s M.C.s and Choric Commentators—​How Medieval, How Early Modern?,” Neophilologus 103 (2019): 255–​271, and also David John Palmer’s essay, published as a monograph, We Shall Know by This Fellow: Prologue and Chorus in Shakespeare (Manchester, UK: John Rhylands Library, 1982). In medieval mystery plays, the prologue was often a homily, while in other cases it was a wordless pantomime or “dumb show.” See Jeremy Lopez, “Dumb Show,” in Early Modern Theatricality, ed. Henry S. Turner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 291–​305.

80  Staging the Sacred the retold Bible, narrative exegesis as we find it in midrash and targum, and fanciful extensions of homiletical musing, the boundary between “filling a gap” and “creating a gap to fill” can seem willfully blurred. A good conceit demands a telling, and the distinction between exegesis (“reading out”) and eisegesis (“reading in”) is often arbitrary and depends on the reader’s evaluation of the interpreter. Furthermore, some works—​for example, the JPA poem on the Fall of Betar (JPA Poem #17)—​narrate post-​biblical traditions that are well attested and fully developed in prose sources.118 Two examples will highlight how late antique liturgical poets invented occasions to embellish poetically: the first, Ephrem’s paean in praise of Shechem (Hymns de Virg. 17119), takes the perspective of a city; the second, a lament by Eleazar ha-​Qallir (“Then Jeremiah Went to the Graves of the Ancestors”), depicts the historical experience of displacement and exile as a familial quarrel between God and the ancestors of Israel. Just as the Samaritan woman and her compatriots anticipated the “church of the Gentiles” in Jacob of Sarug’s memra, Ephrem’s hymn praises the city of Shechem as a symbol or “type” that anticipates a non-​Jewish church, a community of outsiders incorporated into the covenant. In the initial line of this hymn, Ephrem blurs any distinction between the biblical character named Shechem, son of Hamor, from Genesis 34, with the city that bears his name. By the Hellenistic period, Shechem—​proximate to the Samaritan holy site of Mount Gerizim—​was a population center of the Samaritans; the city of Sychar, the site of Jesus’ encounter with the woman of Samaria in John 4:1–​42 (treated earlier, in the context of a memra by Jacob of Sarug), is often identified with Samaria’s major city. In this poetic treatment of Shechem, Ephrem draws an analogy between the destruction of the city, laid waste by Jacob’s sons in revenge for Shechem’s rape of Dinah, and the ruination of creation, brought to catastrophe by the sin of Eve; such violence, distressing as it may be, is the nature of justice, Ephrem posits—​but it is not the final word. The Samaritan woman of John 4 restores the city to grace (just as, by extension, Mary undoes the sin of Eve). In the concluding lines of the poem, Ephrem singles out Shechem for its church, a built structure that bears the inscription of Jesus’ words to the Samaritan woman. Shechem constitutes a microcosm of redemption, tangible in the present tense. It is a truth one can touch, sacred history to which one can make pilgrimage.

118 119

See Lieber, Jewish Aramaic Poetry, 61–​64. Kathleen McVey, Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1989), 334–​336.

Setting the Stage  81 The entire hymn speaks directly to the city; its conceit is that the city itself is a “character,” and the human congregation overhears and affirms his praise of the site. Twenty-​one times in its ten stanzas the poet addresses Shechem as “blessed,” although not in a regular or predictable structure. The poem is not organized chronologically—​it is not a “microhistory” to complement the “compressed histories” studied earlier. That said, it does move forward from Eve to Joshua and the other righteous who are buried there, and it speaks of Jesus, who is depicted as making pilgrimage there (a beautiful retrojection of late antique piety into the New Testament). The work is not invented out of whole cloth: the poet carefully explores the range of references to Shechem in the biblical and extra-​biblical context, a city of importance in the time of the patriarchs and of enduring significance as the burial place of Joshua, Joseph, and Eleazar, understood as “chiefs and prophets and priests” (Stanza 5; see Josh. 24:29–​33). Jesus’ visit confirms its sanctity, forever memorialized by the church that marks the occasion of his visit—​itself likely a place of potential pilgrimage in antiquity. The poem’s arc thus spans creation (represented by Eve) to the present. The focus, however, is consistently on the city—​a real and tangible location—​both for its symbolism and the historical events it evokes. As Ephrem writes, “Blessed are you, O Shechem, in whom is planted /​even the pure tree of symbols” (Stanza 4). The church erected on the site of Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well constitutes a matrix of interwoven symbols. The poet leads his listeners on a pilgrimage of the imagination. Nowhere in the Christian scriptural canon is the city of Shechem singled out for praise of the kind Ephrem offers. In this composition, the poet weaves together a range of the fleeting mentions of the city, scattered throughout the Old and New Testaments, into a comprehensive totality, a singular vision that speaks to the wholeness and importance of this site—​hardly a neutral position, since, while the poet does not address the tension, the city of Shechem (known also as Neapolis, i.e., Nablus) remains to this day a place of central importance to the non-​Christian community of Samaritans. Ephrem’s intense focus on the city, and his insistent direct address to the city personified and Christianized, unifies the poem, even as it stakes a very real claim on it. The cataloging of symbols and episodes, however—​the specific techniques employed by the poet—​reflect techniques familiar from classical rhetoric and argumentation. The hymn invents a coherent “story” of Shechem across the Hebrew Bible and New Testament; that story lies behind the reason the poet composes this ode to begin with and argued in way a skilled rhetor would recognize.

82  Staging the Sacred In the Qallir poem “The Jeremiah Went to the Graves of the Ancestors,” the poet constructs a multi-​person drama.120 Ephrem addressed the city of Shechem, and while the city was both important and real, it was not necessarily of practical urgency or primary importance. Shechem was a symbol of a non-​territorial concept, the Gentile church. Qallir, by contrast, here focuses on a specific location—​the cave of Machpelah in Hebron—​but his topic is actually displacement, the landlessness of exile and disempowerment.121 He crafts his drama as an elaborate dispute between God and Israel’s ancestors, who intercede on behalf of their children. The children, listeners would have understood, constitute not only imagined figures but also the individuals in the audience. Qallir’s composition is a lament (qinah) for the Ninth of Av, and it is written as a series of dialogues between God and the patriarchs and matriarchs of Israel, whom Jeremiah has roused from their sleep in the grave. It opens in medias res:122 Then Jeremiah went to the ancestor’s graves /​And said: “Beloved bones! /​ How can you just lie there? “Your children have been exiled and ‘pierced by swords’ (Ezek. 16:40) /​. . . . And where is the ancestors’ merit ‘in the land of thirst’?” (Hosea 13:5) [Refrain A] “If they, like Adam, transgressed the covenant (Hosea 6:7) /​Where is the merit of the covenant-​makers?” They wailed, all of them, in lamentation /​Over the loss of (their) children They murmured in a voice of entreaty /​Before the One who dwells in the heavens And where is the promise of, “And I will remember to your benefit the covenant of the first ones?” (Lev. 26:45) 120 For the Qallir text, see The Order of Laments for Tisha b’Av, ed. Daniel Goldschmidt (Jerusalem: Mosad HaRav Kook, 1968), 98–​100; the Hebrew is also readily available via the Maagarim database: https://​maaga​rim.heb​rew-​acad​emy.org.il/​Pages/​PMain.aspx?mishib​bur=​600​018&mm15=​ 00304​6051​010%2000&mismi​lla=​[2,3]; the present translation is the author’s. Narratively, this poem follows the events in Qallir’s lament, “When Her Quota of Grief Is Filled,” discussed in Chapter 4. 121 The technique of personification, specifically prosopopoeia (“speech-​ in-​ character” when the subject is an inanimate object) is discussed at length in Chapter 4, where we study Qallir’s poem, “When Her Quota of Grief Is Filled”—​a companion to this lament, and one in which he personifies Zion. 122 For alternative translations, see Tzvi Novick, “Between First-​ Century Apocalyptic and Seventh-​Century Liturgy: On 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch, and Qillir,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 44 (2013): 373–​ 78; and https://​ope​nsid​dur.org/​pray​ers/​lunar-​cycle/​commem​orat​ive-​days/​fast-​days/​ tisha-​bav/​az-​bahalo​khyi​rmiy​ahu-​kalir-​c-​7th-​cent (Hebrew and English).

Setting the Stage  83 [Refrain B] “What can I do for you, My children? /​The decree has gone forth from Me.” “They exchanged My honor for nothingness /​with neither fear nor trembling “And when I turned My gaze from them, they were diminished /​but they neither repented nor ceased.”123 And how shall I overlook, “He is nothing” (Jer. 5:12)? “If they, like Adam, transgressed the covenant /​Where is the merit of the covenant-​makers?” The father-​of-​the-​multitude124 cried out on their account /​entreating the presence of God Most High “For naught was I tested with ten tests, for their sake? /​For lo, I see them shattered! And where is the promise of “Fear not, Abram” (Gen. 17:5)? “What can I do for you, My children? /​The decree has gone forth from Me.” “They strayed into estrangement, /​into idolatry “They plotted to hew out cisterns /​broken cisterns (Jer. 5:12) And how can I overlook the nullification of the Ten Commandments? “If they, like Adam, transgressed the covenant /​Where is the merit of the covenant-​makers?” Thus shouted Isaac /​before the One who dwells in the clouds: “Was it in vain that slaughter was decreed against me? /​That thus my seed is crushed and erased? And where is the promise of “And I will sustain My covenant with Isaac” (Gen. 17:21)? “What can I do for you, My children? /​The decree has gone forth from Me.” “They rebelled against Jeremiah /​and defiled Mount Moriah “I am weary of enduring their groans /​that accost Me from (the land of) oblivion.125 123 This line follows the version in Goldschmidt, who uses the text from the Worms machzor. The MS employed in the Ma’agarim online lexicon is much shorter: ‫ולא שהו‬, “and they did not pause.” 124 That is, Abraham. 125 See Ps. 88:13, where “land of oblivion (‫ ”)ארץ נשיה‬refers to the underworld.

84  Staging the Sacred And how can I overlook the murder of Zechariah?126 “If they, like Adam, transgressed the covenant /​Where is the merit of the covenant-​makers?” The one born for learning127 spoke up /​tears flowing as though from a crocodile “My babes, whom I kept close in swaddling cloths /​alas, they were taken from me, scattered—​ And alas! How many myriad are torn from me, blood for blood?” “What can I do for you, My children? /​The decree has gone forth from Me.” The faithful shepherd128 spoke up /​begrimed with dust and dung “The flock that was nurtured at my bosom /​alas, they passed away, so suddenly!” And where is the promise of “but he is not bereft” (Jer. 51:5)? “If they, like Adam, transgressed the covenant /​Where is the merit of the covenant-​makers?” The sound of Leah’s weeping /​and her beating upon her chest Rachel, her sister, bewailing her children /​and Zilpah slapping her face Bilhah grieving with both her hands “What can I do for you, My children? /​The decree has gone forth from Me.” Return, O pure ones, to your rest /​I will surely fulfill your requests “I send Myself to Babylon, for your sake; /​Here I am, restoring your children from exile!”

The poem begins with Jeremiah shouting to the sleeping ancestors to awake, to rise (quite literally) to the defense of their wayward children. Each pair of stanzas, indicated by the alternating refrains, consists of a speech by an ancestor, in which he or she cites a divine promise from scripture, followed by God’s insistence that He cannot undo His divine decree; the sins of Israel, cataloged in their own scriptures, condemn them. The impression of divine 126 Alludes to 2 Chron. 24:20–​22, and the development of this tradition in LamR Pet. 5 (Vilna ed., 2a). 127 That is, Jacob; see GenR 63:9 (T-​A, 692–​693). 128 Moses.

Setting the Stage  85 fixity creates a tension that builds, as it raises the question of whether God will ever relent and whether Israel—​the congregation—​will ever be forgiven and rescued. Qallir continues to employ this format, with Isaac speaking next, then Jacob, and Moses. In the penultimate stanza, the four wives of Jacob perform a classical display of gendered mourning: Leah weeps and beats her chest, Rachel cries aloud, Zilpah strikes her face, and Bilhah “laments with both her hands” (ll. 28–​30). God’s participation in the dialogue contracts, until He only speaks by means of Refrain B; the compression of the initial structure suggests that God is, in some sense, being worn down. After the wordless display by the mothers of the twelve tribes, God relents: “Return, My pure ones, to your rest /​I will surely fulfill your requests “I have sent Myself to Babylon, for their sake /​Here I am, restoring your children from exile (ll. 31–​32).

In the end, God is depicted as persuaded not of Israel’s innocence—​they are not innocent—​but of the need to end their exile. The poem echoes a tradition found in Lamentations Rabbah. The midrash concludes an extended explication of Isaiah 22:12, “My Lord God of Hosts summoned on that day to weeping and lamenting, to tonsuring and girding with sackcloth.” This lengthy prose text focuses on the emotional experience of the deity. It depicts a God shocked by the sight of the Temple’s ruins, overcome with grief at His people’s suffering, and angered by the angels’ attempt to prevent Him from mourning. God tasks Jeremiah, who has been part of His retinue, with a task: The Holy Blessed One said to Jeremiah, “I am now like a man who had an only son, for whom he prepared a marriage-​canopy, but (the son) died under it. Do you feel no anguish for Me and My children? Go, summon Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and Moses from their graves, for they know how to weep!”

In the passage’s continuation, Jeremiah raises the ancestors, including summoning Moses from his unknown burial place, and all the ancestors, as well as the twenty-​two letters of the alphabet, petition God on Israel’s behalf even as they express horror at the cruelties their descendants have

86  Staging the Sacred experienced. Eventually, Rachel is the one who moves God to pity, by means of shaming Him: Rachel broke forth into speech before the Holy Blessed One and said, “Sovereign of the Universe! It is revealed before You that Your servant Jacob loved me exceedingly and toiled for my father on my behalf seven years. When those seven years were completed and the time arrived for my marriage with my husband, my father planned to substitute another for me to wed my husband for the sake of my sister. It was very painful for me, because the plot was known to me and I disclosed it to my husband; and I gave him a sign whereby he could distinguish between me and my sister, so that my father should not be able to make the substitution. But then I relented, suppressed my desire, and had pity upon my sister that she should not be exposed to shame. In the evening they substituted my sister for me with my husband, and I shared with my sister all the signs which I had arranged with my husband, so that he should think that she was Rachel. More than that, I went beneath the bed upon which he lay with my sister; and when he spoke to her, she remained silent and I made all the replies in order that he should not recognize my sister’s voice. I treated her kindly, was not jealous of her, and did not expose her to shame. Now if I, a creature of flesh and blood, formed of dust and ashes, was not envious of my rival and did not expose her to shame and contempt, why should You, a sovereign who lives eternally and is merciful, be jealous of idolatry—​something which isn’t real!—​and exile my children and let them be slain by the sword, and their enemies have done with them as they wished!?” At once, the mercy of the Holy Blessed One was aroused, and He said, “For your sake, Rachel, I will restore Israel to their place.” And thus it is written, “Thus says the Eternal: A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are not” (Jer. 31:15). This is followed by, “Thus says the Eternal: Cease your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears; for your effort shall be rewarded . . . and there is hope for your future, says the Eternal; and your children shall return to their own territory” (Jer. 31:16–​17).129



129

LamR, Proem 24; translation is the author’s.

Setting the Stage  87 The midrash here gives Rachel a lengthy speech, and moved by her persuasive testimony, God finally relents. The proem moves from grief and divine self-​pity to divine self-​recognition and redemption. Qallir’s qinah seems, at first glance, simply to be a poetic variant of this aggadic tradition, but it differs in important ways. The poem is notably shorter, with each speaker given terse lines that stress the importance of divine promises. God’s declamations become ever briefer; God responds to Isaac with a full stanza, decrying the desecration of Mount Moriah, the site of Isaac’s binding, but following Jacob’s petition, God responds simply with a reference to the martyrdom of Zechariah; Moses’ words are followed immediately by the stanza describing the mourning of the women. Furthermore, where the midrash presents an entire monologue in the voice of Rachel—​a marvelous example of what late antique rhetoricians would have recognized as ethopoeia130—​in Qallir’s poem, she and her fellow wives do not speak at all but perform; they appear in the poem not through words but actions. It is not a lengthy, well-​argued, persuasive speech that moves God, but the actions—​ violent behaviors of bereavement—​of mourning women. In the midrashic text, the authors dwell on the horrible suffering of the Israelites, and figures speak at great length, citing scripture and arguing with passion. The poetry distills the argument to its essence, with increasing precision and incisiveness, but in the end suggests that words alone cannot suffice. In this lament, it is the act of lamentation the moves the deity to compassion. These women, in their mourning, model effective lamentation for the human community that hears the piyyut. This hymn’s lesson may well be that rituals are as effective as words. The differences between Lamentations Rabbah and this Qallir piyyut—​ texts roughly contemporary with each other131—​reveal the important role of performative context in exegetical and liturgical composition. Midrash and piyyut share clear affinities.132 But where the midrash explores topics of theological daring and displays exegetical inventiveness, both achieved by means of bold displays of rhetorical sophistication and expansiveness, the poet writes with terse clarity and uses the tightening gyre of his form and the 130 See Chapter 4. 131 Lamentations Rabbah likely dates to the early fifth century ce; see Hermann Strack and Günter Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1996), 286. 132 Qallir’s affinity for the traditions in LamR Pet. 24 (Vilna ed. 5a–​6a) is evident when this qinah is read alongside his qinah in which Jerusalem is personified as a widow. These two compositions can be seen as companion pieces; see the discussion in Chapter 4 (pp. 274–278).

88  Staging the Sacred power of repetition to increase the sense of forward momentum in the composition. He focuses narrowly on the dramatic exchanges between ancestors and deity, serial conversations perhaps inflected with intensifying passion or increasing despair, as impassioned words give way to desperately wordless action. Finally, the poet encodes a subtly self-​referential lesson: God is moved not by artful rhetoric, but by the physical performance of lamentation—​in the context of a lament being uttered in the synagogue. Images and phrases from scripture texture this work, and yet the scene imagined by the poet—​with Abraham and Isaac in the same scene as Moses and Jeremiah—​exceeds anything the Bible imagines. The language of the poem is not obscure; some coinages are new, but even they feel traditional. The poem is a compelling and unexpected dramatic scene, and one that draws the congregation into its conceit, even as it willfully violates any conventional sense of chronology; that, too, is part of its power. The poem exists in liturgical time: in the context of lamentation, Abraham can weep with Jeremiah, and Moses with Rachel and Leah, and the congregation can join them in their pleas, and in their hopefulness. Qallir has invented his poem’s narrative, but not from whole cloth; he has woven together many subtle threads from throughout the tradition, biblical and post-​biblical, and crafted a composition uniquely suited to his task: to engage his listeners, to draw them into the scene he imagines, and to reveal ancestors who model effective penitential behavior. The mothers of Israel instruct their children on how to compel God’s mercy. Elliptical Narration: Most of the “storytelling” in poems presented thus far in this chapter has shared with more conventional late antique performance a fairly clear-​cut relationship with narrative traditions from the classical (here, scriptural) canon, even as they also make use of theatrical delivery techniques such as the creative use of voice, dynamic engagement with audiences, and the modeling of reactions—​performative elements developed at length later in this study. It is important to note, however, that the biblical canon contains much that is not narrative: the Torah contains much legal material and substantial poetic sections; the Prophets and Writings, sacred in Judaism, in turn, contain prophetic poetry, laments, psalms of praise, memoires, and wisdom literature; and the New Testament contains apocalypses and epistles, among other genres. And this brief rehearsal offers only an eclectic sample, not an exhaustive accounting of genre and style. We should not, therefore, be surprised that liturgical poems, taking these various sacred anthologies as starting points, touchstones, and libraries of references,

Setting the Stage  89 themselves reflect a diversity of structures. Poets sought to imbue the tradition with the aesthetic delight and imaginative appeal of theatrical performance, and they did not limit themselves to narrative poetry when so much of their source material was in genres other than narration. The theatrical techniques and effective modes of delivery could enliven hymns even when they lacked explicit storytelling. In this final section, then, we should turn our attention to several examples of “elliptical” hymnody, poems in which “story” is not the primary structural device in the composition at all.133 Specifically, we will examine three works in Aramaic: two Samaritan piyyutim and one Jewish Aramaic work. We have already seen the impulse toward nonlinear composition manifesting in the storytelling poetry of Yannai and Ephrem, examined earlier; here, that formal feature becomes dominant. Compared with the majority of Jewish and Christian hymns from late antiquity, classical Samaritan poetry is, as whole, far less narrative—​less linear and less oriented toward storytelling, more evocative of ritual and experience (including the rituals and experiences that Marqe imagines for the ancestors and wishes to recreate for his congregation). It reflects a distinctive aesthetic, one that aligns in its gestural way with the Samaritan use of scriptural florilegia in the liturgy. Samaritan authors wove together images, motifs, phrases, and themes in their compositions and trusted in their communities to perceive the whole. But despite this apparent lack of emphasis on narration, Samaritan piyyutim engage robustly with the classical tradition of the Torah. Indeed, the poetry of Amram Dare, Marqe, and Ninna—​the lineage of father, son, and grandson who are the authors of almost the entire classical Samaritan corpus of poetry—​is remarkably Torah-​centric. Two poems by Marqe illustrate this fascination: one about the revelation of the Torah (Marqe #23) and another addressed directly to the Torah (Marqe #20).134 The text of poem #23 is attributed to Marqe; while that authorship is not unquestioned, its Aramaic argues strongly that we retain its conventional date to Marqe’s period.135 The composition is brief, so I present its text in full; 133 The concept of the jeweled style is important here but has proven fruitful in the study of late antique poetry in general. Michael Roberts’ monograph, The Jeweled Style: Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989). 134 The latter poem is treated and presented in full, annotated translation, in Laura S. Lieber, “Scripture Personified: Torah as Character in the Hymns of Marqah,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 24.2 (2017), 195–​217. It is also discussed in Chapter 4. 135 For the original text of this poem, see Ben-​Hayyim, LOT III/​2, 254–​255; it also appears in the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon. Translation in Laura S. Lieber, Classical Samaritan Poetry (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2022), 211.

90  Staging the Sacred in current practice, it is recited on the sixth Sabbath between Passover and Shavuot: Continue to bless the Name136: The honored and awesome One! For it is good for us to bless Our God, may He be blessed! All of us hasten to say: “May the Writing be praised with peace137!” For forty days the prophet stood, fasting, Upon the mountain; he ate no bread, No water did he drink138 In order to learn and to teach The children (of Israel) the words of the covenant, The Ten Utterances. “And the Writing was the Writing of God,”139 His words of life and blessing. From the highest of heavens did God descend Upon Mount Sinai, to proclaim in the presence of His prophet, the Ten Utterances Happy are we on account of what we heard, For it is our lives!

This poem begins with an invocation to praise God but segues quickly and for the remainder of the poem to praise of the Torah. In the second stanza, the poet lauds the Writing (‫ ;)כתבה‬in the next stanza, he alludes to Moses’ time on Sinai, where after a period of extended fasting he acquired the Torah for the purpose (we are told in Stanza 3) of teaching his people the words of the covenant, specifically the Decalogue. The poet then quotes Exodus 32:16 (in Hebrew), highlighting the divine authorship of the Torah, and then returns to the image of God descending from heaven to Sinai to proclaim His

136

“Hashem” (in Hebrew [‫ ]השם‬rather than in Aramaic [‫)]שמא‬. BH suggests reading ‫“( משלם‬fully, perfectly”) instead of ‫בשלם‬. 138 Hebrew; from Exod. 34:28. 139 Hebrew, from Exod. 32:16. 137

Setting the Stage  91 word to His prophet. The poem concludes with an affirmation of the appropriateness of human joy as a response to this marvelous gift—​an expression of gratitude that is, we should note, written in the present tense, as if the congregation itself just witnessed the drama of revelation. The enduring presence of the sacred scroll signifies the ongoing experience of Sinai. The poem assumes substantial familiarity with the events of Exodus 19–​20, which describes the revelation of Torah to Moses atop Sinai. Furthermore, it weaves into that episode quotations from Exodus 32 and 34, but without mentioning the intervening episode of the golden calf. The poem relies on the canon, but its content is more imagistic—​snapshots rather than stories, visuals instead of narration. Despite this work’s nonlinearity, or perhaps because of it, the hymn conveys the powerful drama of the moment: the people and the Torah occupy center stage, while Moses’ ascent and God’s descent frame that pivotal event with a sense of physical dynamism and motion. The final lines bring the congregation into the drama, much like the Avodah poems do—​the people are part of the story. Marqe’s poem #20, by contrast, speaks not of the Torah but to it. This poem is longer than poem #23—​it a full alphabetical acrostic of twenty-​two strophes—​but still lyrical. In a way reminiscent of how Ephrem personified the city of Shechem, a version of the technique known in the training of orators as prosopopoeia, Marqe here speaks to the Torah.140 The congregation, through the refrain, addresses the Torah directly at the end of every stanza: “And there is no Writing as great as you!” The power of the Torah, significant in its own right, leads the poet to conclude his hymn with an exclamation that, as in the other hymn, draws the community into the composition: “Praises and hymns /​Let us utter with devotion to the One who gave you!” The community and performer engage in a dialogue—​the poet’s exposition alternating with the communal refrain—​but the final stanza reframes the entire the poem as a preface to the more general act of prayer, one that views the deity through the lens of revelation. In a hymn speaking to the Torah, God is continually present as the Torah-​Giver. Speaking to the Torah, the congregation speaks about God. While this poem is not a narrative, insofar as it tells no linear story, it draws heavily on the language of scripture—​it uses the Torah to praise the Torah. This poem is rich with allusions: it draws on the Torah’s language to describe the Writing’s origin (written by God’s own finger, as in Exod. 31:18),

140

This technique is discussed in depth in Chapter 4.

92  Staging the Sacred its revelation from within fire (Exod. 19:18), and its manifestation, accompanied by the sound of shofars (Exod. 19:16). Torah also provides images such as Moses’ shining face (Exod. 34:29), motifs including God’s desire to heal those who are faithful to his teaching (Exod. 15:26), and emotion, such as the fear experienced by those who heard of the theophany (Exod. 15:14–​16). The poet does not overtly signal his reliance on scripture, but he weaves his hymn together out of its phrases, a tapestry of allusions. This poem does not directly “dramatize” any single event from the Torah, nor does it create a theatrical version of a familiar story, either compressed or expanded. And yet, it is dramatic, and its content cannot be separated from the sacred canon. Indeed, this poem constitutes a drama staged for the Torah: it seems to presume that it is performed in the presence of the Torah scroll, and the refrain functions like an acclamation that one might utter to the emperor or local authority in the context of some other form of spectacle or game.141 It asks its listeners to draw upon their knowledge of tradition even as it displays an easy, organic affinity for the more general repertoire of its era. As noted earlier, Samaritan poems are not unique in their nonlinear narration; in some ways, these works resemble units of the qedushta in classical Jewish poetry—​particularly those later in the composition that stress formal

141 The subject of congregational participation in the performance of synagogue poetry has long been a topic of scholarly interest, with foundational work done by Ezra Fleischer in Hebrew Liturgical Poetry in the Middle Ages (Jerusalem: Keter, 1975), 133–​136 [Hebrew], and, Fleischer, “Studies on the Influence of Choral Elements on the Configuration and Development of Types of Piyyut,” Yuval 3 (1974): 18–​48 (esp. pp. 25–​26) [Hebrew]. Relying largely on internal Jewish sources, he asserts that Jewish congregations were largely passive until the sixth century, when professional choirs were possibly added to assist the cantor in liturgical transitions. While Fleischer credits Andalusian poets with the innovative desire fully to involve the congregation in piyyuṭ, scholarship since the 1970s has taken a more contextual approach to the study of early hymnography, and these contextual sources argue strongly in favor of some form of participation. Note the discussion in Amnon Shiloah, Jewish Musical Traditions (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1992) 111–​129. As these studies delineate, professional choirs, lay choirs, and full congregational participation were all known models available in this period, and in addition to aesthetics, factors such as finances and population size likely influenced norms of liturgical performance in every setting. However, the urban–​rural divide remains significantly understudied. For an innovative initial analysis of this basic element of synagogue worship, see Chad Spigel, Ancient Synagogue Seating Capacities: Methodology, Analysis and Limits (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2012). Even scholars who minimize congregational activity recognize that the Holy Days—​Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and the month of Elul that precedes these holy days—​differed in terms of inviting more community involvement. The penitential litanies of the seliḥot prayers, for example, obviously invite congregational participation through their highly repetitive formulations. See Laura S. Lieber, “Confessing from A–​Z: Penitential Forms in Early Synagogue Poetry,” in Penitential Prayer: Origins, Development, and Impact, ed. Mark J. Boda, Daniel K. Falk, and Rodney Werline, 3 vols. (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008), vol. 3: 99–​ 125. The texts I examined in that article are often litanies rather than poetry but could easily serve as examples of (non-​poetic) acclamations.

Setting the Stage  93 elements rather than storytelling, even as they rely on elements of the story narrated earlier in the poem. Similarly, Ephrem (and, less often, Romanos) can take an “imagistic” approach to a topic. Finally, the resemblance between these poems and some of the Jewish Palestinian Aramaic poems far exceeds their linguistic affinities; some of the JPA poems are the closest formal analogs to the Samaritan works. One example from the JPA corpus, a lament for the Ninth of Av, will illustrate this resemblance, even as it indicates how qinot—​liturgical laments over the destruction of Jerusalem—​vary, as this work differs from the two laments by Qallir already addressed in this chapter.142 This poem—​JPA Poem #21, a lament for the Ninth of Av143—​exemplifies a highly structured aesthetic of poems that we find attested in Hebrew as well as Aramaic. The poem’s form is fairly intricate: it is an alphabetical acrostic with a refrain that is a biblical quotation (Lam. 1:16); as in a Yannai-​ style rahit, each stanza also begins with a fixed word, “over (‫ )על‬. . .” Like the second poem of Marqe’s examined earlier (Marqe #20), it can be understood as a dialogue between a narrator-​performer (who speaks the verses) and the congregation (which recites the refrain). The stanzas do not offer a linear narration of the destruction of Jerusalem (as we see in JPA Poem #18), but, in a fashion akin to the biblical book of Lamentations itself, each stanza offers an image of bereavement: “Over | my sanctuary laid waste /​ and my priests slain by the sword” (ll. 8–​9); “Over | children at their books /​ as fire burned them” (ll. 20–​21); “Over | my tranquil place, now fallen /​ the innocent one144 driven from it into exile” (ll. 32–​33). The voice of the speaker is ambiguous: Is it Zion personified, the community envisioning the scene, the bereft deity, or perhaps even the prophet Jeremiah, had he been a payyetan? In some ways, this poem could be classified as a version of the “expanded story” variety of poem, in that it constitutes a kind of hymnographic extension of Lamentations adapted to the more intricate aesthetics of late antiquity. The sense of stasis in the poem, however—​the knowledge that but for 142 The two qinot already analyzed here—​both by Qallir—​do not necessarily typify the laments by Qallir, who composed numerous hymns for the Ninth of Av. Some of Qallir’s poems, such as his lament structured on the twenty-​four lay and priestly watches (Seder ha-​Qinot #11 [pp. 47–​52]) and other highly patterned works (e.g., Seder ha-​Qinot #18 [pp. 75–​77] and #20 [pp.79–​80]), strongly resemble the non-​narrative works considered in this section. The patterning in such works likely helped facilitate participation and communal engagement. 143 See Lieber, Jewish Aramaic Poetry, 73–​74. 144 That is, daughter Zion.

94  Staging the Sacred the acrostic, the poem could have continued offering endless variations on its tragic theme, the lack of a sense of time beyond an ever-​present “now”—​ suggests that this work even more strongly exemplifies the “elliptical” style of composition. Circling around and around its main ideas and images, it is not a poem with a plot; it lacks any forward motion or momentum. Instead, it creates an opportunity for the community to dwell at length in specific a moment, to revisit repeatedly, and actively, a single episode of enduring pathos and power. The poem’s redolent meaningfulness derives from its rootedness in scripture—​in Lamentations, a text of communal grieving—​and in the essential component of Israel’s sacred history, the experience of exile and destruction. This poem does not dramatize the narrative of the destruction of Jerusalem, however; rather, it offers vivid images that allow the community to imagine the experience of loss in great detail, in a frozen “then” that becomes “now,” and thus experience for themselves the emotional experience of communal devastation. Each stanza constitutes a brief, dramatic scene to which the community, chorus-​like, responds. The poet here scripts his own lamentation. As these three examples show, liturgical poems can dramatize scripture without necessarily retelling its stories. Marqe #23 offers a kind of emotional response to the existence of Torah, while Marqe #20 uses words from Torah to praise it; and JPA Poem #21 meditates on images from scripture and recreates a sense of “being there” in the moment of the composition of Lamentations. These works share a reliance on knowledge of scripture, from which they derive their richness and resonance, and at a basic level their meaningfulness. But as poems, these hymns model a different form of exposition: a rhetoric that is imagistic rather than narrative, visual as much as intellectual, invested in a moment in time rather than in the sweep of time, kaleidoscopic rather than conventionally clear. This analysis, because of its stress on the relationship of hymnic storytelling to scriptural narratives, risks overemphasizing the narrative qualities of liturgical poetry. In many cases, the poet’s focus is not on a story, but a figure or an idea: the incarnation, the nature of Torah, the importance of the Land of Israel, or the nature of God. Poems of these varied types and approaches—​examples of which will be treated in the chapters that follow—​ are, in a fashion akin to the lament studied here, “scriptural,” not just because of their topic or plot, but because their words and worldviews are formed out of sacred text. In these poems, we hear lasting echoes of timely ideas articulated through timeless words, mediated by the poets’ own aesthetics,

Setting the Stage  95 for the purpose of engaging the listeners not only emotionally but, in some instances, physically, as well.

Conclusions Charlotte Roueché has discerned that despite legal and literary sources suggesting a diminished or suppressed presence of theater in late antiquity, evidence from material culture—​the infrastructure of theaters and the scrawl of epigraphic traces—​indicates a continued, vigorous theatrical culture well into the period.145 Not only did works that related to the classical Greco-​ Roman canon of drama and comedy continue to be performed, she argues, but new storylines were also actively sought out. In places where the population was mixed—​Jews, Christians, pagans, and others—​Roueché argues, the plots for public shows could easily have come from any local traditions. As an example, she presents evidence that general audiences enjoyed the plot of the Hellenistic novella Tobit. Given the sheer quantity of theatrical performances staged on a regular basis throughout the ancient world—​all the actors on all the stages throughout the vast empire, from Spain to Syria—​ she argues that audiences would have been hungry for new stories, and the biblical canon could easily have been a resource, particularly in areas with significant Jewish, Christian, or Samaritan presence, where the population (or performers) would likely have known the story outlines and characters. In such locations, among such communities, sacred stories constituted the indigenous “classical canon”—​plotlines familiar and readily available to local performers, poets, and playwrights as fodder for their audience-​engaging creativity. Alongside the argument made by Roueché, in which stories flow from scripture into the theater, another current runs just as smoothly in the reverse direction: from theater into sanctuaries. Attunement to and experience with theatricality would have colored how Jews, Samaritans, and Christians viewed (and judged) their liturgy and ritual, and especially hymnody—​was it appealing and engaging? Or dull and uninspiring? Religious performers adapted stories from scripture in the same way that public entertainers adapted the traditions of public theater. We need not posit that religious communities borrowed directly from the conventions

145 Roueché, “World Full of Stories.”

96  Staging the Sacred of the theaters and other forms of entertainment. Rather, these were venues and modes of performance that community members would have known of, that they likely attended and enjoyed, even if critically; the official attitude toward such establishments was, as noted earlier, at best deeply ambivalent. As a result, this study posits that both civic and religious performance related to their traditions and shared common norms of how canons related to contemporary performance. Each community—​ Jewish, Samaritan, and Christian—​possessed its own canon, but they all shared a sense of how the stories grounded in sacred scripture should and could be “translated” to the liturgical stage effectively and, in some sense, entertainingly. Performance—​and the related experiences of and pleasure in seeing and being seen, hearing and being heard—​saturated daily life in late antiquity, and the written evidence touching on the experience of theater is abundant. Closely aligned with theater is the world of oratory, and indeed, given that orators made a careful study of theatrical performance—​both to learn from its effectiveness and avoid its excesses—​much of our knowledge of theater comes filtered through writings by those who studied civic speech and practiced declamation. We have Aristotle’s thoughts on rhetoric, Cicero’s observations of actors, Quintilian’s curriculum for oratory, and Libanius’ defense of pantomime, to name just a few. We do not, by contrast, have much direct evidence for the performance of liturgical poetry. We have in hand today a tremendous quantity of written liturgical poems, but little sense of how they were performed; what evidence we do have varies not only from tradition to tradition, but also from community to community, over centuries of lived use and adaptation. By reading the texts we possess in abundance in light of the evidence we have throughout the ancient Mediterranean world, for all that they represent in different social and cultural realms, we can begin to build in from the margins and reconstruct some sense of late antique society as a whole. The lens of theatricality lets us perceive the place of emerging religious communities and their practices—​whether as imperial powers, subject populations, or marginal and insular communities—​within the larger picture. The repertoire of ancient performance, theatrical and oratorical, drew on a common repository of plots, characters, and gestures, enlivened by shared ideas of what a performer and audience were to do with them. In the next chapters, we will consider how specific performative and interpretive techniques from the worlds of theater and oratory could be fruitfully

Setting the Stage  97 borrowed for the liturgical sphere.146 We will consider features of traditional texts—​biblical and post-​biblical, as defined by each community—​that lent themselves to theatricality while retaining the imprimatur of communal approval. Internal traditions that aligned with external conventions of performance glossed the performance of hymns, which might have seemed transgressive had they overtly resembled theater or even oratory, with an aura of appropriateness. However lively a hymn’s conception or delivery, it could be regarded as organic and native to the religious traditions of a community rather than alien or illicit. Features of works that resonate with performative conventions from the larger culture reveal that performance as it was commonly understood and experienced in late antiquity could be reframed as not foreign and dangerous, but traditional and legitimate, and as sanctified, not sanctioned. In addition to a study of rhetorical composition, we will also piece together aspects of performance, and performers, in late antiquity. Actors and orators studied each other and shared not only common goals, but also a sense of what was effective. Similarly, those responsible for liturgical performance, homiletical as well as hymnic, seem to have internalized, if not explicitly recognized, the power of sophisticated modes of performance, declamation as well as mime and pantomime, as a means for effectively engaging their audiences. These techniques enabled performers to draw people to a venue and keep them there for the lesson.147 Jewish, Christian, and Samaritan writers—​liturgical and otherwise—​faced common challenges, and they shared a similar breadth of traditional resources. Homilists and hymnographers alike wished for their audiences to pay attention and needed to translate their canon into something worth attending to; poets, in particular, worked in a theatrical genre, one in which they performed roles and 146 Even at the level of rhetoric, it seems plausible that many basic elements of liturgical performance, such as the use of antiphony, litany, chorus, and dialogue, are connected to theatrical performance. See Walter Puchner, “Acting in the Byzantine Theater,” in Greek and Roman Actors: Aspects of an Ancient Profession, eds. P. Easterling and E. Hall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 310. 147 I do not here conflate drama and ritual (or drama and liturgy) but, rather, note that both draw on a shared body of techniques for effectively engaging listeners. As Andrew Walker White notes in his important study of early Byzantine Christian liturgical delivery, “The Church Fathers responsible for creating the Divine Liturgy during the early Byzantine period were all trained as rhetors under the most distinguished pagan orators of their day. And because the overwhelming majority of Christians waited until adulthood to convert. . . nearly all Orthodox clergy came to the Church and their ministry after years enjoying the delights of Roman urban life. . . . Given their lifelong exposure to both literary and popular theater, the Fathers could easily have chosen to adopt a dramatic mode of performance during the Liturgy. . . . But their training in rhetoric gave them access to a more sophisticated set of performance tools” (Performing Orthodox Ritual in Byzantium [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015], 53).

98  Staging the Sacred spoke in character, while audiences were actively engaged, through participatory elements such as refrains and liturgical formulas. Is a spectacle still a spectacle if no one beholds it? Can a blessing be complete without a second party to say “amen”? In theory, perhaps, but in practice, in late antiquity, performers wanted audiences, and audiences sought a show.

2 Take Your Places: Authors, Actors, and Audiences I was asleep, but my heart was awake. Hark, my beloved knocks: “Let me in, my sister, my darling, my faultless dove! For my head is drenched with dew, My curls with the damp of night.” —​Song of Songs 5:2

In Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies, the archbishop of Seville (b. 560 in Cartagena, Spain) offers the following entry for the term epithalamium: Epithalamiums (epithalamia) are wedding songs, which are sung by rhetoricians in honor of the bride and groom. Solomon first composed these in praise of the church and of Christ (i.e., the Song of Songs). From him the pagans appropriated the epithalamium for themselves, and a song of this type was taken up. This kind of song was first performed by pagans on the stage, and later was associated only with weddings. It is called epithalamium because it is sung in bedchambers (thalamus).1

In this passage, Isidore credits Solomon—​the author of the biblical Song of Songs—​with the creation of the genre of poetry known in Latin as epithalamia (“wedding songs”). He makes this observation in a section of his De Grammatica, a work that likewise associates classical genres of writing with biblical figures: he attributes the invention of heroic verse to Moses

1 Isidore of Seville, Etymologies I.39.18. Translation from Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, and Oliver Berghof, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 65.

Staging the Sacred. Laura S. Lieber, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780190065461.003.0003

100  Staging the Sacred and hexameter to Job (I.39.11), hymnody to David (I.39.17), and lament to Jeremiah (I.39.19).2 Isidore here reflects an understanding of culture with roots in Christianity that extend back at least to Origen, who regarded the accomplishments of Greek writers, including Homer, as mere extensions or borrowings from divinely inspired Hebrew sources. More specifically, Isidore extrapolates from Origen’s statement concerning the Song of Songs: according to Origen, Solomon’s lyric was both “a play and likewise an epithalamium”; Isidore takes that statement and imagines the translation of a poetic form not only from Israelite to Gentile but from wedding to stage.3 Poetry, drama, and ritual come together. Writing a century earlier in Antioch, the Christian historian Sozomen describes a similar trajectory of performance among the Christians of the East in spatial as well as functional terms. Recounting John Chrysostom’s hymnic brawl with the Arians in Antioch, late in the fourth century ce, our chronicler writes: The Arians . . . previously assembled by night in the public porticoes, and were divided into bands, so that they sang antiphonally, for they had composed certain refrains which reflected their own dogma . . . John [Chrysostom] was fearful lest any of his own church people should be led astray by witnessing these exhibitions, and therefore commanded them to sing hymns in the same manner. . . . Having commenced the custom of singing hymns in the manner and from the cause above stated, the members of the Catholic Church did not discontinue the practice, but have retained it to the present day.4

Sozomen recounts here how the two communities, Arian and Orthodox, employed religious poetry—​either newly composed hymns in their entirety, or innovative refrains or doxologies appended to biblical psalms—​both to affirm and to advocate for their specific theological orientations. Liturgical poems were not, in fact, limited to the liturgy in their use; their performance

2 He sees Deut. 32–​34 as “heroic.” The associations of David, the psalmist, with hymnody and Jeremiah with Lamentations are commonplace in antiquity. 3 For a synopsis of this exegetical history, see Joseph R. Jones, “The ‘Song of Songs’ as a Drama in the Commentators from Origen to the Twelfth Century,” Comparative Drama 17 (1983): 17–​39. 4 Salaminius Hermias Sozomen, Historia Ecclesiastica 8.8 (PG 67:1536–​1537); translation from Nicene and Post-​Nicene Fathers. Second Series, Vol. 2: Socrates, Sozomenus: Church Histories, ed. and trans. Henry Wade and Philip Schaff (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1996) 1594; available online: https://​www.ccel.org/​ccel/​sch​aff/​npnf​202.iii.xiii.viii.html (accessed June 14, 2021).

Take Your Places  101 flowed out into the public square and, like other forms of dramatic speech, fueled performance and protest.5 Isidore, writing at the remote western edge of Christendom, exemplifies competing impulses in late antique self-​understanding: while critical of pagan writings, he stakes a claim on classical literary forms and argues that they originated not with the Greeks but with the great poets of the Hebrew Bible. Sozomen, writing in the East and reflecting the history of Antioch and Constantinople, highlights the affinities of liturgical writing and public performance and illustrates the political potency public ritual. If David crafted hymns and Solomon composed inspired plays, and if Ambrose could use poetry in his battle for God, then theater and public performance would lose the taint of the alien and secure the sanction of sacred authority. At the very least, such readings of the canon indicate an awareness by writers in antiquity that even the ancestors understood the need to appeal to audiences, and the powerful bond that performance could fashion between speaker and audience. Moses, David, and Jeremiah were orators and hymnographers, and the descendants of Israel—​whether in church or synagogue—​remained attentive and at the ready to play their part.6 Without quite saying so aloud, Isidore and Sozomen suggest that the boundaries between entertainment and sacred ritual, and between sacred space and the stage, were permeable, if they existed meaningfully at all. Jewish and Christian scriptures are rich with dramatic and theatrical sensibilities, and implicit forms of performance. Jews, Samaritans, and Christians did not face a choice between “importing” alien norms into their aesthetics or withdrawing from the larger culture of late antiquity; instead, we can imagine that conventions from the larger culture activated latent potentials inherent within the traditional canons.

5 See Brent D. Shaw, Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), esp. Chapter 10, “Sing a New Song,” which deals extensively with acclamations in the African church of the late fourth and early fifth centuries (pp. 441–​ 89); Michael Stuart Williams, “Hymns as Acclamations: The Case of Ambrose of Milan,” Journal of Late Antiquity 6 (2013): 108–​134; Jaclyn Maxwell, Christianization and Communication in Late Antiquity: John Chrysostom and His Congregation in Antioch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), esp. Chapter 2, “Rhetoric and Society: Contexts of Public Speaking in Late Antique Antioch” (pp. 42–​64); and Laura S. Lieber, “With One Voice: Elements of Acclamation in Early Jewish Liturgical Poetry,” Harvard Theological Review 111.3 (2018): 401–​424. 6 Nor is oratory the only form of performance/​entertainment associated with that of the ancestors. As noted in Chapter 1, the Palestinian Talmud compared David to a pantomime (y. Sukkah 5:4 and y. Sanhedrin 2:4), as LevR 11:9 (Vilna ed. 17a) similarly does for God, and GenR 77:3 (T-​A, 912) likened Jacob’s wrestling with the angel to an athlete competing in the arena against the king’s son.

102  Staging the Sacred The boundaries distinguishing diverse genres of literatures and their performative settings, as well as the techniques employed by performers themselves and mechanisms for drawing in their listeners, are fluid and permeable. Isidore understands that a biblical text can be transferred to the stage; Sozomen recounts how hymns could be taken to the streets. Just as Greek and Latin writers reflected on how the legal argumentation of orators could be enriched by studying the practices of actors, and actors and dancers mined literary traditions for stories and plots, Jews, Christians, and Samaritans could read their traditions through the lens of their own culture. As discussed in Chapter 1, performance saturated late antique culture, and as a result, performative elements within the religious traditions, evident and latent, appeared with particular clarity to late antique readers. Ritual performance—​even that which drew upon techniques from the outside world—​gained authenticity and existential power when anchored in sacred texts. Furthermore, if Moses were an orator, David a poet, and Solomon a playwright, then it would hardly feel transgressive for liturgical performers—​homilists, cantors, choirs, and others—​to compose in such genres, in service of the enduring divine agenda. Congregants, in turn, could channel their own facility as spectators into the realm of prayer and service of God. Modern scholars, recognizing affinities between Greco-​ Roman oratory and theater, have used that frame of reference to articulate common elements linking those modes of performance with the dynamic, performative richness of the homiletical practices of Church Fathers and, to a lesser extent, rabbinic modes of exegesis. But as important as sermons were, they were far from the only religious discourse in antiquity, and so the question remains: How does the liturgical poet-​performer resemble other kinds of performers—​especially orators and actors—​in late antiquity? How is a liturgically embedded mode of performance distinctive? What kinds of relationships does the liturgical poet create and mediate among his listeners, and to what effect? Is the speaker as vivid a presence as the congregational audience, and what role did the community play?

Drinking from a Deep Well: Spoken Voice in Earlier Traditions Isidore of Seville, citing Origen, understood the Song of Songs as “theater”—​ an impression emerging from its noteworthy use of figures speaking in

Take Your Places  103 character. This understanding of speech-​in-​character as definitional concept for certain kinds of theater can help us understand liturgical poetry, as well, because liturgical poems are composed and performed entirely “in voice.” Even when a poem merely narrates a scene, the poet-​performer acts the role of the narrator and in doing so speaks in character. As a result of sophisticated narrative-​performative style, hymns often present their audiences with layers of speech that must be distinguished: the poet (or a subsequent performer) inhabits the voice of a figure who may, in turn, be recalling the speech of yet another figure. Using as an example a scene we will examine later in this chapter, a poet could craft a passage in which a performer describes the character of Hades reporting to Satan the words of Jesus. As novel as this “theatrical” mode of writing may be within Jewish and Christian tradition—​the Hellenistic dramatization of the Exodus, called “the Exogogue,” attributed to an otherwise unknown author, Ezekiel the Tragedian, provides the only clear example of theatrical drama from Jewish antiquity7—​writing “in voice” is hardly new. Indeed, liturgical poems are best understood as a synthesis of the models organically available to the writers and “native” to the experiences of the congregations, from both within the religious traditions and from the larger cultural context. Jewish, Samaritan, and Christian poets may not have associated their work with “theater”—​such a comparison might well have been insulting—​but their work was unquestionably informed and stimulated by the performative approaches that permeated their larger environment. Religious authors viewed their own sources with an eye toward points of resonance—​as authorized alternatives to disreputable “secular” entertainments—​even as they mined popular culture for effective techniques for appealing to listeners. Before we turn our attention to the affinities of liturgical poems, specifically, for late antique theater, we should recognize the fertile soil within biblical traditions that made Samaritan, Jewish, and Christian liturgical poetry, for all its inventiveness, seem indigenous to religious worship rather than reflective of “foreign” aesthetics. It is unlikely that such works were conceived instrumentally, as naked attempts to modernize, popularize, or compete with civic entertainments. Instead, in a world permeated by theater and oratory, theatrical and oratorical elements of scriptures would have inherently 7 For an overview of the history and significance of Exogogue, see Sarit Cofman-​Simhon, “From Alexandria to Berlin: The Hellenistic Play Exogogue Joins the Jewish Canon,” in Jews and Theater in an Intercultural Context, ed. Edna Nahson (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 23–​36. Moses, as the great orator of the Torah, offered a natural figure for performative expansion as well as modeling.

104  Staging the Sacred stood out or seemed self-​evident. Their presence was expected, and so it was found. Broad social conventions of performance provided external, contextual motivations, but scripture granted these innovations an aura of authenticity and a sense of traditionalism. In our present analysis, we will focus on the Hebrew Bible, as it is the text common to Jews and Christians, and its first five books constitute Samaritan scripture.8 A key element of theatricality is speech-​in-​character; the use of dialogue in the Song of Songs, led Origen to connect it to theater, as it seems to feature voices speaking in distinctive roles: female lover, male beloved, King Solomon, and male and female choruses. Settings—​intimate bowers, dangerous streets, domestic interiors—​are referenced, and concrete actions described, as in Song of Songs 5:2, where the woman first describes her state (between sleep and arousal), narrates hearing her beloved knock, and then recounts his words, which vividly describe his appearance. Similarly, much of the Hebrew Bible consists of direct speech, and much of it is powerful speech—​words imbued by the deity with the potential to affect reality—​ as well as discourse rich with communal and cultural significance. The Torah opens with God speaking creation into existence, while the book of Deuteronomy consists of what is presented as a lengthy monologue by Moses and replete with instructions for how to live a pious life aligned with God’s will. Other passages offer more oblique insight into concepts such as covenant, divine will, and the meaning of history; such narratives, while plot-​ centric, are nonetheless enlivened by voice, from the impassioned petition of Judah in Genesis 38, to the comedic argument between Balaam and his donkey in Numbers 22, to the moving pleas of Ruth in her eponymous book, to the impassioned, clever dialogues of the book of Esther.9 Careless speech causes Jephthah’s downfall in Judges 11, murmured prayer brings Hannah a son in 1 Samuel 1, and an unnamed woman form Tekoa persuades David 8 While the Hebrew Bible stands out for its abundance of direct speech, examples from elsewhere in this study will highlight the fact that the New Testament likewise includes a variety of distinctive voices, which would prove a resource for our Christian hymnographers. On speech-​in-​character in the New Testament, and its relationship to Hellenisitc rhetorical instruction, see Bartosz Adamczewski, Constructing Relationships, Constructing Faces: Hypertextuality and Ethopoeia in the New Testament Writings (New York: Peter Lang, 2011); Justin King, Speech-​in-​Character, Diatribe, and Romans 3:1-​9: Who’s Speaking When and Why It Matters (Leiden: Brill, 2018); and Mikeal C. Parsons and Michael Wade Martin, Ancient Rhetoric and the New Testament: The Influence of Elementary Greek Composition (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2018). Also note studies such as Nicholas Elder, “‘Wretch I Am!’ Eve’s Tragic Speech-​in-​Character in Romans 7:7–​25,” Journal of Biblical Literature 137.3 (2018): 743–​763. 9 On Balaam’s theatrical potential, see Shimon Levy, “Angel, She-​Ass, Prophet: The Play and Its Set Design,” in Jews and Theater in an Intercultural Context, ed. Edna Nahson (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 3–​21.

Take Your Places  105 to bring Absalom back to court, with tragic consequences, in 2 Samuel 14. Much of what comes to be known as the Latter (or Minor) Prophets consists of direct speech addressed to the people of Israel, Judah, and the nations, while Proverbs gives Wisdom and Folly not only voices but personae. Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah (along with the Greek version of Esther) stand out for their striking examples of petitionary prayer as well as records of letters, which can be understood as a specific form of recorded “speech” (particularly if we recall that letters would have been read aloud by a messenger—​a form of speaking in character).10 And Psalms constitutes a unique anthology of poems, often written in a deeply expressive first-​person voice that enables subsequent readers to inhabit them and speak them as their own, even as various headers assigned them to the stories of biblical characters (especially David) or framed them within the experience of the Temple liturgy and pilgrimage.11 The Hebrew Bible, from the first to last chapters, is rich with reported speech, reflecting an abundance of characters, perspectives, and voices. Elements of these scriptural works suggest a lived usage, perhaps performance in a liturgical context, or features that would ease adaptation to such uses. Psalms, the Song of Songs, and Lamentations, in particular, provide suggestively close analogs to the hymns of late antiquity in their synthesis of dramatization and performance. When we read such texts, even in solitary silence from a printed page, we can feel compelled to imagine them as “living,” either in our own voices or in the voices of others inhabiting them. Lamentations presents the voices of mourners with a starkness and rawness that enables later readers to step into the roles of Jerusalem and those who suffered in her destruction. Through a series of dirges in diverse voices, the author(s) of these poems—​who Jews and Christians understood to be Jeremiah—​invite later audiences (literary or auditory) to envision a sequence of “characters” stepping forward to grieve. Even more explicitly, Job is structured as a series of dialogues between the protagonist and his friends—​and 10 On the relationship between writing and the attempt to preserve a distinctive voice, see Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986). 11 For a study that stresses the mechanics of reported speech in biblical Hebrew, see Cynthia L. Miller, The Representation of Speech in Biblical Hebrew Narrative: A Linguistic Analysis (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1996). Most studies address specific corpora and from a less technical perspective, such as Michael Cheney, Dust, Wind, and Agony: Character, Speech, and Genre in Job (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1994); Matthew Michael, “The Dead Trickster and His Shrewd Children? The Persuasive Use of the Double Quotations of a Dead Patriarch in Genesis 49:29–​50:21,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 43 (2018): 179–​190; and Susanna Asikainen, “The Masculinity of Jeremiah,” Biblical Interpretation 28 (2020): 34–​55.

106  Staging the Sacred ultimately the deity; the arguments, while profoundly theological, are also intensely emotional. The work, while it resembles classical Greek philosophical dialogues, has long lent itself to dramatic adaptation.12 Also inherently dramatic is the Song of Songs, which at least since Augustine has tempted interpreters to read it as a script for a drama. To this day, many translations insert headings and identify speakers and help frame the scene—​much as a modern script does for actors.13 Translators do this in order to remedy the ambiguity of the text, but by doing so they conceal the challenging nature of “voice” in the text—​a problem that could, in an oral-​performative setting, have been resolved not through the introduction of new words but, rather, through intonation and body language.14 Indeed, we can easily forget how much interpretation takes place simply through the conventions of writing—​ the use of punctuation marks, decisions about capitalization of pronouns (“he” vs. “He”), and such, themselves in many cases attempts to capture verbal expressions in print—​to which oral, embodied performers lack access. Each medium offers its own version of clarity alongside its own invitations to uncertainty.15 In many cases, the biblical writers made simple and direct use of voice: characters speak in their own voices, either to other figures in the narrative or to a less defined external (human or divine) listener. But scripture also offers its readers examples of more complex speech—​reported speech, collective speech, and imagined speech. Most importantly, for the present study, the Bible contains examples what late antique rhetoricians would recognize as ethopoeia and prosopopoeia, the name given to rhetorical exercises 12 See the treatment of Job in Henry Bial, Playing God: The Bible on the Broadway Stage (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015), 116–​140 (Chapter 5, “Why do the Righteous Suffer?”). 13 The NIV identifies speakers as “he,” “she,” and “friends.” The NRSV uses headings to clarify scenes, such as the preface to Song of Sol. 1:2, “Colloquy of Bride and Friends” and that to Song of Sol. 1:9, “Colloquy of Bridegroom, Friends, and Bride.”) 14 Body language and staging also have precedent in the biblical text, notably in the book of Esther, which later becomes associated with “Jewish theater” at its most explicit (in terms of Purimspiels). Esther displays a bawdy, exaggerated sense of comedy, particularly an attention to details of costume and body language, that would have easily translated to a late antique stage. See Chapter 5. 15 In some instances, performance could not resolve ambiguity, as we see in the instance of clerical objections to the performance of “The Great Procession” during the reign of Justinian II, caused by ambiguity as to whether the sovereign being praised was God or the emperor (i.e., the “King” or the “king”); the text itself was altered to remedy the issues. On this episode and liturgy, see Wolfgang Ch. Schneider and Rudolph H. W. Stichel, “Der ‘Cherubische Einzug’ in der Hagia Sophia Justinians: Aufführung und Ereignis,” in Performativität und Ereignis, ed. Erika Fischer-​ Lichte (Tübingen/​Basel: A. FranckeVerlag, 2003), 377–​394, and Wolfgang Ch. Schneider, “‘Abtun der Sorge und Tanz.’ Der ‘Grosse Einzug’ und die Kuppel der Hagia Sophia Justinians,” in Architektur und Liturgie: Akten des Kolloquiums vom 25. bis 27. Juli 2003 in Greifswald, ed. Michael Altripp and Claudia Nauerth (Wiesbaden, Germany: Reichert, 2006), 143–​161. I am grateful to Bissera Pentcheva for these references.

Take Your Places  107 in which students would invent “speech-​ in-​ character,” inventing and delivering orations in the voices of historical, mythical, or stock figures.16 The prophets often speak in the voices of the nations and their leaders and construct dialogues between God and God’s people. In Lamentations, the poet speaks in the voice of Zion personified, while Wisdom literature gives the abstract idea of Wisdom a voice.17 The Prophets and Writings adopted the voices and perspectives of various figures and characters, in order to deliver their messages with greater authority, vividness, and force. In doing so, the biblical authors engaged in what we would recognize as “inner-​biblical interpretation,” as they revisited and retold narratives from their own canon—​a canon not only still fluid to some extent but continually renewed through reinterpretation.18 At the same time, such writers anticipated and authenticated what would become a central rhetorical-​performative device in the liturgical poems. In the hymns, we often find the poetic construction and presentation of “voice” to be more than a rhetorical stance and, rather, a central element of the composition. Ethopoeia—​and more generally, direct speech of various kinds—​in liturgical poetry (as in midrash and homilies) differs from that in biblical prose and poetry, as suits the different genres of these bodies of writing, and their distinctive functions. The existence of this device in scripture nonetheless serves to authorize and normalize the practice in later sacred writings. It is not presumptuous for prose exegetes or poets to speak in the voice of the ancestors, and even of God; it is, in a very concrete sense, the tradition.

A Genre at the Intersection While liturgical poetry builds on biblical precedents—​ amplifying its techniques and expanding on its characters and its themes—​it is informed and shaped by the ubiquitous performance-​ oriented genres from the broader cultural context of late antiquity. Just as biblical texts can be narrative, forensic, lyrical, tragic, and comedic—​sometimes more than one 16 Ethopoeia refers to a human speaker who speaks in character while prosopopoeia refers to the personification of a nonhuman figure. See discussion in Chapter 4 (especially pp. 234–237). 17 See Chapter 4 for a more detailed discussion of ethopoeia. 18 The classical exposition of how the Bible interprets itself remains; Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). On the fluidity of canon and the importance of interpretation for keeping scripture a living text, see Moshe Halbertal, People of the Book: Canon, Meaning, and Authority (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).

108  Staging the Sacred genre simultaneously—​liturgical poetry reflects many moods and deploys many modes of performance. A brief survey of the diverse kinds of speaking, writing, and delivery common in late antiquity—​many of which intersected with and influenced each other—​will sharpen our appreciation for what makes liturgical poetry both a natural kind of writing to emerge in this context and one that is utterly distinctive. In this section, we will examine the eclectic, diverse, and dynamic performative context in which late antique hymnography emerged and flourished, and we will consider cultural elements that shaped the norms and expectations of the communities that enjoyed, performed, and transmitted them. These various kinds of writing and performance share overlapping bodies of technique, aesthetics, and norms, even as their functions and social settings differed. Liturgical poems reflect their specific performative contexts, aesthetic demands, and performative sensibilities. Most obviously, hymns resemble prayer (and more broadly, liturgical ritual) and exegesis (both homiletical and more explicitly scholarly); from other perspectives, however, including that of voice and persona, these modes of writing and performance resemble theater and oratory. Prayer and exegesis display forms of speech and direct address and assume an actual or conceptual audience. Homiletical, ritual, and hymnic texts all make use of late antique performative techniques, including those of theater and declamation. We will thus examine how the rhetoric and conventions of all these diverse but entangled genres—​prayer and ritual, exegesis and pedagogy, epic and lyric, drama and comedy, and oratory and declamation—​contributed to the complicated, evocative, and popular genre of liturgical poetry. Prayer and Ritual: “Hymnody,” as the term is used here, describes poems composed for performance during prayer services or religious rituals. Such poems embellish statutory prayers, in the way that the Hebrew Qedushta weaves itself around the first three benedictions of the Amidah, the central prayer of Jewish statutory liturgy; they enliven specific rituals, such as the night vigils of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople for which Romanos composed his kontakia; and they augment and distinguish the celebration of festivals, feast days, and fast days, including those determined by the liturgical calendar, the individual life cycle, and, in the case of the Christian hymns, imperial rites. Given their ritual context, it is natural that the language of prayer colors these hymns, but even more importantly, the perspective of the liturgy—​structured, organized, communal worship—​shapes them, rhetorically and conceptually, as well.

Take Your Places  109 Liturgical poems, like prayers, implicitly and explicitly address two audiences: one human (visible, audible) and one heavenly (invisible and silent, but attentive). God is either directly addressed (“You . . .”) or the subject of contemplation (“He . . .”). They also affirm (and thus teach) theological truths and perspectives, about the nature of God and God’s justice, the trajectory of history, and the relative places of Jews, Christians, Samaritans, and Gentiles in the moment and in the grand scheme, among other topics. Both prose prayer and hymnody in the traditions studied here can be described as structured and predictable; through verbal and literary patterns, they articulate and even constitute a sense of the orderly nature of the created world. Simple devices, such as acrostics, end rhyme, and refrains, convey completeness and impose order on words but also the world. And both prayers and liturgical poems are “powerful words”—​what the twentieth-​century philosopher John L. Austin described as “words that do things.”19 Precisely because the liturgy, including hymns, appeal to and are heard by the deity, and often quote the divine speech of sacred writ, they have the potential to change reality. They are fundamentally active words in a way that words in other contexts are not.20 Exegesis and Pedagogy: Liturgical poems often take their immediate inspiration from their community’s sacred canon.21 Such poems, like prose genres of scriptural interpretation (midrash, homilies, translations, and commentaries), typically engage deeply with a passage from the Bible, often a predetermined lectionary associated with the specific occasion or a calendrically appropriate text. Hymns and related compositions, like their prose exegetical counterparts, often “fill in the gaps” in the biblical text, fleshing out scenes and adding dialogue, and discerning the enduring moral lesson or truth in the text. They often do so imaginatively, through the addition of dialogue and the specifying of elements ambiguous in the original text, sometimes envisioning entire episodes not present in the biblical source text

19 On the idea that words “do” things, see the seminal work of John L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962). 20 Prose prayers possess many poetic elements, including scriptural allusions, rhythmic cadence, direct address, and speech-​in-​character; conversely, some hymns contain sections of what would generally be recognized as prose. In short, the boundary between poetry and prose can be ambiguous, and it is the density of these features—​and also, more ephemerally, elements of their delivery—​ that may define a passage as one or the other. On the boundaries between poetry and prose, see, for example, Laura S. Lieber, “Confessing from A–​Z: Penitential Forms in Early Synagogue Poetry,” in Penitential Prayer: Origins, Development, and Impact, vol. 3, ed. Mark J. Boda, Daniel K. Falk, and Rodney Werline (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008), 99–​125. 21 Chapter 1 discusses the variety of ways in which liturgical poetry relates to the idea of canon.

110  Staging the Sacred but part of broader, extant communal traditions (e.g., Abraham smashing the idols in his father’s workshop, or the Harrowing of Hell). They are also often richly intertextual; the Hebrew piyyutim, in particular, stand out for the way they quote catalogs of entire verses as intertexts, as if providing the listeners with the raw material for generating the expositions contained throughout the rest of the poem. All the poems, however, are rich with allusions to their scriptures, and through their intertextuality, they subtly but persistently underscore a message of the wholeness of sacred writ, coherence of canon, and consistency of meaning. Modern critical editions of these works ideally not only establish any links to lectionaries or biblical passages anchoring such works in the history of interpretation of a given community but also track down and annotate the warp and weft of hymnic intertextuality that runs throughout such works. The analysis of the poems here will often begin by contextualizing works in their exegetical setting, both as freestanding works of interpretation and as they relate to other extant traditions. In doing so, we are able to see how the two modes of writing relate to each other, and where the two kinds of writing differ. While both prose exegetical works and liturgical poems elaborate on biblical characters and voices, congregations experience homilies and exegesis in fundamentally different ways from how they experience hymns. For the prose texts, in some sense, content is primary. These works seek to elucidate, clarify, deepen, and teach scriptural materials, and to translate and apply elements of the traditional, sacred text into the present tense. They are teaching, translating, and applying scripture. Hymns—​governed both by the formal demands of poetry such as rhyme, acrostic, and refrain and by the fact that they were delivered in a ritual setting—​reflect an explicitly performed element: characters are not just developed but inhabited; the gulf between past and present shrinks; and the distance between heaven and earth collapses.22 Perhaps most importantly, the performance of these poems was not exclusively “frontal,” in the sense of communicating from the front (e.g., the stage) toward an implicitly passive audience. While we may not think of them this way today, prose texts were just as “performed” as poetry, particularly genres such as homilies and translations (such as the Aramaic targumim). Most text texts, however, were read aloud, and teaching is even more explicitly a performance-​ based mode of presentation, in which students are actively engaged. Sermons and teachings are, by and large, monodirectional: content flows from the

22 Laura S. Lieber, “Rhetoric of Participation,” Journal of Religion 90 (2010): 119–​147.

Take Your Places  111 speaker or teacher to his listeners, be they pupils, colleagues, or the general community. Liturgical poems, by contrast, through their engagement with ritual performance and by means of techniques such as refrains, moved back and forth, dynamically and reciprocally; they explicitly drew the congregation into the performance. Elements such as acoustics and sight lines not only support the congregation’s receipt of speech from the preacher or teacher but also constitute elements of an immersive performance experience. The community, as well as the poet (or prayer leader), inhabited characters and stepped into the imagined world of the poet’s creation, and they contributed actively to the experience, through their voices, physical engagement, and sound. In these hymns, the space between the pulpit (the bimah, the ambo) collapses, and the congregation in some sense steps onto the stage. Epic and Lyric: Liturgical hymns presumably shared touchstones of tradition, performative space, and audience with other religious writings, but elements of hymnic compositional artistry—​their formal elegance and emotional arcs, their cleverness and wit, their sense of drama and vivid conjuring of scene—​resemble nonreligious poetry from antiquity in both form and delivery. Hymns cultivated what Michèle Lowrie terms “an aesthetic of presence,” much like their “secular” counterparts, roughly epic (narrative poetry, typically lengthy and national in scope) and lyric (shorter works reflecting a singular perspective, usually in the first person).23 In their often intricate formalism, liturgical poems differ (superficially, at least) from previous Jewish and Christian poetic compositions: these poems do not mimic the Psalms or other biblical poems, in the way that the Qumranic Hodayot poems do.24 Literary works written in Greek and Latin—​a tremendous diversity of writings, including novellas, lyrics, and epics—​constituted a cultural touchstone for writers of any background in late antiquity, and civic hymns, modeled on works such as Horace’s Carmen Saeculare, might well have provided practical models for the composition and delivery of Jewish, Christian, and Samaritan hymns.25 In terms of 23 See Michèle Lowrie, Writing, Performance, and Authority in Augustan Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); she introduces the concept “the aesthetics of presence” on pages 6–​8. 24 On the aesthetics of Qumran poetry, see the essays collected in E. Chazon, Ruth Clements, and Avital Pinnick, eds., Liturgical Perspectives: Prayer and Poetry in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Leiden: Brill, 2003). 25 On Horace and public performance, see Lowrie, Writing, Performance, and Authority in Augustan Rome, 123–​141. It is worth noting that even now, reference works such as Scott McGill and Edward J. Watts, eds., A Companion to Late Antique Literature (Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World) (London: Wiley-​Blackwell, 2018), while addressing the broad culture of late antiquity (in ways that similar volumes that focus on early Christianity and early Judaism do not), routinely

112  Staging the Sacred function, liturgical poems share with epics the desire to establish culture and identity not by passively narrating it but by bringing it to life before an engaged audience. Both epic and hymnody mix exposition with dialogue, and in some instances include non-​narrative elaborations of detailed scenes and catalogs of items that serve to concretize and make imaginatively perceptible remote episodes and abstract ideas. In terms of voice, liturgical poems share with lyric a distinctive perspective and a sense of a narrator’s interiority, whether the poet’s own self or an imagined experience of a figure from legend or history. And, finally, intertextuality and allusiveness, often seen as features of prose exegesis, constitute a common feature of what is known as “the jeweled style” of poetry from this era, an aspect of literary composition that colored how listeners heard and envisioned the contents of the poems.26 It bears noting that while lyric and epic were two major genres of poetic composition in antiquity, these classifications themselves encompass broad varieties of style, function, and performance. Antiquity was a period of tremendous literary creativity, in which Jews, Christians, and Samaritans composed works for their constituencies alongside poets composing for civil, state, and pagan religious purposes. Each author wrote for a specific audience and setting, whether an intimate performance in a home, a state occasion on a public stage, or a religious ceremony in a sanctuary or courtyard. The exuberant diversity of styles of poetry reflects its ubiquity in late antique performative culture. Variety is a common denominator. We should assume that all the poets active in this period possessed a concept of “good” poetry and strove to compose at a high level, and that their listeners, too, were astute consumers, and that works endured—​in writing and in ritual use—​because they were recognized as meaningful and pleasing. Viewed through this lens, liturgical poems can be seen as synthesizing formal aesthetics from the larger culture with the thematic and performative demands of their distinctive ritual settings. Whether Samaritan, Christian, or Jewish, and regardless of whether written in Aramaic, Hebrew, or Greek, liturgical poems emerged in a milieu highly aware of its own poetic conventions and aesthetics.

neglect to include Hebrew and Aramaic works, although texts in languages such as Syriac and Coptic are included. The structure of such edited volumes often relegates “Jewish” topics to one or two chapters, and Samaritans may not merit sustained treatment at all. 26 See Michael Roberts, The Jeweled Style: Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989). Also note the multiple important essays anthologized in Jaś Elsner and Jesús Hernández Lobato, eds., The Poetics of Late Latin Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).

Take Your Places  113 It is worth noting that both classical Greek and Latin poems (at the time of their original composition and on into late antiquity) were often performed in public and were sung rather than read—​much like the liturgical poems.27 But performative contexts differed and setting matters. For example, the musical settings of the hymns—​insofar as we have evidence from the Greek and Syriac works—​were not directly adapted from “secular” modalities, although again there was undoubtedly influence on the music in terms of broad aesthetic trends.28 Even more significantly, classical poems were not typically part of a liturgical religious ritual, although their performance could certainly be ritualized or scripted, and they had distinct affinities for elements of the public and imperial cults, and a larger sense of civic mission might be reinforced or critiqued. Liturgical poems, by contrast, were performed in a setting replete with significance and, at some level, boundary creation and maintenance: in the presence of the deity, they conveyed entire worldviews and the meaning of history and taught orthodoxy and its theological limits, and while pleasure or even entertainment was part of their mechanism, one often understands that much was at stake. While the “us” of the liturgical poems, a conceptual stance made real through participatory rhetoric, often served to draw listeners into the emotional and psychological experience of the imagined moment, in the course of doing so it created a very real “them” outside the sanctuary walls. Hymnody, a shared experience between performer and congregation, shaped perceptions of reality. In sum, liturgical poems display a variety of formal affinities for classical epic (those hymns that stress narrative arc and character development, in particular) and lyric (shorter, more impressionistic, and philosophical or moralistic hymns). Epic and lyric, like liturgical hymns, were poems that were largely experienced not as texts read silently to one’s self, but through sung performance: arma virumque cano, opens the Aeneid, an epic of imperial significance, “I sing of war and a man.”29 The verb—​“I sing” (cano)—​reflects

27 See Alan Cameron, “Poetry and Literary Culture in Late Antiquity,” in Approaching Late Antiquity: The Transformation from Early to Late Empire, ed. Simon Swain and Mark Edwards (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 327–​356. 28 Lowrie, in Writing, Performance, and Authority in Augustan Rome, provides a helpful summary of the major lines of thinking concerning performance, recontextualization, the importance of writing versus singing versus declamation, and other topics of relevance here; see esp. pp. 1–​23. Our knowledge of Jewish or Samaritan music from this era is far less, but the cues within the hymns suggest musicality, and Jewish visual culture from the period indicates a familiarity with performance. 29 On the performance of epic and lyric in ancient Greece and Rome, in addition to Lowrie, Writing, Performance, and Authority in Ancient Rome, see Lowell Edmunds and Robert W. Wallace, eds., Poet, Public, and Performance in Ancient Greece (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University

114  Staging the Sacred the performative stance of the author. There is, however, a third genre of classical literature that can shed light on important aspects of liturgical poems, the most self-​consciously theatrical and fully staged form of classical literature: drama, the poetic-​speech performance of the theater. While epic and lyric were also routinely performed in a variety of settings, including public and domestic venues, dramas (and their counterpart, comedies) were intended for public display, often with political and social significance.30 Theater (Drama and Comedy): The origins of theater, as is well known, lie in religious rituals of Greek antiquity; in the Roman period, temples were integral to theater construction and public performance spaces.31 By late antiquity, however, theater and religion were often at odds. Figures of authority were often ambivalent toward theater, which could threaten their dignity through mockery and their power through mobilization of mobs, an anxiety emerging from the popularity of such entertainments and the power performances could wield.32 In general, theater—​both as a profession and as a site for gathering—​was widely associated with the less savory elements of society, and its performers considered people of loose morals and ill repute. Although Theodosius I (347–​395 ce) supported the theater, and the empress Theodora (500–​548 ce) was an actress before her imperial marriage, as early as the fifth century, the Church—​influenced by antitheatrical rhetoric from Church fathers—​had excommunicated all mimes. In 692, the Council of Trullo (Canon 51) banned (at least in theory) all forms of theatrical entertainment, including mimes, pantomimes, hunting games, and dancing on stage. As Katherine Dunbabin notes, this edict reveals “that [mimes and theater] were still a popular attraction and a problem for church authorities,” and she later states, “The very vehemence of the Christian preachers reflects their failure to have much impact on the behavior of most of their hearers.”33

Press, 2001). For a study of a phenomenon adjacent to poetic performance—​public processions in Rome—​note Jacob A. Latham, Performance, Memory, and Processions in Ancient Rome: The Pompa Circensis from the Late Republic to Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). 30 It is important to recall that the wealthy hosted performances in their homes; such performances complicate any overly simplistic private–​public distinction. See Shaun Tougher, “Having Fun in Byzantium,” in A Companion to Byzantium, ed. L. James (Oxford: Wiley-​Blackwell, 2010), 135–​145. 31 For a current, comprehensive study of the origins of theater in ancient Greece, see Eli Rozik, The Roots of Theatre: Rethinking Ritual and Other Theories of Origin (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2002). Katherine M. D. Dunbabin’s Theater and Spectacle in the Art of the Roman Empire (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 2016) is richly illustrated and particularly accessible. 32 The essential study of this topic remains Alan Cameron, Circus Factions: Blues and Greens at Rome and Byzantium (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976). 33 Dunbabin, Theater and Spectacle in the Art of the Roman Empire, 118 and 231.

Take Your Places  115 And furthermore, all evidence suggests that despite the ban, theater continued even as it changed—​and many of its functions may, in fact, have been taken over by more “acceptable” (and sustainable and, perhaps, affordable) forms of performance, including religious ritual.34 As popular as mime, pantomime, and hybrid forms of performance were in late antiquity, we can see them as art forms edging up to a precipice.35 The classical canon that undergirds pantomime performance was intrinsically polytheistic, while the plots of many mime performances were gleefully vulgar and often accused of being outright immoral.36 The renaissance of theater in late antiquity coincided with a period when the imperial authorities were taking increasingly aggressive measures to purge traditional civic festivals of polytheistic elements. Retzleff notes that “public festivals continued to be produced in the fourth and fifth centuries, but an effort was made to remove cultic elements and to make theatre a desacralized event”—​ theater was being consciously adapted to a new context and emerging but still novel norms.37 These “secularized” theaters would have been that much more attractive to Jewish, Christian, and Samaritan audiences, particularly if theatrical mockery of religious practices and religious figures diminished.38 For all the articulated ambivalence and displays of antagonism between theaters and religious communities, if we view both establishments from a perspective of structural elements and social function, powerful affinities 34 Extravagant spectacles such as games seem to have declined in the Western empire in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, due—​as Dunbabin puts it in Theater and Spectacle in the Art of the Roman Empire—​to “the economic problems, barbarian invasions, and general civic decline that characterized this whole period” (233). The evidence for the Eastern empire and Rome itself, however, suggests that theater (mime and pantomime in particular) remained highly popular. For an encyclopedic listing of anti-​theatrical canons, local and ecumenical, see Jules M. LeCompte de Douhet, Dictionnaire des mystères, moralités, rites figurés et cérémonies singulières (Paris, 1854; reprint, Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1989). 35 See discussion in Chapter 1. 36 Choricius of Gaza, writing in the sixth century, defended mimes as “not immoral” because vice was punished on the stage (Apol. Mim. 54–​55, from Richard Foerster and Eberhard Richtsteig, Choricii Gazaei opera [Leipzig: Teubner, 1929; repr. Stuttgart, 1972], 356:19–​357:5). On Choricius, see the discussion in Andrew W. White, “Mime and the Secular Sphere: Notes on Choricius’ Apologia Mimorum,” in New Perspectives on Late Antique, Spectacula, Studia Patristica LX, ed. Karin Schlapbach. (Leuven, Belgium: Peeters, 2013), 47–​59, and Laura S. Lieber, “Unholy Spectacle: The Ordeal of the Accused Adulteress in the Early Synagogue,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 29 (2022): 135–​162. 37 Retzleff, “Near Eastern Theatres in Late Antiquity,” 133. 38 Anyone asserting political or moral authority or making claims on ultimate truth—​civic or religious, Jewish or Christian—​could be a target of public derision. Similarly, ethnic minorities—​ those in positions of weakness—​were also vulnerable to ridicule. See discussion in Blake Leyerle, Theatrical Shows and Ascetic Lives: John Chrysostom’s Attack on Spiritual Marriage (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001), esp. pp. 100–​142, and Weiss, Public Spectacles in Roman and Late Antique Palestine, 227–​253.

116  Staging the Sacred emerge. Most obviously, liturgical poems, like theatrical performances, face an audience; in both genres, the authors explicitly anticipate public, oral performance in dynamic engagement with other parties, which may include other actors, musicians, and the public. There is a distinctive dynamism to theatrical performance, particularly the relationship with the audience, which can be structured (e.g., by means of a refrain) or rhetorical (by explicitly connecting the events “on the stage” with the lives and experiences of the listeners). The energy of performance is bidirectional, in that it moves not just from the performer to the audience but, just as importantly, from the audience to the stage, in a feedback loop of mutual encouragement. Just as significantly, the performers of liturgical poems often stepped into “character roles,” much in the way that actors would: they would not only speak words ascribed to the deity, ancestors, or other figures from scriptural tradition but also perform them. This essential act of impersonation and ventriloquism is particularly evident when we consider that poems may present changes in voice—​switching, for example, from Abraham to Sarah, or from Moses to God—​without narrating or explicitly cuing the change. If we grant the premise that these poems were comprehended and coherent, then we must presume that the identity of the speaker was conveyed in some way other than by explicit statements: by voice, by body language, or by some other “performed” cue in the delivery. Finally, liturgical poems, as with dramas and comedies, often use voice to create and convey emotions—​grief, joy, scorn, and awe—​that they intend their listeners to experience in an immediate way. In sum, theater and liturgical poetry are two genres deeply invested in creating immersive, transformative, cathartic experiences for their listeners. If anything, liturgical poetry takes the tools, techniques, and skills of theater and applies them to the realm of ritual, which serves to augment its power. Oratory and Declamation: Of all performers in antiquity, orators most resembled actors; public speakers admitted to learning from theatrical performers even as they strained to remain distinct from (and superior to) them, and to distinguish the art of declamation from the tawdry world of the stage.39 Oratory and declamation, like mime and pantomime, assume an audience’s presence, make use of role playing, and draw on a foundation of canonical texts and traditions. In practice, the boundaries separating theater 39 Aldrete provides a helpful synthesis of this material; see his study of performance, Gestures and Acclamations in Ancient Rome (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). For a study of the anxiety around this issue, see Maud W. Gleason, Making Men: Sophists and Self-​Presentation in Ancient Rome (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).

Take Your Places  117 and forum, rostrum and stage, were quite blurred, a feature of performance in antiquity noted from the time of Cicero until Libanius. According to Dio Chrysostom (Or. 18.4–​5), the only difference between orators and actors was preparation: public speakers declaimed extemporaneously while actors rehearsed.40 Teaching pupils to declaim, to speak eloquently with voice and body in public, required training them to perform and connect with listeners (including themselves and their peers) who were well acquainted with other forms of entertainment and their conventions: how body language conveyed interior state and emotion, how combinations of voice and stance could convey status and mood, what constituted humor and pathos and distinguished irony from sorrow, and where audiences were allowed to or expected to engage, signaling delight, affirmation, or displeasure. Instructors, in some sense, functioned as a distinctive kind of audience, providing feedback to students just as their listeners eventually would. Simultaneously, oratorical pedagogy also demanded that practitioners learn to recognize, and occasionally police, a perceived distinction between a dignified practice and a temptingly degenerate profession. While teachers cautioned students of oratory against mimicking vulgar mimes, effective performance suggests the impracticality of such advice. Gregory Aldrete notes that “the frequent criticisms leveled against orators who too exactly resembled actors indicate the thin line that divided performances on the rostra from those in the theater and the close affinity between the gestures used by orator and actor.”41 William Batstone observes that even on the semantic level, terms such as actores (doer, performer) and persona (self-​presentation, mask, taking on a role) applied to both professions.42 Orators studied the thespian arts to improve their own rhetoric and delivery, and some of Rome’s most famous orators—​notably Cicero—​befriended actors and appreciated how oratory could benefit from actors’ skills; Cicero observed of one speaker: Sulpicius indeed was of all orators whom I have ever heard the most elevated in style, and, so to speak, the most theatrical (tragicus). His voice was

40 See Leyerle, Theatrical Shows and Ascetic Lives, 61. Whitney Shiner provides a helpful synthesis with an eye toward early Christianity in Proclaiming the Gospel: First-​Century Performance of Mark (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2003), 77–​102. Also note discussion in Chapter 5. 41 Aldrete, Gestures and Acclamations in Ancient Rome, 68. 42 William Batstone, “The Drama of Rhetoric at Rome,” in The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rhetoric, ed. Erik Gunderson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 212–​227.

118  Staging the Sacred strong and at the same time pleasing and of brilliant timbre; his gesture and bodily movement extraordinarily graceful, but with a grace that seemed made for the forum rather than for the stage; his language was swift and of easy flow without being either redundant or verbose.43

But Cicero and other orators also criticized rivals whose delivery was deemed too theatrical—​too close to what was familiar from the stage—​particularly if it was judged inappropriately effeminate.44 Both acting and public speaking were concerned with effective means of persuasion, audience engagement, and mimesis. The rhetorical technique of ethopoeia—​stepping imaginatively into the shoes of another, one of the major exercises preserved in the progymnasmata (handbooks that outlined the program for training orators)—​involves the creation of a character, whether done in order to represent a legal client better or to perform on a stage.45 The related concepts of enargeia and ekphrasis, “vividness,” speak to the ability to bring a scene alive before listeners—​ whether the speaker is recreating a tableau that could justify a jealous husband’s murderous rage in the context of a trial or make understandable the emotions of a father confronting a command to sacrifice his son in scripture.46 Actor and advocate both seek to persuade their listeners to enter into the reality of their character, and thus the truth of their story, whether their objective is to entertain or obtain a favorable judgment. Finally, actors and public speakers both performed in venues where they could anticipate dynamic engagement with their audiences; late antiquity 43 Cicero, Brutus §203 (LCL 342, 173–​175). 44 See Aldrete, Gestures and Acclamations in Ancient Rome, esp. 44–​84; Maud Gleason, Making Men, 103–​130. Cicero was keenly attuned to masculinity in delivery, noting, “The superior orator will therefore vary and modulate his voice; now raising and now lowering it, he will run through the whole scale of tones. He will also use gestures in such a way as to avoid excess: he will maintain an erect and lofty carriage, with but little pacing to and fro, and never for a long distance. As for darting forward, he will keep it under control and employ it but seldom. There should be no effeminate bending of the neck, no twiddling of the fingers, no marking the rhythm with the finger-​joint. He will control himself by the pose of his whole frame, and the vigorous and manly attitude of the body, extending the arm in moments of passion, and dropping it in calmer moods” (Or. 18.59 [LCL 342, pp. 348–​349]). Quintilian, however, remarks that even Cicero was accused of such excesses: “And yet [Cicero’s] own contemporaries had the hardihood to attack him as bombastic, Asianic, redundant, repetitive, sometimes unsuccessful in his humour, and undisciplined, extravagant, and (heaven forbid!) almost effeminate in his Composition” (Inst. Or. 12.10.12 [LCL 494, pp. 288–​289]). 45 Ethopoeia and prosopopoeia are examined in depth in Chapter 4. 46 Ekphrasis is the subject of Chapter 3. On the relationship, and common confusion, between enargeia (vividness) and energeia (defined by Westin as “actualized outcome”), see Monica Westin, “Aristotle’s Rhetorical Energeia: An Extended Note,” Advances in the History of Rhetoric 20.3 (2017): 252–​261.

Take Your Places  119 was the golden age of acclamation, and listeners were also heard. While our evidence from the world of liturgical performance, particularly that of liturgical poetry, is less clear, the popularity of refrains may have served to formalize this kind of exchange, and contextual evidence (such as that discussed in the opening of this chapter) also suggest the communal energy of hymnody.47 Liturgical poets, like orators, had much to gain from theater, even as their leaders and institutions expressed significant ambivalence toward actors and acting. Like orators, however, they sought to convey authenticity, not artifice, and oratory suggested status, dignity, and education, while acting suggested frivolity and licentiousness. The rostrum, bimah, and ambo shared presumptions (or pretentions) of gravity and a seriousness of purpose, of truth. Neither orators nor liturgists sought, primarily, to entertain; they sought to persuade and affirm, whether of the truth of their argument, the motives of their client, the orthodoxy of their theology, the insightfulness of their exegesis, or the correctness of their views. As Cicero notes, “orators are the players who act real life”—​truth, and the conveyance of truth to those who did not witness events, was the purpose of public speech.48 And if orators spoke to a certain kind of reality, framed and presented in such a way that they hoped their assertions of its nature were incontrovertible, then liturgical poets faced an even more serious task, in that they spoke to existential elements of their audiences’ lives: not just the nature of society, but reality; not only human truths, but divine. However, granted the significant differences in setting, for liturgical performers

47 Audience participation and practices such as acclamation are treated in Chapter 5; also see Laura S. Lieber, “With One Voice: Elements of Acclamation in Early Jewish Liturgical Poetry,” Harvard Theological Review 111.3 (2018): 401–​424. 48 Pantomimes and orators were noted for their ability to evoke strong emotions in viewers; Cicero recounts how Gracchus’ oration moved even his enemies to tears and he laments the loss of such skill: “My reason for dwelling on these points is because the whole of this department has been abandoned by the orators, who are the players that act real life, and has been taken over by the actors, who only mimic reality” (De Or. 3.56.214 [LCL 349, pp. 170–​171]). Actors might well have felt the reverse, of course—​that their craft revealed something true that simple facts could not elicit, and their performances possessed an eloquence unique to the stage. We see such an argument made in a recent work of historical fiction—​a genre in some ways akin to theater; in this case, a character deeply formed by watching theater reflects, “She missed good theater more than anything else. . . . She thought of the small gestures of the actors, of the long sentences, their ever-​varying, nearly musical rhythm, now swift and clattering, now dying gradually away, now questioning, now bristling with authority. . . . [I]‌t was not theater that was false, no, everything else was pretense, disguise, and frippery, everything that was not theater was false. On the stage people were themselves, completely true, fully transparent” (Daniel Kehlmann, Tyll: A Novel, trans. Ross Benjamin [New York: Pantheon, 2020], 166–​167).

120  Staging the Sacred comparisons to oratory might have seemed aspirational, or at least respectable; to acting, an insult. Just as orators recognized, with varying degrees of enthusiasm and resignation, that their craft could benefit from a study of the stage, liturgical performers would have found much to learn from the delivery techniques of both professions. The best speakers even now understand that entertainment is essential to engagement, and thus to persuasion, and so the techniques shared by actors and orators would have supported the work of other religious declaimers and singers, too. After all, a performer needs an audience, and listeners’ attention must be gained, captured, and kept. Delivery was a skill, and delivery of vividly persuasive truth was the preoccupation of orators; their tools would have been essential for religious speech to be compelling, particularly in the dynamic, contentious period of late antiquity, when performers were everywhere. By way of this section’s conclusion, we should note that all of these genres—​religious and secular, poetic and prose, entertaining or imbued with gravitas—​intersect with each other, and the boundaries among them are often blurred and overlapped, sometimes willfully so, sometimes because of simple effectiveness. Every written work presumes an audience, whether a reader or a listener, in a private home or a public forum; every communication is a translation of vision, deploying some form of imagination and engagement of the mind, and through the mind, emotions and senses. Words create connections and convey understandings. The analysis here surveys the variety of kinds of speech common in late antiquity: prayer, exegesis, poetry, drama, and oratory. It also affords an overview of the techniques that typified communicative performance in late antiquity, in order to understand how the performance of liturgical poetry resembled other kinds of performance, and what made it distinctive—​key aspects of which will be developed further in this study. In the following sections, all of which consider the role of audience and how audiences are engaged in liturgical performance, we will focus exclusively on hymnody, in order to understand in greater detail how delivery and performance functioned in synagogues and churches in late antiquity. A range of texts by Jewish, Christian, and Samaritan poets, writing in Syriac, Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, will illustrate a range of techniques and concerns of special interest in the study of liturgical poetry, but informed by the kinds of speech considered earlier.

Take Your Places  121

Liturgical Syntax: Ephrem and Romanos on the Harrowing of Hell Liturgical poetry manifests a dynamism similar to that of theater and oratory, and as in theater and in the rhetorical exercises that orators studied, much of the success of liturgical poems relies on creating character and generating intellectual engagement as a means of conveying truths and ritual experiences of deeper significance. I use the term “dynamism” to convey the essential give and take with the audience, in physical, emotional, and intellectual terms. This aspect of performance includes not only obvious features such as refrains, in which the congregation joins its voice to the performance, but also techniques such as perspectival shift, which lends the relationships among characters in the hymns and between the hymn and the audience a complex fluidity. Subjects become objects, speakers are spoken to, and audiences become performers, and this dynamism integrates the community into the performance, as integral components of the dramaturgy. Indeed, attention to the setting highlights how these works resemble other genres but also inhabited a uniquely complicated performative space, one replete with numinous meaning. As prayer, these works speak to God on behalf of the community; as exegesis, they are rooted in scripture and sacred narratives; as poetry, they exemplify the aesthetics of artistry; as oratory, they seek to persuade of their truth claims; and as theater, they present characters, action, and entertainment. Liturgical poetry was appealing but also deeply significant. In order to more fully understand this hymnic (i.e., specifically liturgical-​ performative) deployment of address and voice, we will consider closely how poets employ the range of first-​, second-​, and third-​person perspectives, both singular and plural. This use of language provides the most immediate and explicit indication of how rhetoric drew listeners into the full experience of the hymns, even as it constitutes an element of the works fairly readily apparent over the centuries, unlike more ephemeral components such as music and auditory ambiance. Each grammatical component (first, second, or third person, in the singular or plural) expresses and constructs a specific set of relationships among the figures, including the congregation. Grammatical “person” is a key component of character creation and performance; in a liturgical setting, all individuals are “characters,” in shifting proximity to the hymn’s narration.

122  Staging the Sacred To illustrate the subtle skill of hymnographers’ command of speech, let us examine two Christian hymns that embellish the tradition known as “the harrowing of Hell” and Jesus’ defeat of death. These two compositions demonstrate poetic manipulation of perspective and highlight their palette of choices in the use of voice.49 First we will examine a madrasha (a term often rendered simply as “hymn”50) by the fourth-​century ce Christian poet and homilist, Ephrem the Syrian of Nisibis, written in Syriac Aramaic and performed with the assistance of a female choir;51 then we will consider a kontakion, written two centuries later in Greek, by the great hymnographer of Justinian’s reign, Romanos the Melodist. The hymns share rhetorical features reflective of their performance within the liturgy and suggestive of their existence as miniature staged dramas: each hymn begins with a stanza that transitions from the liturgical, congregational setting into the imagined “biblical” scene; and each poem concludes with a stanza that leads the congregation back out from the world of the story into their own world. The bulk of each poem, however, is written as direct speech, in the personae of characters: in Ephrem, in the voice of Death; in Romanos, the voices of Hades and Satan.52 Ephrem begins and ends this eighteen-​stanza hymn with third-​person narration about God, which he frames through the lens of God’s relationship to the community. The poet speaks from within the congregation, in the first-​person plural: “Our Lord subdued His might and constrained it /​that 49 The motif of death’s defeat is rooted in verses from the Hebrew Bible and New Testaments, including Isa. 25:8, Hosea 13:14, 1 Cor. 15:26, 2 Tim. 1:10, and others. See the monograph (a revised dissertation) on this topic by Peter G. Bolt, Jesus’s Defeat of Death: Persuading Mark’s Early Readers, Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 125 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Also note Georgia Frank, “Christ’s Descent to the Underworld in Ancient Ritual and Legend,” in Apocalyptic Thought in Early Christianity, ed. Robert Daly (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009), 211–​226; and Graham H. Twelftree, “Exorcism and the Defeat of Beliar in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs,” Vigiliae Christianae 65 (2011): 170–​188. 50 See the excellent discussion of nomenclature in Jeffrey Wickes, Bible and Poetry in Late Antique Mesopotamia: Ephrem’s Hymns on Faith (Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019), 1–​6. 51 Susan Ashbrook Harvey has articulated the significance of how Ephrem and other Syriac writers voiced Mary; see her essay, “On Mary’s Voice: Gendered Words in Syriac Christian Tradition,” in The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies: Gender, Asceticism, and Historiography, ed. Dale B. Martin and Patricia Cox Miller (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2005), 63–​86, and Harvey, Song and Memory: Biblical Women in Syriac Tradition (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2010). On the performance of Ephrem, see Jeffrey Wickes’ recent essay, “Between Liturgy and School: Reassessing the Performative Context of Ephrem’s Madrāšê,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 26 (2018): 25–​51. 52 Jacob of Sarug’s poetic homily (memra), “On the Conquest of Death,” offers a useful contrast to the poems of Ephrem and Romanos, in that it is exclusively narrative and makes no use of reported speech, nor does it offer explicit evidence of communal participation. For the relevant passage of text, see Jacob of Sarug’s Homilies on the Resurrection, ed. and trans. Thomas Kollamparampil (Piscataway,

Take Your Places  123 His living death might give life to Adam” (Carm. Nis. 36, Stanza 1, ll. 1–​2).53 Likewise, in the final stanza, the poet speaks to “our King” and concludes by urging the community: “great glory let us ascribe to Him . . .” (Stanza 18, ll. 1, 6). In this language, we can easily hear the rhetoric of prayer. The poet stands within the congregation on whose behalf he speaks, in praise of a deity, whom he addresses indirectly with praise. The rest of the poem is more complex, however. The refrain switches from the plural, communal perspective (we/​us) to an individual voice in the first person singular (I/​me): “Blessed is He who gave me the victory and resurrected the dead, to His glory!” This refrain immediately raises an important question: Who is the “me” of this refrain? Does Jesus speak these words, as the agent of divine triumph over death, and should “me” perhaps be capitalized? Or do the humans in the congregation utter them, each individually expressing wonder and gratitude for the assurance of ultimate immortality? As we will see, the use of the first person in this hymn illustrates how even the congregation “plays a role” in the hymn. Ephrem disaggregates and individuates the “us” of the stanza into a collection of individual “me” voices in the refrain. The use of the first person (singular and plural) in the refrain introduces a level of uncertainty into the hymn concerning who speaks to whom, and it thus lends the work a riddle-​like quality that persists into the body of the poem. The grammatical forms are clear, but to whom do the pronouns refer? All but one of the next sixteen stanzas continue to employ the first-​person voice, speaking directly to God, but also about God. The second stanza opens: “If you are God, reveal your might! But if you are mortal, feel our might!” (ll. 1–​2). Who is this who speaks so skeptically and even derisively, perhaps to God? The pronoun “our” indicates plural, but to whom does it refer, and could it be an individual using the “royal we”? Modern translators may be tempted to gloss the text—​to resolve the ambiguity by indicating who

NJ: Gorgias Press, 2008), 40–​47. This is not due to genre conventions, as other memre by Jacob are rich with reported speech, and while memre do not include elements such as refrains that directly indicate participation, it is quite possible that the performer and his audience engaged each other by less formal means. 53 Text from Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, 240.120 (1963), 8–​14; a translation into English can be found in J. T. S. Stopford, “The Nisibene Hymns,” in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-​Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church: Second Series. Translated into English with Prolegomena and Explanatory Notes, vol. 2, ed. J. Gwynn (Oxford: James Parker & Company, 1898), 197–​199, and Sebastian P. Brock, The Harp of the Spirit: Poems of St. Ephrem the Syrian, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Aquila Books for the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, 2013), 55–​65.

124  Staging the Sacred speaks to whom—​but in a live performance, such interpretations would have been made by other means.54 Understanding the poem would, itself, rely to some extent on the performer’s interpretation of the lines. Through intonation, stance, volume, and gesture, the performer could have telegraphed an answer or extended uncertainty. As if anticipating the listeners’ uncertainty, the third stanza draws us closer to an identity, but still with the rhetoric of a riddle: “I am he who has conquered all wise men” (l. 1), and likewise, the next stanza opens, “I, alone, have conquered multitudes” (l. 1).55 From here, the poet continues to write in this distinctive but unnamed voice, describing how none escapes his grasp—​ except Enoch and Elijah (Stanza 7)—​but while this figure speaks directly to Jesus throughout the work, he is not explicitly identified until Stanza 11. At last, Ephrem resolves any ambiguity. He tells his listeners, “Death ended his mocking speech” (l. 1); then, in a few short lines, the poet describes the defeat of death and the liberation of humanity from his clutches: “the voice of our Lord sounded into Hell, and He cried aloud and burst the graves one by one” (ll. 1–​2). Stanza 11 constitutes a pivot point within the work, and it consists exclusively of narration written in the third person. Stanza 12 resumes the voice of Death—​his identity now revealed—​but death has been defeated and has seen the error of his earlier ways. He expresses regret, misery, confusion, and fear, and his final lines, in Stanza 17, begin with a petition and concludes with a pledge of fealty: “O Jesus, King, accept my supplication . . . when I hear your horn /​I will lead the dead out with my own hand upon your arrival!” (ll. 1, 7–​8). Death, who spoke in the majestic plural (“our might!”) in Stanza 2 finds himself, here at the end of the poem, entirely overcome. He appeals to Jesus in utter subservience. Much could be said about Death’s rhetoric and Ephrem’s skillful use of personification in this poem, but for the moment, let us attend to issues of voice and delivery. In terms of voice and rhetorical stance, the opening stanza emphasizes the relationship between people and God, collectively. In the refrain, the choir (or community) speaks not in their own voice, but in that of Jesus, who actually defeated Death, but they also speak from their own perspective, because the defeat of Death is a victory for every mortal. The people 54 On the physicality of delivery, and how it could enable the performer to make interpretative decisions of this sort, see Chapter 5. 55 The use of the riddle here echoes the use of the same rhetorical technique in Qallir’s lament on Jeremiah and the beautiful woman, discussed in Chapter 4. It is not that these poems are related but, rather, that riddles were an effective means for listener engagement.

Take Your Places  125 participate in the construction of this character but are characters themselves. At the same time, in the body of the poem, it is Death who speaks to God directly (“you”) while the congregation addresses God indirectly (“he”). Death’s directness might reflect arrogance, and the communal indirection reflects modesty—​what might be understood as a respectful distance. It is worth noting, too, that the refrain adopts liturgical phrasing (“Blessed be . . .”). The congregation, appropriately, offers a benediction. A simple study of pronouns—​subjects, objects, possessives, and vocatives—​in the poem puts the elegant structure of the poem on display. A close reading of pronouns, from the perspective of performances, raises important questions concerning the mechanics of leader–​congregation dynamics, even as attentiveness to such linguistic-​rhetorical elements sheds light on aspects of the delivery and reception of such works. If we accept that the first half of the poem was comprehended (a useful assumption but one that must be recognized as stressing intellectual content over elements such as music, and one relying on reasonable acoustics and sight lines in the performance space), we must assume that the poet in some fashion conveyed the persona of the speaker to his listeners. That is, his delivery of the speeches involved effective use of the technique of ethopoeia to personify the figure of Death and create it as a recognizable character even in the absence of narrative gloss, which we do not have until Stanza 11. Among the tools at the performer’s disposal were the gestures of hands, the stance of the body, vocal intonations, and other physical cues and clues that would color delivery. The possibilities, which leave no trace in any record, are diverse and would reflect the performer’s interpretation of his “script,” but extrapolating from what we know of theater and oratory, we can imagine that the performer would have physically indicated the change in speaker after the first recitation of the refrain, when the poem shifts from setting the scene in the communal voice to speaking in character as Death. Technically, the performance consists of performer-​refrain-​performer, but the identity embodied and voiced by the performer changes in the course of the hymn. We can presume that the listeners anticipated the overall topic of the poem, but the unmarked change of speaker (and the change to direct address of God) after the first stanza nonetheless suggests extra-​textual means of expression. Furthermore, the character of Death is not static: in Stanzas 2–​10, Death speaks arrogantly and dismissively, refusing to believe the identity of the being to whom he speaks; in Stanzas 12–​17, Death confesses his error and arrogance gives way to abasement and supplication. The performance

126  Staging the Sacred must convey these dynamic moods. Finally, we should note that Death speaks directly to Jesus, using apostrophe and vocatives; Jesus is the “audience.” While Jesus never speaks directly in response, in Stanza 11, the poet narrates a powerful divine speech act: “He [Jesus] cried aloud and burst the graves one by one.” In that single stanza, Ephrem describes in compressed, dramatic terms the liberation of the dead.56 With regard to performance, Death speaks the majority of the lines, the divine is silent but ever present and actively involved, and the congregation functions as a chorus, overhearing, reacting, and commenting. Taking rhetoric and intelligibility into account, and considering what we know of theatrical and oratorical delivery in late antiquity, we can begin to envision the choreography of this hymn’s performance. In the opening stanza, the poet sets the stage: in this prologue, he aligns himself with the people (“our Lord”) but speaks of God indirectly; God is the object of congregational reflection, led by the poet-​performer. The refrain draws the communal voice in, affirming what the poet has said but speaking in the individual voice (“me”), collectively (i.e., many “me” voices speaking at once), even as it participates in the ambiguity of the speaker’s identity (is “me” actually Jesus, in which case the community has stepped into character?). With Stanza 2, the character of Death occupies center stage, with the refrain constituting a version of a chorus, a righteous counterpoint from the winning side (Jesus and mortals): first in defiance of Death’s misguided arrogance in the first half of the poem, then as a triumphant response to his humiliation in the second. The penultimate stanza concludes the “theater,” with the poet resuming the narrative voice in the final stanza, the epilogue. It is a play performed by the community for a divine audience that remains offstage. In contrast to the simple, if occasionally oblique, elegance of Ephrem’s composition and its singular focus on the creation of Death’s persona, Romanos’ kontakion on the same theme, Kontakion, “On the Victory of the Cross” 56 While Narsai’s memra on the Resurrection does not devote significant time to the Harrowing of Hell, it provides a useful counter-​example to the Ephrem. The only spoken lines belong to Jesus, who commands Hell, “Give me the captive sons of Adam who the evil one gave you! /​You have enslaved long enough the free-​born sons under your harsh yoke” (ll. 145–​146). The responses of Death and the dead are described, but in narrative rather than direct speech: “Death trembled and was dismayed” in l. 147, and, in a rhetorically impressive line, “the dead to the dead were recounting the new (event) that had come to pass /​how a dead (man) prevailed over death and raised the dead” (ll. 155–​156). For the relevant passages, with original and English translation, see Narsai’s Metrical Homilies on the Nativity, Epiphany, Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension: Critical Edition of the Syriac Text, trans. Frederick G. McLeod (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1979), 144–​147.

Take Your Places  127 (O. #22), imagines a larger “cast” and thus places even greater demands on the performer and his congregation to discern the poem’s content and meaning, and to grasp its exegetical and theological messages. Romanos’ poem, a dialogue between Death and Satan, offers a complicated exemplar of a popular genre of late antique hymn, the dispute poem. Indeed, Ephrem wrote a dispute poem using the same conceit (Carm. Nis. 52), but the dialogue Ephrem stages between the alternating voices of Death and Satan is more static and straightforward compared with Death’s more emotional and dramatic monologue in Carm. Nis. 36.57 Romanos’ distinctive inflection of this established set piece highlights his impressive theatrical flair and offered an opportunity to the performer to display his own skill.58 The text of Romanos’ kontakion on the harrowing of Hell preserves three alternative poetic prefaces (proemia).59 The first two appeal particularly strong to the sense of sight, and all three reflect distinct rhetorical tactics: the first opens with an image suggestive of creation restored, “The sword of flame no longer guards the gate of Eden . . .” (an allusion to Gen. 3:24, the punishment now revoked), and goes on to address God directly (“You”) from the individual perspective (“my savior”); the second begins with graphic violence, “Nailed to the form of the Cross . . .,” and continues to address God directly three times in the context of a communal dynamic (“you redeemed us . . . you snatched our souls . . . you brought us back . . .”). The third proemion lacks direct speech and is much shorter than the other two; it states in full, “All things in heaven and earth rightly rejoice with Adam /​Because He has been called—​Again into Paradise.” Each proemion concludes with the phrase—​ “Again to Paradise”—​a phrase that constitutes the refrain that ends every stanza.60 While the phrase is fixed and unchanging, it is spoken by a variety of figures and accrues a plethora of intonations; it becomes an exclamation, a rhetorical question, a cry of dismay, and a triumphant shout. This one short phrase—​“Again into Paradise”—​draws the congregation directly into the 57 Ephrem’s Carmina Nisibena 35–​42 are collected under the general title, “On Our Lord, Death, and Satan.” These are treated as a thematically unified whole along with Hymns 52–​68, which follow under the common title, “On Satan and Death.” 58 As Ephrem Lash notes in the preface to his fine English translation of this hymn, “As in Greek tragedy the dramatic events take place ‘off stage,’ and the Kontakion takes the form of a dramatic dialogue between Hades and Satan below the earth as they comment on the drama taking place on earth” (On the Life of Christ: Kontakia [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994], 154). The impressive theatricality of this piece is unmistakable. 59 The text is O #22 (164–​171). The best English translation is that of Lash, On the Life of Christ, 155–​163. 60 Stanza 10 departs from this pattern, perhaps a sign of textual corruption, and concludes with “this man to paradise.”

128  Staging the Sacred drama. But the congregation is more than a simple chorus; their line is static but their character is not. The first stanza of the kontakion sets the stage. The poet sketches out a scene, stark and vivid in its spare detail, establishing an efficient link to the biblical episode: “Three crosses Pilate fixed on Golgotha /​Two for the thieves and one for the Giver of Life.” In the third line, however, he shifts our gaze downward, to a world of activity below the Crucifixion scene, and he introduces one of two main voices in the poem: Hades (the personification of Death). We find ourselves listening as Hades cries out in pain and bewilderment, warning the denizens of the underworld that he is about to vomit up Adam and the rest of the dead. Hades’ exclamation alarms Satan, who “runs, crawling” (Stanza 2, l. 2) to Hades’ side—​an unsettling motion that befits “the crafting, scheming serpent” (l. 1). Satan attempts to convince Hades that he is overreacting, that he misunderstands what he perceives above—​“off-​stage,” so to speak, but an image of the character’s imagined gaze that Romanos helps the listener envision—​while Hades counters that it is Satan who fails to perceive the truth. The two voices alternate for several stanzas: “Who gave you such an idea, Hades?” opens Stanza 4, while in the follow stanza, Hades addresses his counterpart as “the cunning serpent” of Genesis 3:1. The banter is rapid, but the orchestration of the dialogue is clear. Each figure speaks for one stanza, and then the other figure responds in the next, in a format typical of “dispute poems,” a genre that goes back to ancient Sumer and remained popular throughout the Levant and Mediterranean.61 In the initial back and forth (Stanzas 2 and 3), the poet specifies who speaks; in the subsequent exchange (strophes 4–​6), the speakers are not named, although they continue speak directly to each other. Presumably, physical and verbal delivery continued the unambiguous presentation of character. The poet’s rhetoric in these first six stanzas is clear but relatively static: Hades speaks, then Satan speaks; Hades speaks, then Satan speaks; Hades speaks, then Satan speaks. The banter is witty, and its scriptural allusions and lawyerly argumentation lend the exchange a pleasing depth, but the dialogue itself is not particularly lively. Other examples of this type of Hades–​Satan dispute poem, such as Ephrem’s Carm. Nis. 52, were 61 On dialogue-​dispute poems in Syriac, see Sebastian Brock, “Syriac Dispute Poems: The Various Types,” in Dispute Poems and Dialogues in the Ancient and Mediaeval Near East: Forms and Types of Literary Debates in Semitic and Related Literature, ed. Gerrit J. Reinink, Herman L. J. Vanstiphout (Leuven, Belgium: Peeters, 1991), 109–​119.

Take Your Places  129 content with this static debate structure, but Romanos introduces significant rhetorical complications starting at the end of Stanza 6. At this point, Romanos begins to add layers to the speeches of his characters. In Stanza 6, Satan’s confidence leads him to anticipate a taunt with which he will tease Hades when Hades’ fears fail to come to pass: “For when Christ is buried, I shall come to you and say /​‘Who now is bringing Adam back—​Again into Paradise?’ ” (ll. 9–​11). In strophe 7, Hades reports to Satan what the dead are saying to him: “And the dead are shouting, ‘Hades! Understand /​ for Adam is running back—​Again into Paradise!’ ” (ll. 9–​11). We thus move from direct speech to anticipated (imagined) speech to reported speech. This becomes even more complicated in strophe 9, when we encounter what might be called “nested speech”: Hades reports to Satan a conversation between Jesus and the thief that he has overheard: the thief asks Jesus to remember him, and Jesus responds, “Today, poor beggar, you will reign with me /​For with me you will go in—​Again into Paradise” (ll. 9–​11). The poet nests a dialogue within a dialogue. For a congregation to follow this performance would have required a virtuoso presentation by the performer. In strophe 10, at the midpoint of the hymn, the poet pauses his rehearsal of the argument and offers a stanza that is half narration and half inner monologue. In the first lines, he depicts Satan’s responses to Hades’ report of Jesus’ words, telling us he “wilts” (l. 2), he “is astounded” (l. 4), and, overcome, he “strikes his breast and argues” (l. 5). In the second half of the strophe, we become privy to Satan’s thoughts, as he asks himself rhetorical questions and imagines Jesus the shocking scene of Jesus ignoring Pilate but telling a “murderer. . . . ‘Come, live in pleasure’ ” (l. 8). By Stanza 11, Satan has persuaded himself of the truth of Hades’ perspective and confides in Hades (and by extension, in the congregational audience) how he shuddered when water, the sign of life, gushed from the wound in Jesus’ side. In Stanzas 12 and 13, Hades and Satan join voices in a duet: “together they bewail their fate. . . . ‘As we have fallen together, so let us grieve /​for Adam is going back—​again into Paradise’ ” (Stanza 12, ll. 3 and 9–​11). The final stanzas of the poem are almost exclusively in Satan’s voice, although he quotes Jesus in Stanza 14 (reporting that he has heard Jesus, at the point of death, forgiving those who sin against him) and directly addresses Hades in Stanza 16: “Now, therefore, Hades, groan and I will harmonize with your wails /​Let us lament . . .” (ll. 1–​2). Following Satan’s appeal, Stanza 17 embeds a brief

130  Staging the Sacred exchange and concludes with what may be a monologue or could be another duet.62 In strophe 18, the kontakion’s final stanza, the poet abruptly transitions from the drama of Satan and Hades in the underworld, and the imagined stage beneath the Crucifixion, to his own voice, his own space, and the present tense. Here in the epilogue he speaks to God directly (“You”), adopting the first-​person plural (“we, us, our”) that locates him within the congregation and as their representative voice. The end of the dispute poem in the underworld is not explicitly marked; Stanza 17 likewise speaks in the first-​person plural, as Death and the Devil concede their defeat. The transition was presumably marked not only by content—​the direct address to God as “Most high and glorious” (l. 1)—​but also by the physical performance, including intonation, gesture, and stance. The final lines draw the community, together with the poet, directly into the story, as they speak to God: “To us your Tree gives back /​every day and moment wealth beyond price /​for it brings us all—​Again into Paradise” (ll. 8–​11). A hymn that constructed a poem in alternating voices from the realm of myth now pivots to a stanza that seems to open a new dialogue, but one that leaves the response unsaid, as the congregation waits for God’s response. For most of the poem, every iteration of the refrain had been in a “voice”—​primarily that of Satan or Hades; in this final instance, the first-​person plural of the refrain transforms from a rhetorical component of persona creation into an actual plurality of voices. The congregation does not speak in the voice of a biblical character, but in their own voices, on their own behalf. What had been a story, told with wit and humor, becomes increasingly serious and important to the listeners’ own lives. This drama speaks to their own fates. Where Ephrem’s poem consisted almost entirely of a single voice, sustained throughout the performance of the hymn, Romanos creates a miniature, multi-​character play. Indeed, while dispute poems are an ancient genre, Romanos’ nesting of voices and embedding dialogues with a dialogue suggests a significantly subtler form of performance. In Stanza 9, the

62 Lash notes in the version of his translation posted online (absent the print edition) that the speakers of the opening lines of Stanza 17 are difficult to identify. He writes, “The Oxford editors assume that Hades takes up the dialogue, while the French editor makes the Devil’s answer continue from line two to the end of the stanza. The American translator [Carpenter] has failed to see that the speaker in line two is not the same as that in line one. I follow the Oxford punctuation” (https://​web. arch​ive.org/​web/​200​6071​8214​957/​http://​anasta​sis.org.uk/​ROM​K22.pdf; accessed August 31, 2022). While the text’s ambiguity may be a challenge for a translator, it is perhaps an opportunity for a performer, who must voice an interpretation.

Take Your Places  131 performer speaks as Hades reporting the conversation between Jesus and the thief; in Stanza 14, the performer speaks in the voice of Satan as he narrates the “offstage” utterances of Jesus—​and here Romanos even suggests a gesture: “Quiet, be patient, lay hand on mouth!” (l. 2) Satan cries out to Hades. We can imagine the performer miming this motion, and the combination of humor and potential buffoonery recalls the performance of mime. Finally, in Stanza 12, the poet speaks as both Hades and Satan in a single line: “ ‘Alas, my comrade!’ ‘Alas, my companion!’ /​‘As we have fallen together, so let us grieve . . . ’ ” (ll. 8–​9). Performing this work would have made tremendous demands on the performer, but it must have been marvelous theater for the congregation, as this was not just a good story, but a story very much about them. When they join in the recitation of the final line, it is their own entry to Paradise of which they sing. Ephrem creates drama through the use of grammatical voices (first person, second person, and third person) while Romanos crafts the action within his kontakion through speech-​in-​character, with multiple figures having speaking roles, on-​and offstage. Both Ephrem and Romanos, each in their own way, remind us how important performance was: Ephrem presents his listeners with a complex character study, in which a single individual figure emerges and transforms; Romanos conjures an imaginary stage on which two figures stand (and others hover just beyond), but they, too, experience a welter of emotions and mood changes. In both cases, the congregation participates in complicated ways, in Ephrem as the voice of Death surrendering to a new reality and in Romanos, ultimately, as themselves. Both Ephrem and Romanos composed poetry for performance in religious settings.63 Their poems address the faithful, affirming their confidence in religious teachings and traditions, and thus the stakes are perhaps higher than for other forms of theater. And yet, we can see here the traces of other forms of performance. The framing reinforces the liturgical context, at times even invoking liturgical language. The message aligns with that of homily, albeit more indirect and subtler. The artistry reflects the importance of poetic aesthetics in antiquity, including rhythm, cadence, and elegance of phrase. 63 On Ephrem, see G. A. M. Rouwhorst, “The Original Setting of the Madrashe of Ephrem of Nisibis,” in Let Us be Attentive! Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of the Society of Oriental Liturgy. Presov (Slovakia) 9–​14 July 2018, Studies in Eastern Christian Liturgies, vol. 1., ed. M Lüstraeten, B. Butcher, and S. Hawkes-​Teeples (Münster, Germany: Aschendorff Verlag, 2020), 207–​223. On the setting of Romanos, see Georgia Frank, “Romanos and the Night Vigil in the Sixth Century,” in A People’s History of Christianity, Vol. 3: Byzantine Christianity, ed. Derek Krueger (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2006), 59–​78.

132  Staging the Sacred The creation of character reflects techniques familiar from the training of orators. And the dynamism and even humor recall the appeal of theater, particularly mime. These poems, so clearly separate works in distinctive forms, even as they share the classification of hymnody, reveal affinities for other forms of performance, religious and popular, which no doubt contributed both to their composition and their appeal. These works offered a bit of everything, something for every taste and preference.

Liturgy of Theater and Performance of Law In the performance of a liturgical poem, all who are present have parts to play: the poet (and his subsequent stand-​in, the lead performer) acts as the “conductor” who crafts and shapes a set of experiences for the congregation; the congregation, in turn, responds to his cues, prompts, and expectations in emotional, intellectual, physical, and verbal ways. The performer draws on both theatrical and forensic-​oratorical techniques of delivery as he seeks to engage his listeners and draw them in, both emotionally and performatively, even as the congregation relies on conventions from the performative world for their responses. The two poems on the harrowing of Hell have already suggested how the poets could—​indeed, might have needed—​to use gesture, stance, and intonation as a means for constructing and distinguishing multiple voices and characters, as well as elements such as refrains, to construct complicated dramatic works that engaged the listeners actively in the performance. Those poems exemplify some of the potential dynamism of liturgical poetry; we will now examine more closely how liturgical poems resemble both drama and declamation not only in form but also function. To illustrate the theatrical and forensic facets of liturgical poetry, we will examine a single poem by the Jewish liturgical poet Yannai (sixth c. ce) that employs both registers.64 This Hebrew piyyut was written for performance on the Sabbath when the Torah reading began with Numbers 5:11—​the trial of the accused adulteress. The topic of this poem, a ritual-​legal ordeal transformed into a public spectacle, offers an opportunity to examine both the forensic and the dramatic richness of liturgical poetry. Jewish poetry, of course, lacks the motif of the Harrowing of Hell—​but this poem paints a 64 For a detailed analysis of this poem, its late antique context, and a translation of the complete work, see Lieber, “Unholy Spectacle.” The translations here are adapted from that edition.

Take Your Places  133 picture that is nonetheless harrowing, and it anticipates the eventual defeat of death. Theatrical Rhetoric: In Numbers 5:11–​31, the Bible outlines a procedure for dealing with cases in which a woman is suspected of infidelity in the absence of either witnesses or confession. The prescribed ordeal, in which the accused is compelled to consume a potion of “bitter waters” in the presence of a priest, provides an inherently dramatic premise for our liturgical poet. It is an intimate, destructive jealousy, resolvable only by recourse to a divine trial. As dramatic as the biblical text is, the rabbis in Mishnah Sotah embellished it even further.65 It is written in m. Sotah 1.7: By the measure that a person measures, so is [justice] measured out: just as she adorned her body in order to transgress, so God has stripped her; just as she revealed her body in order to transgress, so God has exposed her. She began the transgression with the thigh and afterwards with the belly; therefore will the thigh be smitten first, and afterwards the belly, and the rest of her body shall not escape.

Later the rabbis write, “Hardly has she finished drinking before her face becomes green, her eyes bulge, and she [seems] filled with veins, and [the priests] say, ‘Remove her, remove her!’ lest she defile the courtyard” (m. Sotah 3.4). The rabbis embellish the biblical text in unsettlingly graphic detail, as they express a kind of horrified fascination with the consequences of a lurid betrayal. Yannai, evidently familiar with the rabbinic text, distills Mishnaic language to a vivid rehearsal of measure-​for-​measure justice in Unit 5 of the poem. I present that unit in its entirety here so that the intensity of its imagery, and the fury of its cadence, is on full display: A woman with her man In deception, with deceit: Unto the priest shall he hasten her And for (her) deception, let him accuse her Into temptation and trespass—​ Oh, how sinfulness beguiled her!

65

Ishay Rosen-​Zvi, The Mishnaic Sotah Ritual: Temple, Gender and Midrash (Leiden: Brill, 2012).

134  Staging the Sacred A curse he proclaims upon her And an oath he makes her swear. Indeed, just as she behaved like a beast So, too, is her offering that of a beast Just as she walked “in the way of the Egyptian” So, too, gird her hips with Egyptian rope Just as in the presence of a stranger, concealed, did she stand So, too, before the Pure One, exposed, the priest stands her And just as she betrayed the nature of (her) Creator He will make her drink curses from a created vessel The mere mention of the Holy Name, written with holiness Will be blotted out with holy water to put to proof the (un)holy woman The curves of her thighs will abruptly rot And the depths of her belly will there empty out Her lovely face will yellow and her eyes bulge Her fingernails fall off and her sinews give way They will see her and say, “Take her out! That alien woman, “Before she renders the Temple Court impure!” Please, God . . . Forever . . .

This scene describes what in late antiquity would have been recognized as a spectacle. It is entirely narration, but the focus is on images rather than action. These lines offer a vivid example of ekphrasis, painting a picture with words. The poet scans his way up the woman’s body, in a terrible reverse of the description of the beloved in the Song of Songs and an undoing of the generative imagery of Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones in Ezekiel 37. Woman—​the source of life, as indicated by the very name of the first woman created, Eve (“life”)—​is uncreated. While the lines are imagistic, they are hardly static; the poet uses active verbs that suggest gestures and body language, a potential for physicality that might pull on the conventions of theatrical delivery. Guided by the poet’s words, the accused woman, found guilty in the ritual, decomposes before the eyes of the assembled community. She becomes something wholly inhuman—​she is explicitly called “alien”—​and whatever is left of her must, like the detritus after combat games, be removed from the holy precincts. This graphic description of divine retribution is quite a fall for the woman who was described just a few lines earlier as a powerful demonic figure:

Take Your Places  135 In her eyes: death! /​At her feet: death! //​ At her feet will dance the angel of death! Until You swallow up Death and uproot the Evil Inclination //​ And remove the heart of stone from us (Unit 4, lines 5–​6)

Again, the poet also draws our attention to the body of the woman, literally head to toe, as if the listener stands in her presence. The lines jarringly juxtapose the concrete with the abstract: eyes, feet, and mouth linked with Death and Evil Inclination. The verbs are vigorously embodied: dancing, swallowing, uprooting. Yet the significance of the imagery is unmistakable: death constitutes woman’s herald, her retinue, her companion, and servant. She goes into the world destined for conflict with God, who is fated to triumph. The first line almost demands gestures, while the second pivots from the narration of the scene—​fantasy spoken into imagined life—​to direct petition of the deity and the startling assertion of communal complicity in womankind’s crimes: it is “our” heart of stone that God must remove, not “hers.”66 The Torah reading from Numbers 5 gives the poet unusual license to explore the more lurid corners of society and its constructions of female power and that power’s transgressive potential—​all the more striking as the poet rarely depicts women in a negative light.67 The Torah portion provided Yannai with a licit occasion to explore a variety of scandalous behaviors typically associated with theater—​with adultery mime, in particular.68 He writes: And thus, “She acted unfaithfully against him. . .” (Num. 5:12) She bound jewels upon her head Thus in shame she unbound the hair of her head She grew proud and fastened fancily the braids of her hair Thus he judged she must hide her hair She made herself pretty, for the sake of her sin Thus she became stupid and ugly, because of her sin 66 See Maria E. Doerfler, “Translating Eve: Death and Female Identity in a Funerary Hymn Ascribed to Ephrem,” Journal of Theological Studies 73.1 (2022): 167–​194. 67 See discussion in Laura S. Lieber, Yannai on Genesis: An Invitation to Piyyut (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2010), 285–​295. 68 The classic study of “the adultery mime” remains R. W. Reynolds, “The Adultery Mime,” The Classical Quarterly 40 (1946): 77–​84. It is worth noting that Yannai’s contemporary, Choricius of Gaza, defended mimes as “not immoral” because vice was punished on the stage (Apol. Mim. 54–​55; Richard Foerster and Eberhard Richtsteig, Choricii Gazaei opera (Leipzig: Teubner, 1929), 356:19–​ 357:5), as also happens here.

136  Staging the Sacred She was insolent and brazen of face Thus pale and green became her face She soiled and defiled her flesh Thus thin and sickly became her flesh She concealed her perversity within her Thus before the eyes of all it was revealed about her She defied both curse and adjuration Thus she succumbed to both curse and adjuration She rebelled against that which was written for her Thus her sins were revealed through a written text She opened her thighs to the stranger Thus her diminishment came with the wasting of her thighs She called to the stranger and he embraced her belly Thus decayed and bloated became her belly She set her eye upon another Thus she shall belong to neither her husband nor any other (Poem 7a)

As mentioned earlier, the focus is on the woman’s body, especially her face and her belly and thighs: the most visible part of her body and the most concealed. Yannai’s depiction of female licentiousness is graphic and detailed, as is his vision of what justice would look like: we can imagine how an actor would pantomime the actions, both sin and punishment. It is visceral and physically vivid. Forensic Rhetoric: Sex, including infidelity, was a common element of ancient theater, particularly in comedy, whether we are considering Menander and Aristophanes or Plautus and Terence. In Jewish and Christian tradition, the most popular indigenous analog to the classical adultery mime plot comes from the Genesis story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife (Gen. 39), in which the woman plays the part of the senex amator (“besotted old man”) stock figure.69 Yannai’s treatment of the accused adulteress lacks any comedic sensibility; it is deadly serious, as such accusations would have been in daily life.70 And given that the biblical story recounts a trial—​an ordeal, but one 69 See Laura S. Lieber, “Stages of Grief: Enacting Laments in Late Ancient Hymnography,” AJS Review 40.1 (2016): 101–​125. 70 It is worth noting how this poem reflects conventions attested in Roman law, such as the idea a woman’s dress would reflect her conviction of adultery: “The status of mater familias was not the only one to be created by the lex Iulia. As part of the established penalty, a woman convicted of adultery was to be publicly humiliated through open identification as a prostitute. This was mainly achieved by stipulating that the adultera damnata should wear the toga, which heretofore only prostitutes among women had been accustomed to wear”; Thomas A. G. McGinn, Prostitution, Sexuality, and the Law in Ancient Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 156–​157. A respectable matron

Take Your Places  137 that is nonetheless regarded as juridical and administered by the priest as a ritual authority—​it should come as no surprise that this poem also makes use of forensic oratory. It is quite possible that Yannai’s community was familiar with a form of the ritual in their own day.71 At the very least, Yannai argues like a prosecutor, making the woman’s crime palpable, engendering sympathy for the betrayed husband, and inspiring them to convict the woman and condemn her. It is they who, with their shouts of “take her out, take her out!,” pass the ultimate judgment. Of course, in the hymn this condemnation is complicated by the fact that it can be understood as embedding a figurative reading: the betrayed husband could well be understood as God, and the faithless woman is Israel—​the listeners themselves. Certainly, passages in this poem articulate a sense of self-​condemnation and anxiety over the proclivity of all people to stray. While the poem, like the Mishnah, largely dwells on the fate of the guilty woman, as an ordeal the rite holds out the possibility of innocence: an accused adulteress could be falsely accused. The biblical text acknowledges this possibility, and as a result it provides the peg for the one unit of the poem that considers this outcome: And thus, “If she has not defiled herself . . .” (Num. 5:28) If she did not sin against her marital contract Let her be more blessed than the other women in her tent If she did not revel like an alien woman Let her resemble a fruitful vine If she did not show herself about outside the house Let her take root in the innermost house would have worn a garment known as a stola. In Yannai, as well, a woman’s clothing is integral to her status, and to her humiliation. 71 Indeed, materials that attest to the persistence of this rite are indicated in Genizah sources contemporary with our Yannai manuscript, as well as in early medieval ritual and literary sources. These rituals have been updated to reflect the absence of the Temple and its priesthood: “earth from the four corners of the Torah ark” stands in for the earth from the tabernacle floor, and a sage with knowledge of divine names takes the place of the priest. For a treatment of the Genizah text, entitled “On the Matter of the Faithless Woman,” see Michael D. Swartz, “Sacrificial Themes in Jewish Magic,“ in Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World, ed. Paul Allan Mirecki and Marvin W. Meyer (Leiden: Brill, 2002) 303–​318 (esp. 307–​311), and Gideon Bohak, “Jewish Magic in the Middle Ages,” in The Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West, ed. David Collins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) 268–​299. For the relevant passage in the medieval Italian Megillat Ahimaatz, see Robert Bonfil, History and Folklore in a Medieval Jewish Chronicle: The Family Chronicle of Ahimaaz ben Paltiel (Leiden: Brill, 2009) 254–​255; esp. useful is Yuval Harari, “The Scroll of Ahima‘az and Jewish Magical Culture: A Note on the Ordeal of the Adulteress” (Hebrew), Tarbiz 75 (2005–​ 2006): 185–​202.

138  Staging the Sacred If she did not play the harlot and ruin herself Let her bear sons instead of daughters If she did not . . . Let her . . . and successfully sow seed If she was not false against her marriage vows Let her . . . If she did not rebel against he who rules over her Let her be comforted, foreigners not rule over her If she did not grow stubborn like a heifer Let her . . . if she shall be barren If she did not spread her knees for the wicked Let her be justified through a blessed pregnancy If she did not summon the alien to her belly Let her know the merciful reward of fruit in her belly If she did not drink stolen waters in secret72 Let her be crowned with good favor in public and in secret (Unit 7b)

This unit posits a series of negative actions—​sins not committed—​followed by positive consequences that revolve primarily around fertility. It is a version of “measure for measure” in which not acting is rewarded. In this unit, the transgressions, for all that they are negated, are the more varied, creative, and robustly physical half of each pairing. That said, this unit lacks much of the vividness of those units that imagine sin committed and punishment dispensed. Only the final lines invoke the body in graphic ways; even so, the vision of the woman spreading knees for a lover, summoning him to her belly, invites listeners to imagine (and the performer to physically suggest?) the commission of sin rather than the restraint of innocence, while references to “drinking stolen waters” may lack the imaginative forcefulness of those passages that immerse themselves in imagining a vision of guilt. When he wrote this unit, the poet imagined the woman’s potential innocence, although the rest of the poem assumes her guilt. Her presumed lover—​whose culpability and punishment the Mishnah does treat—​never figures meaningfully in the liturgical poem; the focus is exclusively on the woman, and the verdict, traced back to Eve, condemns women categorically. Yannai writes in Unit 4 (the final lines of which were quoted earlier):

72 Prov. 9:17, the summons of the adulteress to the fool.

Take Your Places  139 From the time when that woman sinned through her hand You lashed and bound the hands of woman She is fire and her name is fire and she is likened to fire Woman-​from-​man: /​She enflames the embers in the bosom of man She sinned and brought into being the bitterness of death Her sin was bitter as death /​brazen is she, like death No one masters the day of his death But all her pathways lead down to death In her eyes: death /​at her feet: death At her feet will dance the angel of death Until You swallow up Death and uproot the Evil Inclination And remove the heart of stone from us

Guilt is in the very nature of woman: she is fire, she is sin, she is death.73 The listener-​cum-​jury has almost no choice but to convict, to assume the worst. But in dwelling on woman’s nature, the poet indicates that the people convict themselves. The poem embellishes not only the Torah portion of the accused adulteress but also includes the prophetic complement from the lectionary, which begins with Hosea 4:14: “I will not punish their daughters for whoring, nor their daughters-​in-​law for committing adultery; for they themselves turn aside with whores and sacrifice with prostitutes, and a people that is without sense must stumble.” The next verse (Hosea 4:15) is even more explicit: ‫ואם זנה אתה ישראל‬, “and if/​when you are a whore, O Israel . . .” Woman’s nature is Israel’s nature, and her fate rests not with the priests or with a human judge, but with God. The poet, like a skillful orator, convinces the people to convict themselves. And it is, in fact, the extant opening unit of the poem—​what would be the third unit (the Meshallesh) of a complete Qedushta—​that complicates the forensic resonances of this work. This unit, which spells out the poet’s name in a signature acrostic, goes as follows: ‫ י‬You know, O our Creator /​our Evil Inclination That it is our afflictor /​crouched always at our side ‫ נ‬The adulterer is named as “lacking of heart” /​the adulteress, “wily-​hearted” But You, Creator of the heart /​probe deeply the heart’s intentions 73 It is important to ask whether Christian arguments about original sin have colored Yannai’s depiction of the sotah, or whether the popularity of motifs such as the Harrowing of Hell, discussed earlier, heightened his enthusiasm for the divine defeat of death.

140  Staging the Sacred ‫ י‬O Yah, extinguish the coals /​which burn within us Renew the heart of flesh /​and remove the heart of stone ‫ י‬Bind the Evil Inclination /​and no longer shall You have to watch over The young women, should they play harlot Nor the brides, should they prove false

This poem does not speak to the community in the way that an orator would address a crowd but speaks, rather, to God, as an orator might address the emperor. And rhetorically, this ultimately makes sense: the people are not a jury but the accused, and it is God who must be persuaded to convict, to find innocent, or to show mercy. Guilt seems likely, and diving knowledge of the truth is assured, but the speaker petitions God to see beyond sinful nature and transgressive ways, and to act with transformative power. In this poem, the poet uses the conventions of theater and techniques of oratory, but he does so to suit his own, contextually determined and liturgically driven ends. Synagogues, like churches, competed with such events for the attention of the public but also conveyed interpretations of scripture and helped congregants navigate a range of social norms and conventions. Yannai, like Romanos and Ephrem, functioned as a conductor who crafted and shaped a set of experiences for his listeners. He drew them in, kept their attention, guided their emotional responses to dramatic interpretations of sacred traditions, and wove them into his story, with the consequence that they would emerge from the experience not only informed, but also shaped, aware of their place in the larger cosmic drama. Our poet’s task here is, ultimately, to create space for liturgical prayer: he does so by helping people understand what prayer can do, and by giving them confidence that prayers are heard. He speaks not only to the people and for them, but for God and to Him.

Speaking Truth to Power Qedushta’ot, such as Yannai’s composition on the accused adulteress, stands out as among the most complicated forms of late antique liturgical poetry. Where most poems—​particularly memre and kontakia—​have a uniform structure despite their length, a qedushta is composed out of nine distinctive units written in a variety of styles, ranging from the narratively expansive to the terse and highly patterned. And yet, whether long or short,

Take Your Places  141 simple or complex, or written in Hebrew, Greek, or an Aramaic language, liturgical poets shared a common artistic challenge: they innovated literarily and performatively within fixed conventions and reflecting congregational norms and expectations. The existential stakes of sacred space and religious ritual would have mitigated against overt, let alone transgressive, innovation. Setting, after all, is crucial to any work, and poets needed to engage, not alienate, their communities. While the challenge and constraints were, broadly speaking, similar, the specific aesthetics and expectations varied by genre, occasion, and lectionary. When hearing Yannai on the ordeal of the accused adulteress, his listeners could coalesce around the key image of the Torah portion, the trial, with visceral horror yoked to self-​incrimination, and they could imagine themselves into the Temple precincts (long destroyed) as they occupy the roles of judge, jury, and convicted.74 With Romanos’ “On the Victory of the Cross,” we find ourselves invested in a profoundly witty historical drama that makes the past vividly present, envisioning not only what is “on stage” but what transpires “offstage,” a dazzling layering of imagined worlds. And in the case of Ephrem’s hymn on God’s triumph over mortality, we can imagine how his community found itself unexpectedly invested in the character of Death, as the poet created for them the experience a singular event from that singular perspective, even deploying their voices to express death’s own words. Liturgical poets, wedding theater and oratory to ritual and liturgy, collapse the axes of time and space: national history becomes lived memory, remote spectators become eyewitnesses, while at the same time heaven and earth draw near to each other as humans and angels join together in praise. To use an image that would perhaps resonate with (and simultaneously unsettle) Jews and Samaritans in antiquity, it is as if the congregation stands together again at Sinai and each person spends a moment as Moses. Whether Christian, Jewish, or Samaritan, the liturgical poet, and subsequent performers, lead the congregations into and through ritual experiences; they function as exegetes, dramatists, and prayer leaders. We have already considered, if briefly, how poets use ethopoeia—​speech-​in-​character—​as an 74 There may be an allusion here to something akin to the Athenian dikastês (amateur judges); see Rebecca Futo Kennedy, Athena’s Justice: Athena, Athens and the Concept of Justice in Greek Tragedy (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), 72–​79, and P. J. Rhodes, “The ‘Assembly’ at the End of Aristophanes’ Knights,” in Law and Drama in Ancient Greece, ed. Edward M. Harris, Delfim F. Leão, and P. J. Rhodes (London: Bloomsbury, 2010), 158–​168. The function of dikastês asked “civilians” to play a juridical role, which theater both exploited and amplified, in that it asked the audience to imagine themselves in the role of a “lay judge-​jury” that was itself inhabiting a role.

142  Staging the Sacred important rhetorical technique. Often, when stepping into a persona, the poet explicitly collapses the present moment into the past: the community hears and sees Death’s agony in his defeat and experiences revulsion at the guilt and punishment of the adulteress. In doing so, the poets imaginatively flesh out the sketches of extant biblical scenes and stories, even as they draw their listeners into the drama, and the ritual: the congregation merges itself, guided by the poet’s words, into both their own traditions of religious myths and the performance of liturgical rituals. The poet weds commonplace rhetorical and theatrical techniques such as ethopoeia, ekphrasis, and enargeia all descriptive of methods by which speakers make performances vivid and engaging75—​with the ritual concept of anamnesis (“calling to mind”). Anamnesis describes the transformation of sacred history into personal experience: classically, it describes the Eucharist, that moment when a believer takes the divine essence into her body, but it also can describe the way the Torah service in the synagogue re-​enacts Sinai or the Passover Haggadah’s understanding of Exodus 13:3 (“Remember this day, in which you came out from Egypt, out of the house of slavery”) to mean that “in each generation, each person is obligated to see himself [‫ ]לראות את עצמו‬as though he personally came forth from Egypt.” The way poets describe scenes in detail, give voices and emotions to characters, and draw the congregation into the performance all serve to make the scripturally infused liturgical moment “real.” The tools of rhetoric and theater thus serve to amplify ritual power.76 Liturgical poets did not in isolation, honing a craft purely in the realm of study and imagination, any more than actors or orators did; writers and performers existed as individuals and as members of communities—​in some fashion emerging from the larger population that they would hope to engage and address. Thus, when liturgical poets speak to the congregation, they also speak from within it, and on occasions when that perspective is primary, they typically orient themselves toward the present moment and a future time, both terrestrial and heavenly. In such moments, they may speak in their own voices to God and acknowledge the liturgical moment in which they stand. In the prologues and epilogues to Ephrem’s madrasha and Romanos’ kontakion on the Harrowing of Hell, we see how the poet guides the congregation into the imagined scene and then leads them back out into the present 75 Chapter 3 will focus on ekphrasis, while Chapter 4 attends to ethopoeia in close detail. 76 See also Ruth Langer, “From Study of Scripture to a Reenactment of Sinai,” Worship 72.1 (1998): 43–​67; in this piece Langer argues that the choreography of the Torah service intentionally recreates the moment of the original revelation.

Take Your Places  143 at the end. Ephrem speaks of God in the third person in both the first and last stanzas, addressing the community as his audience; Romanos’ stance varies in the different repetitions of the proemia but his composition concludes with direct address to God in the final strophe, in the communal (plural) voice. The opening of Yannai’s poem on the accused adulteress of Numbers 5 is missing, but while his compositions vary in focus and scale, his initial units by definition must link the opening words of the Torah portion to the theme of the first blessing of the Amidah (“ . . . shield of Abraham”). Each of the initial units aims, inexorably, for lines the community would join in reciting, but the fixed words would shift in significance due to the poet’s new framing of the blessing. The final units are likewise contextually, and thus liturgically, driven: by definition, every qedushta concludes with the Qedushah (the “holy, holy, holy” of Isaiah 6:3, also known as the Sanctus or the Trisagion in Christian liturgical tradition). The poet weaves themes from the lectionary into varied threefold repetitive lines at the end of every composition Isaiah’s exclamation, that speak to God in a rapturous human voice. In all these cases, the poets share a sense of a common, timeless liturgical present tense, each with an eye toward a future moment of significance for his community, near in time or far distant, when prayers will be answered and hopes for redemption fulfilled. The commonalities among the poems should neither obscure nor minimize their differences, however. Here two Aramaic poems—​one Jewish and one Samaritan—​will help illustrate the possibilities (even when written in a largely common language). An example from the Samaritan hymnic tradition will help illustrate a less rigidly formal mode of poetic composition and voice, while the JPA poem will provide a dramatically narrative counterpoint. The entire text the Samaritan hymn reads: When you rise up At daybreak And see the light dawning, And it illumines the entire world, Proclaim, one and all, and say: May the Radiant One be praised, He who kindles for the world A lamp that cannot be extinguished, It traverses the firmament And illumines the entire world,

144  Staging the Sacred Just as He, the Master of All, Kindles for the world a lamp that cannot be extinguished. “In the Beginning”77 was made a treasure-​room for lamps, The heavens and the earth are a building that were not built, The great light resembles its Source. Day breaks forth every morning, opening up the world; Dawn proclaims to humanity: “Rise up from your slumber, And see the light, and praise its Maker!” May God be praised! There is no God but the One!78

This lyrical hymn is attributed to Amram Dara, the first great Samaritan poet who most likely lived slightly before Ephrem in the region of Shechem (modern Nablus).79 It begins with a poetic address directly to the community, in the plural (“you”), providing them not with a story, but with prayer instructions. The poet sets a scene—​daybreak—​in the present; he writes of the uncomplicated, actual “now.” Within the body of the poem, he embeds the text of a prayer, and this text hearkens back to the creation account in Genesis 1. Watching the sun rise inspires wonder, and the poet provides his community words with which to celebrate this quotidian miracle. Furthermore, he transmits to his community the responsive words emanating from the heavens, dawn’s song to humanity. The final two lines of the poem contain the brief doxology that concludes many Samaritan piyyutim and transitions the listeners into the next prayer rubric. This composition embeds speech in two voices: it prescribes words the community is to speak and transcribes words the sunrise utters—​the latter being a variation on ethopoeia known as prosopopoeia (speech in the character of an object rather than a human, i.e., personification through speech). The biblical story that narrates the origin of the dawn is fleetingly mentioned, 77 The poet uses ‫בראשית‬, in Hebrew. 78 Amram Dara #7; the original text is available at cal.huc.edu; the English is adapted from Laura S. Lieber, Classical Samaritan Poetry (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2022), 58–​59. 79 For an analysis of this hymn, see Laura S. Lieber, “I Will Awake the Dawn: Two Samaritan Sunrise Hymns from Late Antiquity,” in Analogie und Differenz: Das dynamische Verhältnis von jüdischer und christlicher Liturgie, ed. Claudia Bergmann and Benedikt Kranemann (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2021), 89–​100.

Take Your Places  145 but the lyric does not so much embellish Genesis 1 as use it as a springboard for articulating and contextualizing a sense of theological wonder, an etiology of the impulse behind prayer. The poet weaves together a dynamic exchange of praise songs: humans, dawn, humans. This hymn is not interested in history—​dawn comes daily, the most mundane of events—​but illustrates how heaven and earth align in common purpose. Where Amram Dare’s poem displays a self-​awareness of its liturgical significance, and it is rich with biblical allusion and personified nature enlivening its ritual focus, our next exemplar, written in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, focuses almost entirely on embellishing a biblical scene with dramatic speech. It lacks any immediate reference to a liturgical content but is richly exegetical. In this anonymous composition, we find no explicit reference to prayer at all, and nothing leading the listener into, or back out of, the biblical scene it describes. Instead, the poet brings to life the scene in which Moses has received word that he is soon to die (Deut. 31:14). Written as an alphabetical acrostic (indicated in the translation), rich with perhaps unexpected humor, the entire work consists of twenty-​two lines: ‫ א‬ The Lord asked Moses /​from within His divine presence: ‫ ב‬ “Why are you so afraid /​of death? ‫ ג‬ “I have declared it the fate /​of all living beings; ‫ ד‬ “Know that thither /​have gone all (your) ancestors.” ‫ ה‬As soon as Moses /​heard this speech, ‫ ו‬ At that very moment, /​he set out for magnificent Hebron; ‫ ז‬ He shouted and called out to Adam /​within his grave: ‫“ ח‬Explain to me why /​you sinned in the garden! ‫“ ט‬You tasted and ate /​from the Tree of Knowledge, ‫ י‬ “(And) bequeathed to your children /​weeping and grief; ‫“ כ‬The whole garden lay before you /​but you were not satisfied! ‫ ל‬ “Why did you rebel /​against the commandment of your Lord?” ‫“ מ‬Who are you?” Adam asked him /​in his wisdom; ‫ נ‬ “I would like to know if you possess /​knowledge (and) insight? ‫“ ס‬It’s a bad sign, indeed /​that you have woken me from (my) sleep!” ‫ ע‬ He answered, saying: “I am Moses, /​who received the Torah!”

146  Staging the Sacred ‫ פ‬He opened his mouth and said to him: /​“(Then) consider what you have read! ‫ צ‬ “Note that the Torah preceded me /​by two thousand years! ‫ ק‬ “Resign yourself, Moses, /​to drinking the draught of Death: ‫ ר‬ “My name was listed for death—​/​why do you blame me?” ‫ ש‬Moses listened; /​his tears flowed ‫ ת‬ “Let your soul find rest /​with all the ancestors.”80

Of the works examined in this chapter, this poem most closely resembles Romanos’ dialogue between Hades and Satan, as this author also taps into the tradition of the dispute poem. Thematically, of course, the works are quite distinctive: Romanos (like Ephrem) dramatizes Death’s defeat, while the anonymous Aramaic poem describes Moses’ futile resistance against mortality, a doom accepted by God and Adam. But they have an appreciation for wit and argument in common. As is typical of many liturgical poems, this work begins in medias res, with no setting of a stage whatsoever.81 The listener must discern the scene through the question God asks Moses: Why is he so reluctant to die? Rather than answer this question—​itself potentially colored by intonation, as wry or sad or serious—​Moses turns aside and tracks down Adam, whose sin brought death into the world.82 Adam asserts that his fate was foretold, that his sin and its punishment were not truly a choice, and encourages Moses to accept his destiny. For all its brevity, each speaker in this composition possesses a distinctive voice and persona, and throughout the poem, the poet is careful to indicate who speaks to whom: God to Moses, Moses to Adam, and Adam to Moses. In the final couplet, however, the poet permits a significant ambiguity. We are told Moses’ physical response to his inescapable fate—​he weeps silent tears—​but we are not informed in whose voice the final line in spoken. Here, the poet grants the performer an opportunity: Does Moses release Adam to return to his sleep, or Adam bid Moses a gentle farewell, or God return and encourage Moses, however reluctantly, to accept fate? The fact that these words are direct speech is clear, but the performer can encode it in the 80 The text is JPA Poem #40; the English translation can be found in Lieber, Jewish Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity, 148–​149; see, also, Laura S. Lieber, “Stages of Grief: Enacting Laments in Late Ancient Hymnography,” AJS Review 40.1 (2016): 101–​125. 81 This may reflect the favored chronological structure of ethopoeia, in which the speaker moves from present, to past, to future; see discussion in Chapter 4. 82 It bears mentioning that Eve is not held culpable here.

Take Your Places  147 voice of his choosing and thus color the tone of the entire scene. It is, from this perspective, an ambiguity in text only; brought to life, we can imagine the performer resolving the uncertainty. Delivery becomes determinative. The lack of a liturgical framework to this poem reflects the fact that it was not necessarily part of a prayer service, but perhaps a dramatic embellishment of the Torah service, Torah-​themed paraliturgical “theater,” or some kind of oratorical demonstration. The absence of explicit ritual cues, and the power vested in delivery, highlights how purely theatrical this poem could be. Where the Samaritan hymn focused on ritual and used voice to articulate prayer, this work delights in exegesis and character creation. Story and prayer are always intertwined, but they exist along a continuum, with poets stressing various elements and possibilities to shape their works as they wish.

Talking Back In liturgical poetry, the voices of the author and performer predominate: the former provides the “script” while the latter interprets it and brings it to life. In cases where the poet was the performer, then the resemblance to oratory is strong; if we imagine the two roles as separate (as would certainly have been the case as these works became popular, and over time), then the affinity for theater becomes clear. We have also considered just how important a figure the performer would have been: he should not be regarded merely as a ventriloquist voicing the words and intents of the poet but understood as an active interpreter of the composition and co-​creator of the experience. Just as we refer to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, we refer to Olivier’s Hamlet, too. Without doubt, the role of voice in the performance of hymnography is complicated: like actors and orators, the poet (and thus performer) frequently speaks in character, adopting the voices and perspectives of figures from the sacred past or from otherworldly (heavenly and hellish) realms. But liturgical poetry also makes room for external voices and perspectives, both rhetorically and in practice. The potential for lively audience engagement in the performance of liturgical poetry reflects both the participatory nature of the liturgy, which expects personal investment in the performance of rituals and the recitation of key words and phrases, and the engaged dynamics of public speaking in late antiquity more broadly, which was often defined by enthusiastic audience participation, particularly through acclamation. We have already considered how the poet induces “passive” participation when

148  Staging the Sacred he uses first-​person plural verbs to locate himself within the community, and when he addresses God directly as “You,” thereby making explicit a dynamic with a heavenly listener. It is important, however, to consider the variety of audiences the liturgical poets would have had in mind as they wrote, and to account for the potential dynamics of audience engagement afforded by the performance of liturgical poetry. While we conventionally think of performance as focusing on the performer, the ways in which the audience participates constitutes another essential element of dramaturgy. As in late antique theater and oratory, where acclamation was an essential element, those who listened and responded to liturgical performance were not only witnesses to a show, but part of it—​indeed, the power of religious ritual is such that the congregation was an essential component of the performance, the reason for the performance to exist. As prayers, liturgical poems address two primary constituencies: the congregation and the deity. The poet mediates the relationship between the two, speaking on behalf of each party to the other, and speaking to each party about the other: he explains God to the people and the people to God.83 If we view liturgical poetry as a theological conversation moderated by the prayer leader, we become aware of and attuned to the voices of the poet’s dual audiences. Thus, both divine and human constituent voices are present in the performance, orchestrated and guided by the poet but not entirely under his authority. The divine voice participates both implicitly—​because God is spoken to, His active presence is presumed—​and explicitly, through the quotation of divine words from scripture or the invention of divine speech within the composition. From one perspective, we can admire the poets’ audacity in writing new words for divine utterance; but such invented speech, a bold form of ethopoeia in that the poet speaks for God, partakes of the tradition granting playwrights and orators the freedom to write in the voice of any character, even divinities. When addressed as a member of the “audience,” however—​ the “You” to whom poet and community speak—​the deity remains silent, with divine action as yearned for as divine words, in the near future, in keeping with scriptural promise. When the poet directly addresses God, his words may articulate praise and wonder, as seen in the Samaritan hymn that celebrates the marvelous beauty of Creation, even as they may also express hope for redemption, restoration, 83 For the poet as mediator—​the heir to priests and prophets—​see Michael Swartz, “Sage, Priest and Poet,” in Jews, Christians, and Polytheists in the Ancient Synagogue, ed. Steven Fine (New York: Routledge, 1999), 101–​117.

Take Your Places  149 and justice—​explicit or implicit confidence in God’s fulfillment of promises and completion of prophecies. In some cases, a poet may anticipate a future with such confidence that he can describe it in the present tense: we see this in Ephrem’s hymn, examined earlier, in which death is already defeated, and in Romanos’ kontakion, which expresses confidence in a return to Paradise. Other poems approach more tentatively and optatively, as we see in Yannai, who petitions God to “extinguish the coals /​which burn within us //​Renew the heart of flesh /​and remove the heart of stone” in his treatment of the accused adulteress (Unit 3, l. 3). Such words speak directly to God but are for the benefit of the congregation, to inspire hope, calibrate worldview, or induce penitence. Both divine and human audiences hear words spoken on their behalf—​or, in the case of poems with refrains, may utter them in their own voices—​and thus not only affirm the sincerity of the sentiment expressed but take confidence in knowing that in the charged context of prayer, God receives their words.84 Repetition, furthermore, reinforces beliefs and inculcates both inward convictions and a sense of cohesion. Poets could use repetition as a form of emphasis, underscoring key truths for their congregations, and they could use quotations from scripture as a form of seeking accountability from God, in that they are simply quoting His own words. Such rhetorical framings of implicit and explicit liturgical conversation can offer hope with an assertive edge, just as they can lead the people to express self-​criticism safely, in the presence of a God who forgives. The force of this subtle rhetoric, at times relying on the nonverbal presence of one party or another, has the potential to make demands not only of the performer but also on the listeners, both intellectual and emotional. The poet-​performer must constantly interpret the poetic “script” to reflect various perspectives, but the congregation must participate actively, as well: following where the poet leads, learning to see the scenarios through various lenses, and understanding the implications of numerous subtexts and intertexts. Because the words of liturgical poems are spoken aloud, we can even imagine that opponents and imagined antagonists of the community at prayer—​for the Christians, heretics and Jews; for the Samaritans and Jews, the Byzantine Empire and Christians—​constituted an “audience” of sorts.85 84 For a study of liturgy that delves into these dynamics, see Nicholas Wolterstorff, Acting Liturgically: Philosophical Reflections on Religious Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). 85 In this use of a “rhetorical audience,” the dynamic recalls the “oracles against the nations” in the Hebrew Bible, which rhetorically address the nations but speaks directly to the Israelites. See John H. Hayes, “The Usage of Oracles against Foreign Nations in Ancient Israel,” Journal of Biblical

150  Staging the Sacred This implicit dynamic becomes explicit on occasions when, as in the anecdote opening this chapter, rhetorical polemic spills into the street and becomes active confrontation. In that moment, the congregations—​Orthodox and Arian—​ceased being the audiences of the poems, assenting to the truth of praise, petition, and wonder, and became performers themselves. On such occasions, liturgical chant overtly resembles the team-​affiliated cheers of the games, rallying behind Blues and Greens.86 We can imagine such scenes when we read a Yannai poem against Edom-​Esau, which might have stirred the passions of listeners against their imperial oppressors, and we have evidence of such episodes in Christian tradition, with the persecution of Jews on Good Friday.87 The bleeding of such actions from liturgical ritual into the street indicates the thorough interpenetration of these worlds, and suggests that even those who are outside a specific community would, or could, know or be responsible for how they are depicted in such works. Congregational participation in the performance of hymns need not, however, be understood as limited to extraordinary episodes such as those recounted by Sozomen, or other episodes that resulted in riots. Liturgical poems routinely integrate the congregation actively into their performance, especially through the use of refrains. A full accounting of participations in hymnody must address both the ways in which hymns involve the congregation “passively,” through their intellectual and emotional investment in the experiences they construct, and “actively,” in the verbalization of words that transform the congregation into performers, addressing each other, the poet-​ performer, and God. In terms of “passive” participation in performance, the congregation that heard liturgical poems may not seem to differ so much from the audience of modern sermons, public speeches, or theater shows—​ modes of performance that speak to a group. Such an understanding assumes

Literature 87.1 (1968): 81–​92, and also, Herbert Chanan Brichto, Toward a Grammar of Biblical Poetics: Tales of the Prophets (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). Also see Laura S. Lieber, “‘You Have Been Skirting This Hill Long Enough’: The Tension between History and Rhetoric in a Byzantine Piyyut,” Hebrew Union College Annual 80 (2009): 63–​114, which examines the tensions among Jews, Samaritans, and the Christian imperial power in the sixth century, both affinities and conflicts, through the lens of one of Yannai’s qedushta’ot. 86 See Cameron, Circus Factions, esp. 74–​104. 87 Yannai’s qedushta for Gen. 14:1 has one unit in which the refrain is “war” (‫)מלחמה‬. The bibliography on religion and violence in late antiquity is extensive, but of particular note here are Michael Gaddis, There Is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2015); Shaw, Sacred Violence; and Thomas Sizgorich, Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity: Militant Devotion in Christianity and Islam (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009).

Take Your Places  151 that performance is largely “scripted” and monodirectional: moving from the speaker-​performer out to the congregation audience. These assumptions underestimate the dynamism of performance in general in late antiquity. Theater, oratory, and other forms of spectacle were raucous, loud, and dynamic and afforded the public occasions for lively self-​expression through acclamation. And religious ritual specifically invites—​even requires—​active participation, through physical presence but also bodily activity: bringing a sacrifice, reciting a litany, or saying “amen,” among other possibilities. Rituals (whether formal or informal, religious or civic) make demands on stakeholders, and this dynamic becomes manifest through the performative conventions of liturgical poems, in particular by means of refrains.

With One Voice In his evocative analysis of Christian conflict in fifth-​century Hippo—​ including the scene that opened this chapter—​Brent Shaw pays particular attention to the significance of communal chanting.88 In particular, he observes how fluidly the practice of rhythmic, collective speech—​which could be used to convey approval, rejection, affirmation, objection, or mockery—​moved among religious, theatrical, and civic venues. Popular acclamation and protest could be both spontaneous and elaborate because it reflected a pervasive norm of civic behavior in antiquity. He writes: Public chanting functioned so well precisely because it was a performance that was understood by the great and the small, and that linked them. . . . [T]‌he chants were not invented on occasions such as these. The people were well educated in their own culture. Like the combatants of Caesarea, they already knew what to do. Some of the chants had been transferred to the church from municipal elections, others from the arena and the theater.89

Shaw continues, “The bishop as preacher was one voice of the divine, but the powerful collective enunciations of the people counted in the same 88 The material in this section draws on two of my earlier studies: “Call and Response: Antiphonal Elements in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic Poetry,” Aramaic Studies 17 (2019): 127–​144, and “With One Voice: Elements of Acclamation in Early Jewish Liturgical Poetry,” Harvard Theological Review 111.3 (2018): 401–​424. 89 Shaw, Sacred Violence, 449, 455; Chapter 10, “Sing a New Song,” deals extensively with acclamations in the African church of the late-​fourth and early-​fifth century (pp. 441–​489).

152  Staging the Sacred way.”90 Communal chant was commonplace throughout late ancient society; it constituted a potent cultural mechanism enabling the people to speak, loudly, to the powerful. Collective, communal voices colored every public assembly, whether political, theatrical, athletic, religious, or mixed. Indeed, as J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz notes, acclamations “formed a continuous accompaniment of public life.”91 The importance of Shaw’s observations for the study of hymnody cannot be overstated. It underscores the fact that audiences in late antiquity, even when not specifically required to speak, expected to participate and be heard. Even material evidence, from the civic depictions in Trajan’s Column to the religiously themed images in the synagogue of Dura Europos, visually represent the practice of acclamation, as something legible and meaningful to their viewers.92 In this participative element, liturgical poetry provided a particularly organic location for Jews, Christians, and Samaritans to make themselves (quite literally) heard. In general, comparisons of liturgical poems to earlier forms of religious poetry focus on form: how piyyutim and hymns resemble biblical compositions such as the Psalms, or how they differ. Examining these works through the lens of acclamation highlights a performative resemblance. Biblical sources already display a familiarity with the idea of acclamation; biblical enthronement rituals provide a particularly concrete example. In 1 Samuel 10:24, we are told, “All the people shouted (‫)ויריעו‬: Long live the king!” Similarly, in 1 Kings 1:39, “All the people said (‫)ויאמרו‬, Long live King Solomon!” The shouting here reflects popular response to the presence of a new ruler. We find this same dynamic in Exodus 24:3, when the people address Moses and God, accepting the Torah and, by extension, 90 Shaw, Sacred Violence, 452. 91 J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Antioch: City and Imperial Administration in the Late Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 209. Also note Jaclyn Maxwell, Christianization and Communication in Late Antiquity: John Chrysostom and His Congregation in Antioch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), esp. 42–​64; Johannes Koder, “Imperial Propaganda in the Kontakia of Romanos the Melode,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 62 (2008): 275–​291, who examines the “activation of the audience” and their indoctrination by means of refrains, repetition, and music; and Peter N. Bell, Social Conflict in the Age of Justinian: Its Nature, Management, and Mediation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), who uses the term “acclamation culture” to describe late antiquity. 92 On Trajan’s Column, discussion in Chapter 5 and Steven Hejmans, “Monumentalising the Ephemeral in Ancient Rome,” in Urban Dreams and Realities in Antiquity: Remains and Representations of the Ancient City (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 144–​ 161. In Dura, as discussed in Chapter 5, there may be a confluence between Roman conventions of depicting acclamation and Persian “frontal” aesthetics; see Bernard Goldman, “A Dura-​Europos Dipinto and Syrian Frontality,” Oriens Antiquus, 24 (1985), 279–​300. It bears noting that Dura synagogue’s visualization of acclamation illustrates the story of Esther, a biblical story that has long lent itself to theatrical performance. The affinity of the fresco for a stage presentation merits further study.

Take Your Places  153 God’s sovereignty. In that passage, we are told, “All the people responded (‫ )ויען‬with one voice (‫)קול אחד‬, saying, ‘All the words which the Eternal has spoken, we shall do.’ ” The collective voice of the people is necessary to affirm the monarch’s position and authority. Without a people, there is no king; and in the biblical text, that dynamic relationship is created by acclamation. In later ritual, the final affirmations of Yom Kippur—​that is, the conclusion of the ne’ilah ritual, in which the community recites the Shema once, a benedictory phrase (“blessed be His name, whose glorious kingdom is forever and ever”) three times, and Elijah’s triumphant assertion of God’s oneness from 1 Kings 18:39 (“the Lord is God”) seven times—​offers a model for choreographed public chanting, with significant repetitions.93 In addition to these public acts of shouting, two psalms offer particularly clear evidence of refrains or antiphonal performance: Psalm 136 repeats the phrase “For His fidelity endures forever” (‫ )כי לעולם חסדו‬at the end of every brief unit, constituting a true refrain; Psalm 118 employs that phrase as the conclusion of the first four lines and the final line, and it includes other repeated phrases throughout the intervening verses, a form that suggests a kind of irregular antiphonal structure. Beyond these two examples, other psalms have also been identified as having refrains (although much depends on definitions), including Psalms 42–​43, 46, 49, 56, 57, and 59.94 While we have no evidence concerning how any of these psalms may have been used in ritual, their structures would certainly have fostered congregational performance. Some, such as Psalm 136, clearly invite public participation, as the repetition of a single, fixed phrase would be effortless to learn; other, less obvious structures may suggest other norms of performance, perhaps more “professional” and suggestive of choirs. On some level, the rhetorical mode of these psalms reaffirms and enacts the relationship between sovereign (divine) power and popular assent.95 Psalms lacking features such as refrains and repetitive phrases nonetheless lent themselves to performance. Psalm 29, with its rhythmic repetition of “voice/​sound” (‫)קול‬, evokes the resonance of a thunderous theophany; 93 See Joseph Tabory, “The Early History of the Liturgy of Yom Kippur,” in The Experience of Jewish Liturgy: Studies Dedicated to Menahem Schmelzer, ed. Debra Reed Blank (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 283–​308. 94 See the study by Paul R. Raabe, Psalm Structures: A Study of Psalms with Refrains (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990); also discussed in Raabe’s book, although less extensively, are Psalms 39, 67, 80, and 99. Raabe distinguishes refrains—​defined as verses repeated in structurally significant patterns—​from “repetends” (a recurring phrase that occurs irregularly in a work, as we find in the Song of Songs). 95 See the discussion of the Shema (pp. 240–241).

154  Staging the Sacred the series of psalms known as the Hallel (Psalms 113–​118) and the rhythm of Psalm 145, alongside the acrostic that lends it a discernible scaffolding, has made it a natural for antiphonal chanting. Indeed, it is worth noting that in the Qumran scroll 11QPsa, Psalm 145 is augmented with an actual refrain: the phrase, “Blessed is He and blessed is His name, forever and ever” (‫ )ברוך הוא וברוך שמו לעולם ועד‬is added after every verse, with the phrase “And this is for remembrance” (‫ )וזאת לזכרון‬added at the conclusion.96 This addition strongly suggests not only that the psalm was part of a Qumranic liturgy, but also that its performance was antiphonal. At the very least, we can assert that by late antiquity, psalms were performed antiphonally not only in the synagogue but in the church, as well.97 While antiphony is not the same as acclamation in a direct sense, it enacts the dialogical dynamic of the practice and can be seen as responding to popular aesthetics and custom, and the desire for communal voice. It is perhaps telling that Romanos, in his hymn on “Peter’s Denial,” quotes from Psalm 147:1 in regard to his community’s practice, in that very moment: “We hymn you, Master, for it is good to chant.”98 Romanos’ song in Hagia Sophia constitutes an extension of the Levitical chanting in the Jerusalem Temple. From the perspective of theater, when staging these liturgical dramas, the communal voice could at times have functioned akin to a chorus; certainly, poets anticipated and planned for congregational participation. But these participatory elements are transformed when translated into the ritual context: communal chanting and other forms of expressive engagement do not reflect simple enjoyment or affirmation of the speaker’s skill but constitute a ritual commitment to and affirmation of the truths being proposed and enacted. Beyond these literary works that suggest participatory performance, scholars in recent years have highlighted the abundance and significance of the communal voice in general in antiquity. In a variety of contexts, from entertainment venues to religious worship to civic and political occasions, people expected to make their voices heard. Furthermore, as Charlotte Roueché notes, by the fifth century ce—​precisely the period when liturgical 96 See Patrick Skehan, “A Liturgical Complex in 11QPsª,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 35 (1973): 195–​ 205; my thanks to Moshe Bernstein and A. J. Berkovitz for this reference. 97 See Robert F. Taft, “Christian Liturgical Psalmody: Origins, Development, Decomposition, Collapse,” in Psalms in Community: Jewish and Christian Textual, Liturgical, and Artistic Traditions, ed. Harold W. Attridge and Margot E. Fassler (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 7–​32, and, in the same volume, Lawrence A. Hoffman, “Hallels, Midrash, Canons, and Loss: Psalms in Jewish Liturgy,” 33–​57. 98 Romanos, O #18.17 (139); Lash, On the Life of Christ, 136. Psalm 147:1 states, “It is good to chant hymns to our God; it is pleasant to sing glorious praise (LXX: αἰνεῗτε τὸν κύριον ὅτι ἀγαθὸν ψαλμός τῷ θεῷ ἡμῶν ἡδυνθείη αἴνεσις).”

Take Your Places  155 poetry entered its own golden age—​people could expect their voices to be recorded, transmitted, and heard again.99 Religion was lived out in the public square alongside other civic activities. “It is important for scholars to remember,” Susan Ashbrook Harvey writes, “how much religious activity took place outdoors, in public, widely accessible spaces: as processions through city streets, or in marketplaces or other civic areas.”100 Congregational participation in the performance of liturgical hymns—​our understanding of these poems as dynamic, dialogical compositions not only rhetorically but actively—​emerges in part from the increasing recognition that much of life in antiquity was loud and participatory. The persistence and pervasiveness of congregational speech implicitly establish an authoritative counterpart to the power structures of the imperial world. Within the walls of a church or synagogue, it is God who is acclaimed as emperor.101 Just as acclamations were formally and thus performatively diverse in late antiquity, so, too, are the structures in liturgical poems that resemble acclamations. The acclamation-​like features of hymns range from single words to short phrases to elaborate choruses; they appear throughout poems or only in particular locations; they express meaningful sentiments or simply create a sensation of acoustic accord. The features of these poems that lend themselves to participation were not necessarily acclamations per se, nor were they necessarily “liturgical” in the sense of being part of the statutory prayers, but structures embedded in these works reflect the poetic and religious internalization of the larger social-​performative practices of public gatherings in their period. The refrains and similar elements that occur in the poems already examined in this chapter will illustrate some of the rhetorical power of audience participation. Some are very brief: in the Samaritan hymn to the dawn, we can only be certain that the congregation would have recited the final couplet, “May God be praised! /​There is no God but the One.” This phrase functions as a transition into the liturgy and, as such, occupies a liminal place between the hymn itself and the non-​poetic liturgy. It is conceivable that the 99 Charlotte Roueché, “Acclamations in the Later Roman Empire: New Evidence from Aphrodisias,” The Journal of Roman Studies 74 (1984): 181–​199. 100 Susan Ashbrook Harvey, “Patristic Worlds,” in Patristic Studies in the Twenty-​First Century. Proceedings of an International Conference to Mark the 50th Anniversary of the International Association of Patristic Studies, ed. Briouria Bitton-​Ashkelony, Theodore de Bruyn, and Carol Harrison (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 25–​53. This applies to the examples of both Ambrose and Chrysostom, as well. 101 Acclamation of Roman emperors often consisted simply of titles, e.g., imperator and augustus; see Aldrete, Gestures and Acclamations in Ancient Rome, 131–​133.

156  Staging the Sacred congregation may have joined in other portions of the poem, which suggest liturgical language, but the lack of repetition complicates any such assumption. Communal recitation of the concluding doxology, however, serves to affirm all that came before. In the Jewish genre of poetry known as qedushta’ot, such as the poem by Yannai on Numbers 5 examined earlier, we have several indications of communal participation.102 Conventionally, the first two poems integrate the first two blessings of the Amidah, the sixth poem often features a brief scriptural quotation that could have served as a refrain, the rahitim (seventh poems) often featured a fixed-​word refrain or other strongly patterned elements that would have been easy for congregations to pick up, and the final unit of the qedushta again integrates statutory liturgical language, thus ending as it began. In his poem for Numbers 5, as in every qedushta, the final unit weaves together elements of the specific poem, both phrases and images, with repetitive, patterned quotations from Isaiah 6:3 and Ezekiel 3:12. We can assume that the community participated in the recitation of the complete verse, and then, in a fashion akin to acclamation, they would have recited the key words “Holy” and “From His Place” in the appropriate locations; these words are akin to the feature known as “fixed-​word” patterns in earlier Jewish poetry, notably that of Yose ben Yose.103 The congregational speech affirms a theological truth while also integrating the human community into the angelic hosts who are also performing the liturgy at the exact same moment: heaven and earth in parallel prayer.104 It is also very likely that the preceding units, in particularly the two rahitim (units 7a and 7b) involved congregational recitation 102 For an example of a Yannai poem that is particularly rich with references to the physical language of prayer in the early synagogue, see Laura S. Lieber, “‘On This Day, We are Perfect’: Embodiment in Yannai’s Yom Kippur Qedushta,” The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 30 (2022): 37–​69. 103 On “fixed-​word” refrains in Yose b. Yose, see Laura S. Lieber, “With One Voice: Elements of Acclamation in Early Jewish Liturgical Poetry,” Harvard Theological Review 111.3 (2018): 401–​424. 104 The idea that angels and humans—​specifically Israelites—​pray at the same time is rooted in ancient understandings of Isa. 6:3 and Ezek. 3:12, verses that become central to liturgical praxis precisely because they bear with them the authoritative stamp of heavenly liturgy. Angelic liturgy becomes a commonplace in midrash, as in GenR 78:2 (T-​A, 918–​920), in which the angel with whom Jacob wrestles begs to be released lest he miss the morning liturgy, but these texts tap into much older traditions. For a discussion of early evidence of this understanding, see Esther Chazon, “Human and Angelic Prayer in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Liturgical Perspectives: Prayer and Poetry in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, 19–​23 January 2000, ed. Esther Chazon with Ruth Clements and Avital Pinnick (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 35–​48, and, for the later period, Ruth Langer, To Worship God Properly: Tensions Between Liturgical Custom and Halakhah in Judaism (Cincinnati: HUC Press, 1998), 188–​244. For an overview of late antique Jewish angelology, see Mika Ahuvia, On My Right Michael, On My Left Gabriel: Angels in Ancient Jewish Culture (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2021).

Take Your Places  157 of the biblical phrases that introduce each unit. Thus, before every stanza of Unit 7a, the community may have recited, “She acted unfaithfully against him . . .” (Num. 5:12), and before every stanza of Unit 7b, “If she has not defiled herself . . .” (Num. 5:28). The two verses are hardly proximate in the Torah reading, but the poet juxtaposes the two ideas—​guilt and innocence—​ and through the recitation of the verses, the congregation underscores the judicial nature of the accused woman’s trial, and in a fashion they speak as the jury—​one that inclines, quite clearly, toward “guilty.” The piyyut envisions the ritual as taking place before an assembly—​and refashions it as a spectacle in the late antique model—​and with these later units, the vision becomes ever more real. As with the Samaritan poem just discussed, the boundary between hymn and liturgy is blurred; the liturgy penetrates the hymn, and performed rituals shape the language of the poems. Congregational speech affirms theological truths while simultaneously integrating the community into the worship of celestial hosts: heavens and earth pray in parallel. The words describe but also perform, narrating events even as they enact them. Ephrem’s hymn on the Harrowing of Hell offers an example of a straightforward refrain: a brief, fixed passage that follows every stanza. In this case, the phrase is “Blessed is the one who triumphed (zky) and resurrected the dead, to his glory!” As discussed earlier, this blessing suits the character of Death, in whose voice most of the poem is written. He has been defeated by God, and this triumph puts God’s power on mighty display. In this reading, the choir or congregation105 speaks Death’s words when they recite these words: they participate in the poet’s ethopoeia, and when they voice Death’s defeat they experience God’s triumph. At the same time, we can imagine that the speakers might well have also applied these words to themselves. The liturgical setting invites benediction, and celebrating God’s power to restore the dead to life would earn mortals praise. And most importantly, the root zky, which can mean “to overcome, vanquish,” can also mean “to find innocent, worthy”—​the ambiguity making the defeat of Death truly a vindication of humanity.106 While the content of each stanza may make one meaning predominate in a given recitation, within this single refrain, the assembly speaks dual (potentially dueling) truths.

105 Note the work of Susan Ashbrook Harvey on this topic, especially the role of women’s choirs; see Harvey, Song and Memory. 106 CAL, s.v. zky.

158  Staging the Sacred In Romanos’ kontakion, “Victory of the Cross,” we again have a single, simple refrain that follows every stanza: “Again into Paradise.” Here, it is not the phrase itself that is ambiguous per se but, rather, the remarkable way that Romanos places this phrase in a variety of voices. Death, Satan, the dead, Jesus, the narrator, and the people all “speak” this refrain—​but it is consistently voiced by the congregation alone.107 However, while in Ephrem, the identity of the speaker was tinged with uncertainty, which renders the communal voice likewise ambiguous, in Romanos’ piece, the identities of the speakers are clearly articulated, which functions, in effect, to draw the community into the theatricality of the piece. The congregation joins in the performance while, at the same time, asserting their confidence in their own redemption, and they do so by playing, however briefly, a number of roles within the composition. The phrase they speak in a ritual context in this poem encodes their own fate, as is stated in the second proemium: “You snatched our souls form death /​You brought us back with You—​again into Paradise!” And again, in the epilogue, the poet speaks in the communal voice, which the people realize: “To us your Tree gives back /​Every day and moment wealth beyond price /​For it brings us all—​again into Paradise!” As the poem opens and closes, the congregation speaks to God in their own voice, confidently asserting belief in the trajectory of divine history. The poet composed the script, but he wrote crucial words both to speak to and to be spoken by his congregation. Even as they “act” the lines, they are their own audience. Not every poem possessed a refrain or other explicit participatory elements, however. One poem discussed in this chapter—​ the Jewish Palestinian Aramaic poem in which Moses confronts Adam (and his own mortality)—​lacks any indication of such features in the text. In this respect, it resembles a true theatrical “script” more than a liturgical text; the space between performer and audience—​the “fourth wall”—​is maintained, at least officially. Any participation from or outright engagement with the community would have been spontaneous or unscripted. We should not, however, generalize from that one example to the wider body of JPA poetry, which presents a particularly diverse poetic corpus. A number of poems employ conventional refrains, such as the lament 107 On this refrain, see Georgia Frank, “Death in the Flesh: Picturing Death’s Body and Abode in Late Antiquity,” in Looking Beyond: Visions, Dreams and Insights in Medieval Art and History, ed. Colum Hourihane (University Park; Penn State University Press, 2010), 58–​74, and Thomas Arentzen, “Voices Interwoven: Refrains and Vocal Participation in the Kontakia,” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 66 (2017): 1–​10.

Take Your Places  159 (qinah) for the Ninth of Av in which every stanza ends with the exclamation, “Woe is me!” (JPA Poem #20). Twelve times in this poem the community voices their grief, in the individual voice (“me”) but from within the collective. Other JPA poems take the form of dialogue and dispute poems, creating conversations among figures from scripture (Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel’s friends, Moses and the angels, Haman and Israel’s enemies) and between personified elements of the natural world (the trees, the signs of the zodiac, and so forth). In some cases, the dialogue is distilled to antiphony—​akin to what we see in the Romanos poem where Satan and Death argue back and forth, only terser and more highly structured. An example of this patterning can be found in the opening stanza of a poem for Shavuot, the festival that celebrates the giving of the Torah to Israel. In this instance, we see Moses arguing with the angels who seek to prevent him from acquiring God’s word; the first two stanzas illustrate the complexity: Angels on high, /​open to me, that I may ente1

Said Moses to the angels

We will not open /​for we have no right to open!

Said the angels to Moses the prophet

I cry violence down upon you: /​Open the heavens to me!

Said Moses to the angels

Why do you cry against us? /​Before the Lord should you cry! Said the angels to Moses the prophet

Here, the “participatory” element simply clarifies the speakers; the narration of speakers does not augment the meaningfulness of the phrases but would draw the speakers into the action of the performance, and suggested the voices in which specific lines would be heard. It may have been spoken by a chorus or a second performer rather than the community. Other antiphonal structures more clearly suggest congregational participation. Again, a lament for Ninth of Av provides an example; the first two stanzas are as follows: Over  a nation beloved, Chosen over all others My eye, my eye flows with tears (Lam. 3:48) Over  young children suffocated As they went forth (into exile) oppressed My eye, my eye flows with tears

In this example, we find a fixed word that opens each stanza (“over”) along with a phrase from scripture (Lam. 3:48) that functions as a refrain. The

160  Staging the Sacred body of the poem provides imagistic snapshots of loss, trauma, and suffering, leading to the communal recitation of individual words of woe: “My eye, my eye flows with tears.” In their biblical context, these words are spoken by an anonymous witness to the destruction of Jerusalem, who may be understood to be the prophet Jeremiah, Zion personified, or God. In this poem, the words become part of the communal experience. Ancient tears are wept anew, congregational sorrow mingles with prophetic and divine lamentation. Words from scripture, spoken in a ritual setting, drawing on performative norms, lead to a moment of collective catharsis, as the power of rhetoric and imagination transform historical tragedy into individual memory that is experienced as communal grief. The congregation ceases to be an audience and participates in the performance. In doing so, they express—​and thus experience—​a shared form of mourning, and perhaps move God toward restoration. The staging may remind us of the theater, but the stakes are high.108

Stepping into the Story In this chapter, we have explored how liturgical poets shared a vocabulary of performative techniques with actors and orators, and we have considered the ways hymnody constitutes a specific variety of performed literature that emerges from the nexus of ritual, theater, rhetoric, and communal engagement. In addition, we have examined some of the numerous ways poets could manipulate aspects of delivery in order to create intellectual and emotional experiences for their congregations: through the embellishment of biblical scenes, the creation of dialogue and drama, and the translation of history into memory. The poet occupies an intermediary place between his community and God, speaking with and for both parties. At the same time, he also creates structures and opportunities for the community to use their own voices, through refrains and liturgical formulas. The number of voices embedded in these poems can be numerous.

108 The novelist Karin Tidbeck confronts this power of theater in general, one that is only amplified in a religious context. Two of her characters argue: “ ‘Do you understand what you have done?’ Director continued. ‘Do you understand what it means to write something that did not happen?’ ‘We are not gods,’ Nestor said. ‘We are a function. We are memory. And memory is not a power to be abused.’ ” (Karin Tidbeck, The Memory Theater: A Novel [New York: Pantheon, 2021], 217). The theater troupe in this novel concretizes and takes literally certain concepts recognized as philosophically compelling or metaphorically true even in late antiquity: theater can shape memory, and thus reality.

Take Your Places  161 Poets and community work within a body of shared conventions, common across religious traditions and language boundaries. The poets sought to engage their listeners, so that they could entertain and edify them and orchestrate effective prayer that spoke for the people, with the people, and to them. Like orators and actors, liturgical poets worked to attract, guide, and hold the attention of their audiences, and they did so not only through the intrinsic seriousness of sanctioned prayer, but also through dynamic delivery, exciting stories, and emotionally compelling narratives. The occasion of prayer provided an opportunity to apply the most effective rhetorical techniques to the most important ritual moments of the religious calendar. As explored in Chapter 1, many of poems begin with narratives derived from scripture, and this shared repository of biblical plots provides a common resource for Jews, Christians, and Samaritans. But the techniques for telling these stories and for translating them into the genre and context of liturgical poetry reflected the sophisticated conventions of performance in antiquity, too, notably the techniques of ekphrasis (vivid description) and ethopoeia (speech-​in-​ character). In the following two chapters, we will examine those rhetorical practices in close detail.

3 Imagine, If You Will: Ekphrasis and the Senses in the Sanctuary As is painting, so is poetry —​Horace, Ars Poetica, l. 361

In her 2009 monograph, Ekphrasis: Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice, Ruth Webb describes the curriculum of future orators as follows: Young readers were encouraged not to approach texts as distanced artefacts with a purely critical eye, but to engage with them imaginatively, to think themselves into the scenes and to feel as if they were present at the death of Patroklos, the making of the Shield of Achilles, or the Athenian disaster in Sicily during the Peloponnesian War.1

Webb here highlights important aspects of how ancient rhetors related to their materials and suggests two particularly important concepts their education would have stressed: the quality of enargeia (“vividness”) and facility with the technique of ekphrasis (“setting before the eyes”). Both of these terms appear in foundational works of rhetorical theory such as Aristotle’s Poetics, and they describe basic skills orators in training needed to master, as delineated in handbooks that outlined the curriculum for elite youths (progymnasmata or “preliminary exercises”). While the progymnasmata address an audience of aspiring orators, or at least those whose social class and profession would have demanded competency in declamation and public speech, many of the techniques they isolate and describe in their curricula relate to the creation of effective delivery in general. As a result,

1 Ruth Webb, Ekphrasis: Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice (Surrey, UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), 19.

Staging the Sacred. Laura S. Lieber, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780190065461.003.0004

Imagine, If You Will  163 the exercises of the progymnasmata and the concepts they articulate easily translate to other contexts, including the theatrical stage and the performance of sacred song.2 In this chapter, I consider two related topics: how poets verbally fashioned the multisensory elements of these poems and to what effect, and how the textual evocations of sight, in particular, complemented the rich visual context of ancient churches and synagogues. I will set the stage for this twofold analysis by considering the importance of visuality (ekphrasis) in the rhetorical handbooks of late antiquity. These handbooks reflect the appeal and importance of such topics and techniques far beyond the scope of those who would actually have studied them. We will then return to our first main topic and explore techniques by which liturgical poets from all three traditions appeal to the sense of sight, as well as other senses. Finally, with those literary and performative exemplars in mind, we will briefly consider how images from the performative environment might have resonated with or reinforced elements from the texts. Throughout the chapter, the interlocking dynamics between physical experience and the power of imagination guide this portion of our study. How could poets appeal to sight when so much of what they treated resided entirely in the imagination, or was ineffable?3 But, on the other hand, how could they not?

Ekphrasis and the Classical Curriculum Orators in antiquity thought deeply about their craft and developed a sophisticated vocabulary to describe their goals and techniques for achieving desired effects. Two terms highlight aspects of this performative task as understood by its practitioners that are relevant for not only oratory but also other forms of performance. “Vividness”—​enargeia—​demands an investment in detail: of pausing to make scenes literally “sensible,” in the sense that despite their reliance on the listeners’ imagination, delivery facilitated a 2 In his discussion weighing the merits of epic and tragic mimesis, for example, Aristotle writes, “Tragedy has vividness (ἐναργὲς) in both reading and performance” (Poetics §26, 145b [LCL 199, pp. 138–​139]). Similarly, Demetrius states that “all imitation has an element of vividness (ἐναργές)” (On Style §219 [LCL 199, pp. 470–​471]). 3 As Jacob of Sarug asks in a reflective moment, “How can a memra depict Him, if it were to depict Him, /​For He dazzles minds and their pigments do not suffice for Him?” (“On the Samaritan Woman,” ll. 39–​40).

164  Staging the Sacred richly “real” sense of the moment. Ekphrasis (“setting before the eyes”) offers a shorthand way of encapsulating the variety of techniques by which scenes are brought to life for an audience through the use of sensory-​engaging language, particularly those that appeal to the sense of sight.4 Enargeia renders the invisible “visible” to the imagination and can also shape how one understands sights that might be seen too hurriedly; ekphrasis describes the details that translate enargeia from an idea into an experience. Jewish, Samaritan, and Christian liturgical poets used specific techniques from the world of oratory to bring scenes of transcendent splendor and temporal remoteness vividly to life for their listeners. In an age of spectacle, the eyes feasted. Liturgical poems emerged in a cultural context in which education was mimetic, and reading an active endeavor, from its earliest stages. Texts were not only sources of data or facts, but latent experiences to be activated and lived anew, whether read or heard, studied or staged. Whether working in genres of tragedy, comedy, declamation, or liturgy, authors rely on culturally formative bodies of tradition (as discussed in Chapter 1), transformed through the power of words into easily imagined scenes and sensations. The chemistry between the moment of performance and the author-​performer generates a kind of empathic mimesis. A reader or listener does not face battle as a mere foot soldier, but as the valiant, doomed Hector; audience members do not grieve like anonymous mortals, but like Hecuba, utterly bereft; a reader, actor, or truly engaged spectator does not rage in a general way, but with the incandescent anger of Achilles. Read in isolation, a written text mediates between author and reader.5 In the cases of oratory, theater, and liturgy, the performer plays the role of the text, translating but also coloring the latent sensory and emotional power of the source materials. The general population in antiquity would have been broadly familiar with a common culture of performance—​the substructure and byproduct of ubiquitous entertainment—​which would have included some exposure, informal if not formal, to the content of classical oratorical education.6 I do not 4 The rise in sensory studies has led to increased attention to sight in various ancient writings. In addition to Webb, Ekphrasis, see also Roland Betancourt, Sight, Touch, and Imagination in Byzantium (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), and Rachel Raphael Neis, The Sense of Sight in Rabbinic Culture: Jewish Ways of Seeing in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 5 Anne Carson explores the evocative analogy of a “love triangle” between writer, text, and reader in her essay Eros the Bittersweet (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986). 6 Of particular interest here is Raffaella Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenstic and Roman Egypt (Princeton, NJ, and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001), as it describes how orators were trained in the eastern Mediterranean world of the Roman Empire; see esp. pp. 132–​147 and 230–​244. It is likely that the authors of hymns and poems were, in some sense,

Imagine, If You Will  165 argue that the majority of writers or performers, let alone their communities (which may have included well-​educated urban elites but may have been economically and socially diverse), received formal training; rather, I posit that the cultural products of formal education—​public oratory and theater—​ were widely popular and socially diffuse, and that audiences and performers shared a set of common understandings about how one communicated effectively. The progymnasmata can be understood as systematizing or distilling this diffuse set of broadly shared ideals, ideas, values, and aesthetics. They collect and organize a general sense of what constituted “learning” and “teaching,” in the service of communicative performance. Liturgical poets wrote in a genre and for a setting that included intrinsically pedagogical aspects: they affirmed, underscored, and conveyed religious truths, traditions, and ideals. Consequently, we can assume that they understood, in broad strokes if not detail, the skills all public performers would be expected to employ. Similarly, congregational audiences acquired familiarity with norms and conventions casually and organically, through attentive attendance to performance in a variety of venues. Performers and populace alike shared expectations of how episodes and figures from a tradition should be brought to life, in synagogues and churches as much as on the rostrum or stage. Rhetorical training in antiquity presumed not only dispassionate study of tradition and mastery of classical plots and characters, but also the ability to deliver dynamic and engaging “experiences” of exemplary episodes before an audience: to perform effectively. Speakers strove to acquire the ability to immerse their listeners in an imagined but shared experience through words and embodied expressions.7 Ideally, according to this understanding of communication, any boundary between past and present, between tradition and self, or between text and reader was thoroughly collapsed. Jurors became eyewitnesses, audiences were transformed into participants, and congregants experienced communal history as individual memory. As Peter A. O’Connell notes in his study of Athenian legal rhetoric, “Part of the challenge of making

“educated” (more so than many of their listeners), although such training could have been formal or informal, structured or more intuitive; these poets were certainly learned within their own traditions. Also note Dunbabin, Theater and Spectacle, 109–​110 (discussed in Chapter 1), who calls attention to the training of slaves as entertainers. 7 The concept of “absorption” remains key in how scholars understand “religious experience” today; see T. M. Luhrmann, When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God (New York: Penguin Random House, 2012).

166  Staging the Sacred a good forensic speech, then, is encouraging the jury to associate themselves with witnesses so that they visualize the speaker’s version of events and conclude that his arguments rest on visual evidence.”8 Students of oratory, like playwrights and poets, were trained to discipline and apply their own creative skills and talents in service of actively engaging the imaginative faculties of their listeners to the point where the imagined became, in some sense, concrete. Public performers—​orators, actors, and poets—​shared the potential to transmit sympathies, emotions, and memories in ways that were profoundly real. All the senses were important in this imagined reality, but education in antiquity paid particular attention to the visual. Effective mimesis relied on spoken words conjuring a sense of sight in the minds of listeners. Progymnasmata consolidated theories of performance, techniques of pedagogy, and personal self-​reflection by orators and teachers, and they innovated in how they systematize and organized existing practices into complete curricula. Universally, they recognize that every speech is a performance: oratory only works if a speaker can engage his listeners, capturing both their attention and their imaginations. Thus, although Quintilian critiqued “competitive” declamation, he nonetheless employed agonistic language when he encouraged students of oratory to understand the audience experience. He writes that they “should be present at as many trials as possible and be a frequent spectator of the battle in which he is destined to play a part . . . training himself, as we see gladiators do, with real weapons.”9 The forum was the orator’s combat arena, and the orator should practice declamations not of myths and fancy but of scenes drawn from real life, as practice for actual cases, and with an awareness of how audiences respond.10 The progymnasmata and the concept of an orator’s curriculum offer a useful framing for our analysis of liturgical poetry and its relationship to both conventions of delivery and established literary tradition.11 Reading 8 Peter A. O’Connell, The Rhetoric of Seeing in Attic Forensic Oratory (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017), 107. 9 Quintilian, De Or. 10.5.20 (LCL 127, pp. 366–​367). 10 It is important to understand the progymnasmata as crystallizations of a far more diverse reality, and to remember the significant nature of local variation. As Cribiore notes, “In Rome, the teaching of rhetoric seems to have been less bookish than in the Greek East. It relied more heavily on the teachers’ own digestion of literary sources, a fact that . . . reflected on the practice of declamation” (Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind, 227). 11 This is not to suggest that education systems throughout the late antique Mediterranean world were homogeneous or lacked diversity. See the discussion in Teresa Morgan, Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), esp. pp. 90–​ 100. Also note Jeffrey Walker, The Genuine Teachers of This Art: Rhetorical Education in Antiquity (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2011), and Joy Connolly, “The Problem of the Past

Imagine, If You Will  167 hymnody through this analytical self-​ understanding of public speech highlights the implicit commonalities between hymns and declamation, and because these handbooks acknowledge the affinities between orators and actors, our three modes of performance continue to coexist. As explored in Chapter 1, poets, like actors and orators, mediated between their literary canon and their publics; they brought the tradition and all its associations to new life and immediacy through embodied speech, including both words and gestures. Because oratorical training was the most formal and self-​ consciously taught form of performative speech, and it was grounded in literature as well as informal varieties of cultural literacy, we have more traces of oratorical education and pedagogy. Furthermore, and related to the study of hymnody, students of oratory in the Greek East—​an area that would include Constantinople and the Levant—​are singled out for having composed poetry as well as prose. They are credited with devoting time to two exercises that align especially well with liturgical poetry: the techniques of ethopoeia (speech-​in-​character), which reinforces narrative elements of poetry, and encomium (laudatory speech), which anticipates one function of hymnody as “songs of praise.”12 Ekphrases—​vivid appeals to the sense of sight—​were, however, ubiquitous. By examining hymnody through the lens of the progymnasmata, we can see how rhetorical conventions and techniques systematized and articulated in the context of oratory could have shaped expectations placed upon performers of all kinds, whether these individuals were well-​ educated students of the curriculum, informally instructed in a more “derivative” way, or self-​taught dramatists, gifted with finely tuned ears and eyes, or simply the proper instinct for this profession. The authors and performers of liturgical works, like orators and actors, translated the larger culture’s norms of performance, including the reliance on “classical” (Greco-​Roman or scriptural) traditions, into the worlds of synagogues and churches. They were, further, presumably motivated by the power of their performative venue, as their audience consisted of not only their own communities, but also their deity. Within the performative, rhetorical world of late antiquity, we can imagine

in Imperial Education,” in Education in Greek and Roman Antiquity, ed. Yun Lee Too (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 339–​372. 12 Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind, 229–​230. Ethopoeia is the topic of Chapter 4 in the present study.

168  Staging the Sacred that liturgical poetry seemed both pleasingly “modern” but also comfortingly “conventional.” Orators and those receiving more thorough educations would have studied ekphrasis and enargeia—​ways of appealing to embodied sensory experiences through the imagination—​in detail. But we need to appreciate the technique not only from the perspective of the speaker or author, but also from that of the audience. Spectators, whether of declamation contests, trials, plays, or liturgies, would have included some individuals with their own professional knowledge (those who had studied oratory in school, or actors and orators who studied each other), and others who would have learned what constitutes ekphrasis by experiencing it “in action”—​fewer formal encounters, but many of them. All parties—​speakers and spoken-​to—​would have understood the important of vividness and the sensory power of words, some through explicit education and others having learned it, literally, by ear.

Ekphrasis: Seeing Oratory through Hymnographers’ Eyes All four extant progymnasmata treat the topic of ekphrasis, as does Quintilian, and it is an important component of the exercises attributed to Libanius.13 Ekphrasis typically appears quite late among the topics addressed in the handbooks, which reflects their perceived importance; as Gibson states, “teachers in late antiquity and Byzantium thought the exercises in narration, speech in character, and description most important.”14 The relative consistency of where ekphrasis appears in the progymnasmata, nuanced by distinctive treatments of the topic, suggests a widespread agreement on the centrality of “setting a thing vividly before the eyes” as a crucial component of rhetoric.15 The manuals distinguish ekphrasis (carefully organized and highly detailed visual descriptions of scenes) from simple narration (linear rehearsal of a series of events), noting that ekphrasis lingers over and highlights specific features that, when taken together, appeal to a listener’s

13 See Appendix to this chapter for a synopsis of ekphrasis as it appears in each of the handbooks. 14 Craig A. Gibson, Libanius’ Progymnasmata: Model Exercises in Greek Prose Composition and Rhetoric (Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2008), xxi. 15 For a useful discussion of how ekphrasis works and what purposes it served, see Simon Goldhill, Preposterous Poetics: The Politics and Aesthetics of Form in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), esp. pp. 1–​37. On how images engaged audiences, see also Alastair Fowler, Renaissance Realism: Narrative Images in Literature and Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 66–​84.

Imagine, If You Will  169 senses and emotions. Done well, an ekphrasis creates a fully imagined picture and permits the listener to experience imaginatively physical and emotional sensations, and thus transforms the audience from passive listeners into active spectators—​viewers who employ their sense of sight, as it were—​and into absorbed, if imaginary, participants in the scene. The forthright study of ekphrasis served to remind students that language has the power to conjure physically embodied responses: frightening words heighten the frightfulness of a monster, lofty words exalt a hero, and lingering, delicate words evoke a summer meadow. Rhetoric could be understood as a form of visual artistry: it creates paintings, sculptures, mosaics, and music, all within the mind, through the medium of words—​“poetry is an articulate picture,” Plutarch recalls Simonides as saying.16 A skilled speaker offered listeners entree into a world perceived through the sensory imagination. Ekphrasis draws author and reader—​or, here, speaker and listener—​together into a shared imaginary space. A performer’s delivery imagines worlds into being, worlds he shares and inhabits with his audience. The systematic study of oratorical technique would have been associated with Greco-​Roman culture, but liturgical poets would have found examples of vivid description readily at hand, authorized by their own sacred traditions.

Scriptural Templates: The Song of Songs While the term ekphrasis emerged in the context of rhetorical pedagogy and compositional theory in antiquity, the concept of “vivid description” predated such nomenclature. Jews, Samaritans, and Christians would have found models for such techniques within their own holy texts and not necessarily regarded it as an aesthetic imported from profane sources.17 Just as Greek and Roman orators found inspiration in Homer’s detailed 16 The full quotation from Plutarch is: “Simonides, however, calls painting inarticulate poetry and poetry articulate painting: for the actions which painters portray as taking place at the moment literature narrates and records after they have taken place. Even though artists with colour and design, and writers with words and phrases, represent the same subjects, they differ in the material and the manner of their imitation; and yet the underlying end and aim of both is one and the same; the most effective historian is he who, by a vivid representation of emotions and characters, makes his narration like a painting” (De gloria Atheniensium §3; LCL 305, pp. 500–​501). 17 Indeed, presentations of David as a pantomime and Jacob as an athlete—​and God as a dance leader—​were discussed in Chapter 1 and serve to further synthesize and authorize these practices, by reading them into central portions of the tradition. In this, late antique Jewish exegetes resemble Isidore of Seville, who traced the origins of wedding songs to Solomon and regarded what he saw in his own midst as paganized bastardization of a sacred inheritance.

170  Staging the Sacred depiction of Achilles’ shield, Jewish and Christian writers found models in biblical sources. Biblical poetry, in particular, stands out for its use of evocative phrases crafted out startling images from the natural world and daily life: Genesis 49, Exodus 15, and Deuteronomy 32–​33 would have been deeply familiar to Samaritan, Christian, and Jewish poets alike, and Jews and Christians would have readily called to mind not only the Psalms but passages such as the Song of Deborah and the poetry of the prophets, as well. The message of these texts is often national in scale and lofty in scope, but their language is firmly grounded in a vividly accessible and even mundane familiarity: stubborn mules, roaring lions, desperate thirst, and sexual appetite are among the quotidian sources of figurative language employed by the classical texts. One particularly evocative example of biblical ekphrasis can be found in the Song of Songs.18 Passages such as Song of Songs 4:1–​7, 5:10–​16, 6:4–​10, and 7:1–​9 offer particularly memorable examples of what would come to be known as a waṣf (in Arabic) or blason (in French), the head-​ to-​toe (or toe-​to-​head) description of the body of a lover.19 While the precise metaphors of the biblical Song of Songs can defy easy decoding and have provided post-​biblical exegetes with substantial fodder down to the present day, the Song of Song’s metaphors and similes tantalize with their concreteness and suggestive eroticism. Three times the male lover describes his beloved using figurative language that is at once both almost tactile in its vividness and yet baffling in its visualization; a few examples would include: “Your neck is like the Tower of David /​built to hold weapons, hung with a thousand shields—​all the quivers of warriors” (Song of Sol. 4:4); “Your hair is like a flock of goats /​streaming down from Gilead” (Song of Sol. 6:5); “Your navel is like a round goblet—​let mixed wine not be lacking!—​Your belly like a heap of wheat /​hedged about with lilies” (Song of Sol. 7:3). Only once does the woman describe her male lover, and this passage states in its entirety:

18 Of particular relevance is Morwenna Ludlow’s recent study, Art, Craft, and Theology in Fourth-​ Century Christian Authors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), esp. the chapter, “The Rhetoric of Landscape in Gregory of Nyssa’s Homilies on the Song of Songs” (pp. 77–​99). Her study treats both ekphrasis (the subject of this chapter) and prosopopoeia (the subject of Chapter 4), although she does not address hymnody. See also Laura S. Lieber, A Vocabulary of Desire: The Song of Songs in the Early Synagogue. The Brill Reference Library of Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 40. 19 The term blason derives from medieval heraldry, where it originally described the constellation of symbols on a crest (blazon). The poetic term thus coincidentally forges a connection between the poetry of Petrarch and Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 and the famous shield of Achilles from the Iliad.

Imagine, If You Will  171 My beloved is clear-​skinned and ruddy, preeminent among ten thousand. His head is finest gold, his locks are curled and black as a raven. His eyes are like doves by watercourses, bathed in milk, set by a brimming pool. His cheeks are like beds of spices, banks of perfume; his lips are like lilies; they drip flowing myrrh. His hands are rods of gold, studded with beryl; his belly a tablet of ivory, adorned with sapphires. His legs are like marble pillars, set in sockets of fine gold; he is majestic as Lebanon, stately as the cedars. His mouth is delicious and all of him is delightful: such is my beloved, such is my darling, O maidens of Jerusalem! (Song of Sol. 5:10–​16)

The images employed in this poem draw on an array of symbols, from both the natural world (botanical and animalistic) and the created world of craftsmen (particularly statuary). The theological significance of these lines, while not to be underestimated, matters less at this moment than the existence of such rich and evocative description in the canon of sacred scripture. If Solomon, to whom a late antique reader would ascribe this passage authorship, employed ekphrasis, it would only be natural for Solomon’s heirs—​including the liturgical poets—​to continue this tradition at its most refined and expressive.

Ekphrasis and Liturgical Song Ekphrasis, whether employed in formal exercises or discovered in a natural literary habitat, was not limited to descriptions of human bodies or inanimate objects, of course. At its broadest, the term suggests the communication of the richness of an experience “in the moment.” Mastery of the nexus of concepts included within “vividness” (whether labeled ekphrasis or enargeia, or simply intuited as effective) was fundamental to skilled oratory in antiquity. Any writer, whether a dramatist, poet, or orator, in order to be effective, needed to convey vividness, significant detail, texture and physical experience, and the harmony between a thing and the quality of the words it evokes; such sensory activation was essential when performances took place in more “minimalist” settings. The speaker at the rostrum, the actor on the stage, and the poet at the ambo, bema, or bimah shared a common mission: to persuade listeners to feel as if they were witnesses to myths and history, to

172  Staging the Sacred see the world and its wonders (and terrors), and to experience the trajectory and meaning of imagined actions and events through their own eyes, guided by the poet-​performer. The key to vividness is detail and specificity, those flourishes that embellish and vivify the grand sweep of history, the dramatic arcs of narratives, and those idiosyncrasies and flaws that mark characters as individuals.20 Such is the great power of the smallest ornament, the gemlike tesserae of mosaics, the facets of which can glitter in the mind’s eye. Although the term ekphrasis is typically defined through the sense of sight—​it makes something clear before the eyes—​the progymnasmata acknowledge that other senses can play a role in vividness, as well. The spoken word inherently engages the ears and can also appeal to other senses beyond sight: taste, touch, and scent. Multisensory appeal contributes to the sense of immersion that successful ekphrasis conveys. The author’s evocation of resonant details builds a bridge between what would have been familiar to his listeners in the imagined world into which he wishes to lead them. Whether it is the smoky haze of a battle-​ruined landscape, the wild frenzy of a husband’s murderous rage deep within his home, or a tranquil garden bower where lovers repose and shut out the rest of the world, all these scenes and more may be unreal in any practical way to the experiences of the listeners, and yet smoke, rage, and gardens provide language that writers can extend into imagined realms, and all of which have already been elements of poetry treated in this volume. And the idea that something defies description does not discourage the poets. Where the biblical prophet Ezekiel struggled to articulate his vision of the divine chariot in Ezekiel 1–​3 and 10, Jewish and Christian hymnographers energetically describe God’s host and retinue. The early Jewish hymn “El Adon” (now part of the standard Shabbat morning liturgy) prepares worshipers for the recitation of the Qedushah de-​Yotzer by describing God’s throne and His royal attendants in concrete language reminiscent of what would come to be known as hekhalot (or merkavah) mysticism. The poem tells us, for example, that the angels are “full of splendor, they radiate brightness /​the beauty of their brightness permeates the world” (ll. 13–​14).21 The Christian hymnist Narsai also finds light imagery essential to 20 One remarkable example of literary ekphrasis from late antiquity is Paul the Silentiary’s description of Hagia Sophia. This work, likely composed at the Emperor Justinian’s behest, offers tantalizing insights into the visual appearance of Hagia Sophia as it was rebuilt after the Nika riots, and as it appeared during the professional life of Romanos the Melodist. It is discussed later in this chapter (pp. 217–221). 21 Text of “El Adon” can be found in almost any standard Shabbat morning siddur; see the discussion in Michael Swartz, Mystical Prayer in Ancient Judaism: An Analysis of Maʻaseh Merkavah (Tübingen, Germany: J.C.B. Mohr, 1992), 163–​165 and 212–​213. Also relevant is Moshe Weinfeld

Imagine, If You Will  173 describing the heavenly realm: in his poem on the Ascension, he describes the appearance of angels as “clothed in a garment of light” (ll. 101, 105) with an appearance that “fascinates.” He offers a sense of radiance and blinding splendor that both reflects the experience of gazing at the heavens even as he bumps up against the sense that what he wishes to describe requires contemplating God’s “ineffable glory” (l. 125).22 Liturgical poets—​ Jewish, Christian, and Samaritan—​ all appealed to the senses by means of detailed description in ways that the authors of the progymnasmata and their students might well have recognized as “vividness.” We can assume that those who heard these hymns would have treasured the sense of access and immediacy to the divine and to their sacred history that poems—​prayers—​enriched by this technique would have offered. These exemplars highlight for us how poets appealed to a range of senses in highly concrete terms, rather than in the inevitably word-​defying manifestations of angels in the heavenly realm. A Sense of Mary (Ephrem, Fourth c. ce): Ephrem’s hymn, “On the Nativity (#8),” offers a concise example of how a poem can appeal to an array of senses.23 The poem focuses on Mary, depicting her as the culmination and ideal of womanhood, setting her in the company of diverse women, from matriarchs to anonymous girls, wise women to youthful brides. Ephrem brings these women to life in the mind’s eye through his appeals to familiar items and experiences—​not in a systematic way or in a compressed section of the composition, but in scattered, evocative phrases of high vividness throughout the work. The hymn opens with an explicitly visual analogy, from the world of visual art, by making a comparison of the Incarnation to an artist mixing pigments (Strophe 2).24 In the second strophe, the poet appeals to taste, describing Christ as “the salt,” the element that renews or restores flavor lost to humanity through Adam’s sin. Other references, while fleeting, likewise

on the Songs of the Luminaries in Normative and Sectarian Judaism in the Second Temple Period (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 90–​111. For examples of Qumran poetry, hekhalot hymns, and late antique piyyutim that are similar to these, see T. Carmi, The Penguin Anthology of Hebrew Verse (New York: Penguin, 1981), 186–​209. 22 For the text and an English translation, see Narsai’s Metrical Homilies on the Nativity, Epiphany, Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension: Critical Edition of the Syriac, trans. Frederick G. McLeod (Turhout, Belguim: Brepols, 1979), 168–​171. 23 McVey, Ephrem the Syrian, 119–​123. 24 Jacob of Sarug also evokes the image of a painter, but not a divine one; instead, he compares himself as a writer to a visual artist, asking of himself and questioning his own art, “How can a memra depict Him, if it were to depict Him, for He dazzles minds and their pigments do not suffice for Him?” (“On the Samaritan Woman,” ll. 39–​40).

174  Staging the Sacred appeal to the tongue: new wine counters the parched vine (Strophe 8), and sour grapes give way to ripe fruit (Strophe 9). Ephrem also evokes sound, first by references to a pastoral scene of farmers bursting into song (Strophe 7) and, with particular resonance, through depictions of mothers singing lullabies (Sarah to Isaac in Strophe 13, and Mary to Jesus in Strophe 17). Also evoked are the joyful shouts of bridegrooms, brides, and children (in Strophes 18 and 19); the intermingling of youthful voices reinforces the sense of generational continuity explicitly created by the matrilineal structure of Strophes 13–​17, which traces a line from Sarah, to Rachel, to Anna, to Elizabeth, and to Mary (with references to Rebecca, as well). Each mother is given a voice: Sarah sings, Rachel cries out, Anna sobs, and Elizabeth prays. The final strophe is likewise dense with audition: young women are described as talkative, and mourners as soft-​spoken, even as laments transform into prophecy (Strophe 22). We can only wonder, too, how the hymn’s performance reinforced the aural elements of its words. Scent and touch are less directly evoked here but may well color memories of taste and sound, just as references to pain, weight, harvesting, dancing, and cradling an infant all draw on bodily knowledge. Less obvious to modern readers, simply because we encounter these works in written form and typically study them in silent solitude or perhaps read them aloud around a seminar table: we need to remember that the experience of hearing these poems—​of standing in the physical space of performance in proximity to others—​would have added unique elements of tactility (bodies coming into contact with each other, skin touching stone, the physical vibrations of sound) and olfaction (the unique odors of spaces and people) to the moment. The prominence of women as figures in the poem aligns with the experience of the women famously so integral to the performances of these hymns in Ephrem’s day.25 Women’s bodies were not abstractions, but present and quite concretely real. Indeed, this is a poem that displays a heightened awareness of the sensual world. While it opens with a fairly abstract theological strophe, stressing ideas of mercy and reconciliation, it quickly segues to depicting a vividly embodied world through familiar and accessible metaphor. Ephrem’s deployment of imagery is meticulous and delicate: the Incarnation, initially depicted as the mixing of paints, becomes a tender and embodied intimacy in the final strophes, in which God “bends down” from His great height toward “our childishness” (Strophe 19)—​a beautiful and very physical

25 See Harvey, Song and Memory.

Imagine, If You Will  175 evocation of the Incarnation; then, having bent down, He “shone forth from the poor” (Strophe 20), a transfer of light rather than color. It is also charmingly everyday: farmers draw forth new life from the soil as laborers give glory (rather than toil). Carpenters and vintners see themselves in their God, even as mothers and brides see themselves in Mary. The sensory richness conveys the vibrantly, joyously mortal and even mundane scale of this poem, without negating the complexities and even paradoxes such analogies can generate. The Culmination of Creation (ca. Fourth c. ce): In the majestic Avodah poem composed for the afternoon of Yom Kippur, “Az Be’en Kol,” we likewise see commonplace analogs used to clarify cosmic mysteries, in this case, the acts of divine creation. Given the immense scale of this work—​at over eight hundred lines, it is by far the longest of the Avodah poems26—​we will focus on the poet’s depiction of the sixth day (Gen. 1:24–​31), when all land animals, including humans, are created.27 This is a small portion of a much larger whole, but it clearly constitutes a distinct unit, as each section of the composition concludes with a selection of proof texts. Even this smaller unit can be divided into sections; to use a metaphor from the world of art, “Day 6” constitutes a diptych—​a composition of two interrelated panels—​within the vast poetic mosaic. One panel depicts the creation of animals (symbolized by Behemoth) and another, the creation of humankind (represented by Adam). This brief excerpt of thirty lines (ll. 177–​207) illustrates how the poet offered his listeners a series of vivid, imagistic snapshots of its topics. “Panel 1” opens with a graphic, multisensory image of how Creation transpired; this is clearly a new unit of the composition, as the previous section concluded with a litany of biblical quotations, which mark the end of a section.28 Congealed cream /​crawling creatures Most of them despised /​and some of them favored (ll. 177–​178)

26 It is possible, given the length of this poem, that it was recited over the course of several days, in which case the listeners—​together with the performer—​would have been immersed in this imagined world for an extended period of time. 27 Day 6 constitutes lines 177–​207 of the poem, found in Swartz and Yahalom, Avodah, 124–​129. While humanity is created in this unit, the poet revisits the creation of Adam and Eve in more detail, in lines 234–​262. The creation of the Sabbath occurs between these two sections (ll. 208–​233). 28 Day 6 concludes with quotations from Ps. 104:24, Neh. 9:6, and Ps. 104:31 (ll. 205–​207).

176  Staging the Sacred Land animals, both kosher (“acceptable, favorable”/​‫ )לרצון‬and not kosher (“despised”; lit., “for wrath, heat”/​‫)לחרון‬, emerge from curdling mud. The poet’s description of Creation is visual, tactile, and unsettling in its specifics; its vocabulary suggests unpleasant textures and convey a sour whiff along with visceral distaste. The poet does not paint the act of creation in the animal realm as an ethereal abstraction but as every bit as messy, smelly, and slimy as the most intimate bodily processes, from procreation to decomposition. Life, like art, makes demands on the senses, and the poet enlivens God’s creation of animals by evoking the most physical aspects of human physical processes. In the stanzas that follow those opening lines, the poet shifts his focus to the first and among the most visually arresting images, the majestic of the terrestrial beasts, Behemoth.29 The second stanza (ll. 179–​180) conveys the beast’s massive size—​it feeds from mountain ranges and drinks from the Jordan; the third stanza (ll. 181–​182) employs as key verbs the terms “to struggle” and “to delight.” These terms appeal to physical, embodied senses and alert listeners (not yet “created” within the poem’s narrative) to the fact that that this beast will star in the end-​of-​times combat spectacle they should hope to witness. The poet stresses the visual impressiveness of the beast, depicting him as clad in natural armor of bronze and iron, adding metallic heft and gleam to the beast’s visage and crafting it in the image of a gladiator in the arena (ll. 183–​ 184). In the final stanza of this panel (ll. 185–​186), the poet suggests that the angelic hosts will witness Behemoth’s combat prowess. The author conjures for his listeners a complicated scene: they imagine themselves watching the angels as angels (once again the audience of the events narrated, along with the human congregation) gaze upon the combat. This end-​of-​days contest, anticipated at the time of Creation, concludes with an evocation of the Creator God as a gladiator: Leviathan rears up (as in Job 41:17) and God, acting the role of the gladiator, defeats him: “Only the One who made him /​ can strike (him) with His sword” (186).30 The poet borrows imagery from the familiar realm of animal games, but he extends those images into realms—​a

29 For Qallir’s treatment of Behemoth, see the discussion in Chapter 1 (pp. 46–​49); while battle is implied in “Az Be’en Kol,” it is not explicitly depicted. Also note Michael Swartz, The Signifying Creator: Nontextual Sources of Meaning in Ancient Judaism (New York: NYU Press, 2012), 13–​32. 30 As in Qallir’s lament (see Chapter 1, pp. 46–​49), this poet also depicts God as the slaughterer of Behemoth, rather than the LamR tradition in which Leviathan and Behemoth slaughter each other. “Az Be’en Kol” depicts Leviathan in “Day 5” (ll. 150–​176), in the context of the creation of sea creatures but does not pit the two giants against each other.

Imagine, If You Will  177 mythic past and heavenly present—​that can only be built in the imagination using the infrastructure of the familiar world as its building blocks. This mention of the deity seems to bring our poet back to his primary topic—​creation—​and at line 186 he turns his attention to the creation of Adam, the topic of the second panel of this scene. Initially, the poet highlights the figure of God: in lines 187–​188, he draws our attention to God’s interiority, depicting a contemplative God. In the seventh stanza (ll. 189–​190), we see the created world through God’s eyes, but the terms used are desolate and come not from Genesis but Lamentations: the earth is lonely, bereft, like a widow. The poet conjures an almost tangible sense of absence, of missing sensory input. Moved by this sense of need, God decides to create a human and prepares to meet his wants with delight. In Stanza 9, He focuses on this human’s food, rich, sweet, and pleasurable (line 191–​192); here the sense of taste leads to piety. Stanzas 11–​13 depict the act of creation, using a variety of mixed metaphors, all suggestive of physicality and precision: he is carved (l. 197) but also pinched from clay (l. 199), and he is a lamp whose wick flickers to life when God breathes upon it (ll. 199, 202). “Carving” and “pinching” suggest divine hands and fingers—​essential to revelation later in the sacred history—​while the final image draws on the visual contrast of light and dark, even as breath evokes the physical experience common to all living beings, and the intimacy of a physical kiss. This sense of life-​giving physical closeness is juxtaposed, in the final stanza of the unit, with the creation of woman, “she who desires to steal” (l. 203): where God bestows life, Eve takes it away. And yet, the section concludes with God’s joy in humanity, the capstone of creation, and this panel’s final impression offers the aesthetic pleasure of a mosaic being completed: “You rejoiced on the day You made him /​and You placed him: a sixth day” (l. 204). God’s masterpiece is complete, and He takes pleasure in His creation, even as He acknowledges its dynamic imperfection. In this poem, the messy, sensory richness of embodied life on land acquires aesthetic and moral qualities—​no less physical, but less exclusively centered on the body. Each of these two panels focuses on a single creature, first Behemoth and then Adam, and each stanza of this poem, fashioned out of two lines, highlights a singular element of a moment in time. The poet does not pretend to have witnessed the final day of Creation; as God asks Job, in the context of a scene that no doubt influenced our poet in his depiction of Behemoth, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” (Job 38:4). The payyetan brings his two panels to life in distinctive ways: the first panel,

178  Staging the Sacred elaborating on Behemoth, is energetic and dynamic, focused on the outward majesty of creation; the second, concentrating on Adam, operates on a far smaller scale, even as it also attends to the first human’s body, including his need for food, and awareness of pleasure and pain. Where Behemoth is robust and nearly immortal, the human is fragile and on the verge of extinction even before he takes a first breath. Both creatures are defined by God’s imposition of mortality, through the violence of gladiatorial combat in the arena of spectacle, or the quiet, subtle, but still audible, tactile, aromatic, and visual experience of snuffing out of a lamp.31 Standing at Sinai (Amram Dare, ca. Third/​Fourth c. ce): If the anonymous author of “Az Be’en Kol” gave his listeners front-​row seats before an animated mosaic of Creation—​imagistic but conveying both motion and morality—​ then Amram Dare, the great Samaritan poet, gathers his community together at the foot of Sinai as his sixth hymn opens.32 Although set in the mythic past, the poem addresses a mythic present; after an initial doxology, he writes, “We assembled at Mount Sinai /​On the day the Writing descended” (ll. 4–​5). This is striking both in the way that it explicitly inserts the contemporary community into its sacred history and in the way that it personifies the Torah and grants it agency. The poet creates a sense of immediacy first through explicit appeals to the ears: “The shofar begins to sound /​and the prophet’s voice grows strong /​and the Good One says, ‘Let My prophet ascend!’ ” (ll. 6–​8). The poem suggests a cacophony of sounds and voices. The poet then shifts his emphasis from sound to sight, narrating to his congregation how the prophet Moses grows “great and beautiful” (l. 9) and with superhuman energy “springs up and reaches up to the heavens” (l. 10). He then describes how God physically alters Moses’ appearance—​dressing him in a cloud and crowning him with a horn of light (ll. 11–​14)—​in order to manifest, visually, his singular status (ll. 15–​16). The imagery conflates the familiar with the conceptual, the tangible with the intangible: clothes and clouds, crowns and light. The first sixteen lines of the poem depict Moses and the revelation of Torah; the remaining nineteen lines of focus on Moses’ family, particularly his mother, Yocheved, and his sister, Miriam. In each case, Amram Dare textures the work with references to the senses. First, he sketches out the 31 The evocative image of a flame being extinguished appears in ll. 199–​200: “He was pinched from clay but his soul is a lamp; /​‘If he becomes arrogant, I will extinguish him (‫)אכבנו‬, and he will sleep in darkness’.” 32 Lieber, Classical Samaritan Poetry, 56–​58.

Imagine, If You Will  179 maternal pride she must have taken in her three offspring. The poet begins with the quotidian metaphor of a vine (Yocheved) bearing three clusters of grapes (Aaron, Moses, and Miriam) (ll. 18–​19)—​a visual image that bears with it scent (the fragrance of a vineyard) and anticipation of taste (sweetness of fruit). He then embellishes each child, drawing on a different, dynamic sense for each: Moses walks through fire (evoking sight and touch), Aaron eats of the fire offering (the tactility of heat, the scent of smoke, an appeal to taste), and Miriam sings at the sea (the song is heard, and the sea sounds, is seen, and is scented) (ll. 22–​24). The final portion of the poem is less oriented toward the senses and more interested in voice—​a move from ekphrasis to a form of ethopoeia (the topic of Chapter 4). The poet speaks in God’s voice, as God bestows blessings upon the siblings and praises their parents, Yocheved and Amram, for bearing such progeny. In line 30, the poet singles out Miriam for praise (“no other like her arose from Eve!”) in language reminiscent of how Moses was praised in the opening lines (“none like him has arisen!” in line 3) even as it may subtly counter Christian praise of Mary. The poem concludes with an appeal to ancestral merit, with the poet pleading that “as their reward, O Good One, rescue us /​in Your mercy” (ll. 34–​35). These lines do not appeal rigorously to the senses but instead highlight the emotional qualities of family dynamics: how parents can feel pride, and children inspire it. Moses, Aaron, and Miriam are, to be sure, exceptional siblings, but parent and child are deeply familiar roles nonetheless, and the community can claim this family as their kin. The narrative logic of this hymn may seem peculiar, at first glance: it divides neatly into two units, one focused on Moses at Sinai and the other on Yocheved and Miriam. The first section consists of a singular, clearly envisioned scene, while the second half reflects a more fluid kind of musing. These two parts are, however, linked, both formally (by the praise of Moses at the beginning and Miriam at the end) and genealogically (the familial bond that connects all the named figures). The near-​divine but almost passive wonder of Moses’ experience is juxtaposed with the prophetic assertiveness of Miriam’s uplifted voice; each models modes of piety for the listeners. We cannot quite imagine what Moses saw, or what the nations heard, and yet a present-​day community owes its existence to their actions, both revelatory and protective, resonating with both study and, just as importantly, the singing of hymns. This dependency gives the poet standing to claim continued benefit from their relationship. The poem moves from

180  Staging the Sacred the majestic to the intimate, from the mythic to the familiar, and the past to the present. A Song of Torah (Marqe, Third/​Fourth c. ce): Where this Amram hymn brought a moment from the community’s sacred history to life through his song, in Marqe #24, the poet highlights the drama of the present moment and makes use of the physical presence of the Torah scroll—​the tangible and visible evidence of God’s covenant with Israel—​to illustrate his vision.33 The topic of this poem is revelation, one of the most popular subjects in Samaritan hymnody; indeed, Amram Dare’s hymn, just discussed, focused on the Sinai experience. In Marqe #24, the poet approaches the Sinai revelation with a particular emphasis on its enduring importance, signified and embodied, physically, by the presence of the Torah scroll in the community, a tangible point of connection that links the present moment with the singular, foundational episode in history. Every stanza of Marqe’s work stresses the ability of the congregation to see the scroll, even as its overall narrative arc involves a move backward in time, from the present to the moment of God gave the Torah to Israel. The poem begins with an imperative addressed to the congregation. The poet invites—​indeed, commands—​his community to connect the scroll that they can see with the divine hand that wrote it and gave it to Moses: “Receive the word of the Living One /​ Extended by the hand of God” (ll. 1–​2). He underscores the continuity between Sinai and the present moment when he states, “This is the Torah /​that You gave to the children of Israel” (ll. 7–​8): the deictic language “this is . . .” (‫ )הדה הי‬indicates a physical gesturing toward the scroll, while the line is spoken directly to God (“You”) about Sinai. The dramatic action and dialogue occur between the poet-​performer and God, while the people look on, a staging recalled in the book of Exodus but ongoing in the present moment. The third stanza focuses on the physical response of the congregation to the scroll’s proximity: in its first line, the poet admonishes the community, “Let all the Hebrews bow down” (l. 11), and in the final line of the stanza the people respond, “When the great Writing is opened /​ We hasten to bow down before its Giver” (ll. 15–​16). The poet, in essence, depicts a desired physical response to the scroll and orchestrates the community’s acceptance of his instruction in the following lines. Marqe orchestrates a kind of contemporary restaging of Sinai.



33 Lieber, Classical Samaritan Poetry, 212–​214.

Imagine, If You Will  181 For all its orientation toward the present, Marqe paints a detailed picture of the foundational moment from the past, the Sinai revelation. In the final three stanzas of this poem (essentially the second half of the seven-​stanza hymn), the poet rehearses the encounter between God and Moses atop the mountain. He describes Moses as standing, while fasting and praying, as preparation for receiving Torah (ll. 21–​23); Torah then “descended from the highest heaven” (l. 30), as if under its own power, both of God but also independent of Him; and the final stanza depicts the theophanic tableau. As Marqe depicts it, the moment when God bestows the Torah is a moment of drama, bright and loud and chaotic: angels manifest, fire descends, clouds billow, shofars sound, creation trembles. If we did not know the story already, the scene would be utter confusion. And yet, at this moment of great tumult, we find a vision of clarity: “God extended and the great prophet received” (l. 38). We can imagine how hand gestures and body language would have underscored the drama of the handoff, the image that concludes the composition. The visual and auditory “sketch” of this transformative moment breaks through into the present precisely because the community possess the object that God transferred to Moses. It is as if the poet has imagined himself and his community into the biblical scene, or the biblical scene escaped the confines of the past and grown organically within the synagogue. The presence of the Torah scroll, tangible and visual in the synagogue, underscores Marqe’s implicit truth, conveyed in the final line: the transfer of Torah from God to Moses has continued through the generations, to the present. The central stanza of the poem, which stresses the luminous quality of the Torah, offers a moment of stillness around which the composition orbits. Early in the composition, the words of the Torah are described as “illuminating” (or “luminous,” l. 6), a term that conveys both a sensory quality as well as intellectual content. In the central stanza, however, the poet stresses that the Torah is unlike other luminaries, “for they [the sun, moon, and stars] are concealed and then revealed every day /​but the great Writing that is in our midst /​Enlightens both day and night” (ll. 18–​20). The light of Torah, while not visible to the senses, continuously shines upon and makes discernable more rarefied, intellectual, and spiritual, senses.34 In some ways, the poem encourages listeners to envision the Torah as if it were one of the

34 The phrasing recalls the imagery in Prov. 6:23 (“For the commandment is a lamp, the Torah is a light”), a text not part of the Samaritan canon.

182  Staging the Sacred heavenly bodies: an object created by God long, long ago yet still radiating life-​bestowing, divinely reassuring light in the present moment. The poem does not develop a singular sustained ekphrasis of an event or item, but it does highlight a singular ritual object in the presence of the community, one that is personified (it descends), dynamic (it opens), and visually compelling (it is luminous). Motion and stillness, cacophony and silence, coexist. The final line, in practice, translates the past into the present. The imagery of this poem constitutes a kind of functional ekphrasis of an object, touching on both its past and its present, as well as its effect in the ritual setting. Moses Confronts the Sea (JPA Poem, fourth–​seventh c. ce): While the moment of the revelation of the Torah at Sinai constitutes a mythic moment par excellence in Jewish and Samaritan tradition, it was not the only mythical episode from scripture to capture the imaginations of Jews and Samaritans in antiquity. Often, the exegetes (poets and homilists) took as their inspiration scenes and figures left undeveloped by the biblical authors—​spying the latent potential in their source materials.35 A Jewish Palestinian Aramaic poem (JPA Poem #2), which dramatizes a scene in which Moses confronts the Prince of the Sea (an embellishment of Exod. 14), offers an example of such an imaginative tradition.36 This work does not present a straightforward model of ekphrasis but it brims with enargeia. The poet presents his listeners with a dynamic miniature drama that brings the imagined scene vividly to life, despite the fact that in most ways it defies easy imagination. The poem employs a number of vigorously active verbs, lending almost every stich a sense of impending or narrated motion. As a result of this density of active language, the poem recreates a sense of dynamism, or even frantic (or frustrated) motion. The listeners could imagine, at a visceral level, the Israelites’ fear as they were pinned between the Sea and the Egyptian army—​an energy we can imagine was augmented by the pacing of the short stichs and, perhaps, the rhythm of the performance itself. The opening line is in God’s voice, unmarked and unprefaced: “Go, Moses /​and stand against the Sea!” (l. 1). The first three stanzas are entirely in the divine voice, as God narrates the scene—​“Here the Sea /​cuts them off //​and the enemy pursues from behind!” (ll. 9–​10)—​and God’s order to Moses, to tell the Sea, “turn aside!,” is repeated in lines 2 and 12, forming a kind of inclusio that bookends

35 See Chapter 1, pp. 68–79.

36 Lieber, Jewish Aramaic Poetry, 21–​23.

Imagine, If You Will  183 the oration. The fourth stanza is terse narration: the Sea turns aside, cowed by Moses and God, but, with dynamic personification, “great wrath” rises up within it and it begins “to rant” (ll. 15–​16). The three stanzas that follow are a vigorous give and take, with the Sea refusing to bow down (l. 18) and Moses asserting his divine authority; it culminates in lines 27–​28 with a dramatic standoff. The stalemate endures for another two stanzas: “Moses cried out /​ with all his strength //​but the Sea would not agree /​to let itself be conquered” (ll. 35–​36). At last, in the penultimate stanza, the congregation experiences relief and freedom of motion: God manifests and gives Moses the staff of wonders (l. 39), and in the final stanza, the Sea, “bereft /​of all its strength” (l. 43) permits the tribes of Jacob passage. The vividness of this unit emerges from the stark vitality of the confrontation. Much of this takes the form of dialogue, but the three main characters—​ Moses, God, and the Sea—​clash verbally even as physical violence looms. The poem’s depiction of the confrontation at the shore of the sea elaborates upon and imaginatively embellishes a key scene from the biblical narrative, and in doing so it transforms the Sea of Reeds from an object (the setting of a drama) into an active participant. The tension between active verbs—​verbs of motion, even as those motions are thwarted—​and the lack of actual motion generate a sympathetic experience of tension among the listeners. The poet transforms the biblical conflict between two masses of people (Israelites and Egyptians) against a specific landscape (the shore of the sea) into a confrontation between two larger-​than-​life antagonists (Moses and the Sea, personified); in doing so, it is as if the poet has lifted the curtain and given the community a front-​row seat to the face-​off between two opposing generals, or perhaps gladiatorial foes. The exchanges between Moses and the Sea grant each a personality (with stubbornness a primary trait), and this transformation renders the biblical moment both more vivid, because of the defined figures and repartee, and more mythic—​for while Pharaoh and his hosts are imposing, the Sea is a true force of nature, one defeated ultimately only through direct divine intervention. The poet offers no details about the Sea’s appearance, or the visual presentation of any other character. It is not that articulating such images exceeds the poet’s verbal capabilities, or that to articulate them would defy imagistic conventions. The visual culture of late antiquity was rich with depictions of Poseidon, river gods, and Nereids, all of which provided a pictorial vocabulary for the poem from the larger society; the synagogue at Huqoq indicates familiarity with dramatic marine imagery within a specifically Jewish

184  Staging the Sacred context. The poet simply favors action over imagery. The repetitions of phrases—​demands made, demands refused, demands reiterated—​generate an audible sense of “stuck-​ness.” Both Moses and the Sea are trapped with each other, even as the Israelites are trapped between Pharaoh and the Sea. Lacking in overt descriptive detail—​we have no sense of the visuality of the scene, are not told to imagine the scent of the salty sea or conjure the soundscape of the confrontation, whether it was windy or still—​nonetheless the poem exemplifies a way by which poets can depict a vivid and lively sense of moment by using language that aligns with and even conjures the emotional and even physical experience of the biblical moment. The conflict generates an energetic charge that is released in the final lines when the Israelites—​ standing in for the community—​are suddenly let go. A Catalog of Nature (Qallir, Sixth c. ce): “Moses Confronts the Sea” constitutes a kind of dramatic “set piece”: a single moment explored, expanded, and imagined into the space between verses of the scriptural text. In other poems, we find other models of less narrative, more recursive, and imagistic visions. For example, embedded within Qallir’s lengthy “Shiv‘ata for Dew,” we find a single idea—​the bountiful fecundity of the Promised Land—​explored in great depth.37 Indeed, this composition, written to mark the ritual transition from the wintertime prayers for rain to the summertime prayers for dew, offers a veritable catalog of the abundance of the Land of Israel, symbolic of how heavenly moisture nourishes life on earth. Where such a roster of trees and plants might seem, in other circumstances, impossibly quotidian—​a kind of grand-​scale shopping list or garden supply store inventory—​in the context of this poetry and its rhetorical conventions, it offers a unique understanding of the theological significance of the land’s riotous bounty. This is an example of “jeweled poetry” that celebrates the flora of the land and its beneficence for her inhabitants; the abundance of the Land is Israel’s shield of Achilles.38 Units 4 and 5 of Qallir’s Shiv‘ata share a single common structure, with strophes of three lines: the first line of each opens with a quotation from the opening of a verse from the Song of Songs, in linear order (Song. of Sol. 7:12–​ 8:13); the second line opens with “dew of rest” and an imperative directed to the deity; and the third line continues the petition and offers a catalog

37 Lieber, Vocabulary of Desire, 284–​294. 38 On the aesthetic of the jeweled style of poetry, see Michael Roberts’ monograph, The Jeweled Style: Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989).

Imagine, If You Will  185 of grains and produce (Unit 4) and trees (Unit 5).39 The opening stanzas of Poems 4 and 5, respectively, illustrate the structure of these poems: Unit 4 Come, my Beloved! (Song of Sol. 7:12)

Strengthen those who sanctify the Sabbaths

Dew of rest

give to those who call the sacred convocations

And may You bless

and heap up wheat, and barley, and lentils

Let us go early (Song of Sol. 7:13)

to knock upon Your doors, (You who) seize the shutters

Dew of rest

pour forth from the Dwelling, rent asunder

And may You bless

and multiply millet, and sprouted spelt, and poppies, and split beans

Poem 5 Establish for me (Song of Sol. 8:6)

Praise and make firm the Palace

Dew of rest

cause to course over the slice of pomegranate

And may You bless

And multiply the laurel, and juniper, and storax, and bitter almonds, and plane-​tree

Waters (Song of Sol. 8:7),

Holy waters will go forth from the recesses of the House

Dew of rest

make sparkle from briers and thistles

And may You bless

And blossom the grapevine, and fig, and pomegranate, and olive

The unity of these two units extends beyond “macro” structure and to the level of subtle, almost invisible, cues. Poem 4 embeds an alphabetical acrostic from aleph to tav while Unit 5 mirrors that structure and embeds a reverse alphabetical acrostic, from tav to aleph, thus reinforcing through formal elements the unity of the two pieces. Within each stanza, there is an implied motion from heaven down to earth, with dew as the life-​giving connection between the two. Words spoken to God manifest, thanks to dew, in the abundance of the natural world. Each stanza is a microcosm, a finely wrought



39 See discussion in Lieber, Vocabulary of Desire, 284–​294.

186  Staging the Sacred miniature story of abundance; the repetitions constitute a kind of natural cycle that underscores the sense of plenty. The listing of botanical items at the end of each stanza—​for example, from Unit 4, “fenugreek and cress, and oats and radishes, and wild peas” (l. 138) and “vetch and turnip, and garlic and onion, and coriander” (l. 144); from Unit 5, “citron and pear, and golden quince and crabapple” (l. 162)—​initially seems improbably mundane, hardly the stuff of lofty, sacred hymnody.40 In isolation, such catalogs may, indeed, seem clumsily mundane, as if the poet has set the produce aisle of his market to music; occurring in stanza after stanza, however, these lists conjure an impression of a garden of earthly delights. The various plants listed are, we can presume, familiar to the listeners; all were plants that grew in the Land of Israel and were useful as food, perfume, and medicines. By evoking each item in clusters upon clusters, however, Qallir creates a mosaic of abundance, one in which each individual plant or tree constitutes a stone and contributes an element not only of color, but also of taste, scent, sound, and texture. Hardy greens intermix with delicate fronds, sweet fruits are juxtaposed with bitter medicinals, and leafy boughs that catch the wind sprout alongside fragrant blossoms in delicate hues. It is a riot of abundance that defies the actual cycles of nature—​these plants ripen and ready for harvest at various times and seasons. But the poet’s art conjures them all forth in the mind’s eye (and nose, tongue, ears, and fingertips) simultaneously. He evokes a kind of gestalt sense of nature with a vivid riot that is ultimately unnatural or perhaps, more accurately, supernatural. We may imagine the visuals of this poem resonating with the depictions of plants and trees in actual synagogue mosaics: now words replace tesserae. Overlaying this riotous botanical mosaic, and glistening throughout the poem as a whole, shimmers the sheen of dew. In rabbinic writings, dew symbolizes both life-​giving moisture and, metaphorically, the divine power of resurrection, and the way that the liturgy stresses dew reflects the enduring longing of the community for both national restoration and the renewal of individual lives. Jewish poets often invoke dew when they compose embellishments for the second blessing of the Amidah, which blesses God for the resurrection of the dead, but for those living in the Levant, dew constitutes an essential source of moisture, one necessary for plants to grow and thus for human life to thrive. Qallir here exploits the dual-​register resonance of dew: he amplifies its figurative significance as a source 40 Menachem Zulay wrote of this poem, which he published in the Israeli newspaper Haʾaretz, “Before us is a Palestinian payyetan who invites us on a short stroll through the food market (shuq) of his day” (“From the Treasury of Poetry and Piyyut,” Haʾaretz, April 1, 1942, 3).

Imagine, If You Will  187 of life-​giving moisture by connecting it to physically familiar items and tangible phenomena, while imbuing the mundane manifestation of moisture with existential meaning. In the two units quoted earlier, dew is granted its dual identity as a source of life and sustenance, physical and figurative, while this complex work as a whole—​written for the liturgical moment when the community transitions from the wintertime prayer for rain to the summertime prayer for dew—​and celebrates with tremendous elaboration and ornament this modest miracle. These two units evoke the tangible, visible moisture that perfumes morning air and catches the light of dawn—​and that will vanish once the sun is high in the sky. The power of the poem derives from its evocation of a familiar phenomenon, recast in a sensuous and playfully poetic context. Dew is a familiar beneficence, daily in its season, and Qallir’s poem uses that mundane phenomenon to celebrate an occasion of national redemption. Our final examples of “setting before the eyes,” by contrast, appeal to listeners’ knowledge of affliction. Jacob of Sarug’s memra, “On the Afflicted Woman” (Homily 131), and Romanos’ kontakion, “On the Leper” (O. #8), both provide examples of comprehensive sensory appeal, conjured through the deployment of viscerally vivid illustrations.41 Here we turn our curiosity from delight to disgust.42 The Hemorrhaging Woman (Jacob of Sarug, Sixth c. ce): In this verse homily (memra), Jacob embellishes the account of the woman afflicted with a bloody flux; the episode features briefly in Matthew 9:20–​22 and Luke 8:43–​ 48, but Jacob uses the longest version (Mark 5:25–​34) as his primary source. That passage states in full: And there was a woman who had had a flow of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I shall be made well.” And immediately the hemorrhage ceased; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone forth from him, immediately turned about in the crowd, and said, “Who 41 For the text of the Jacob of Sarug poem, see Sebastian Brock, “On the Afflicted Woman,” in Jacob of Sarug’s Homilies on Women Whom Jesus Met, ed. Susan Ashbrook Harvey et al. (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2016), 171–​233; the Romanos poem can be found in Lash, On the Life of Christ, 51–​58. Also see Erin Galgay Walsh, Sanctifying Boldness: New Testament Women in Narsai, Jacob of Serugh, and Romanos Melodos (PhD diss., Duke University, 2019). 42 See William Ian Miller, The Anatomy of Disgust, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).

188  Staging the Sacred touched my garments?” And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’ ” And he looked around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had been done to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” (RSV)

Jacob embellishes this account substantially—​his poem runs to 552 lines—​ but he does not deviate from his source’s general outline. The protagonist is a woman who has suffered for twelve years with a vaginal hemorrhage of some kind; indeed, she has impoverished herself attempting to find effective treatment, but instead her condition has grown only worse. She hears about Jesus and decides that the touch of his garment will heal her—​and it does. Sensing that the touch of an ill person has activated his healing power, Jesus asks, “Who touched me?,” to which his disciples respond rather helplessly by gesturing to the pressing crowd. The woman, however, chooses to come forward and confess, after which Jesus blesses her. While many aspects of this memra reward close reading, for the purposes of our current analysis, two elements of this work stand out: Jacob’s use of the “cataloging” or “listing” aesthetic, and his graphic depiction of illness, a physical experience that here acquires a kind of personality. The ekphrasis of this poem—​its vividness—​not only relies on appeals to the listeners’ senses in a passing way but also depends on their ability to imagine physical sensations, and while we may reserve judgment on how actively a performer embodied the suggested dynamics of this poem, we can certainly consider how the poet’s language appeals to the kinesthetic memories of listeners as they envision the scenes the words conjure. Catalogs bracket Jacob’s retelling of the story. “Cataloging” here refers to repetitive structures that are visible formally and even syntactically as well as in terms of content. Thus, in lines 35–​39, Jacob lists a series of metaphors for how Jesus acts on behalf of humanity: He became a physician for us He became a sacrifice for us He became a priest for us He became an offering for us

and removed the illnesses of our sick state and with his own blood cleansed our iniquity and reconciled his father with our wickedness and offered up himself, in order to sanctify us

This repetition does not heap up specific descriptors (as in conventional ekphrasis) but creates a distinctive kind of vivid emphasis through the sheer

Imagine, If You Will  189 force of its patterning, akin to what we saw earlier in Qallir’s listing of trees and plants. Other lines, immediately following this cluster, play with the pattern, comparing Jesus to a libation, wine, holy oil, fresh water, and a shading cloud that brings life-​giving rain. The impression of Jesus that emerges from this concatenation of images and metaphors is unmistakable: one of generosity, abundance, and compassion. A similar list, just a few lines later, summarizes various miracles and beneficences of Jesus—​acts of healing and feeding—​which, together with the catalog of Jesus’ dispositional qualities, acts as a preface for the specific story of generosity and healing to come. As persuasive as these lists can be in terms of setting the stage for Jacob’s poem, his depiction of the illness itself stands out for its vividness. General terms such as “ulcer” (šuḥna’) and “flow/​flux” (rdy’), with their suggestions of oozing, suppurating physical immediacy appeal in unpleasant ways to the senses. Throughout the work, Jacob personifies the flux; while he does not call the disease demonic, he describes it as active and independent. “The afflicted had nested in her limbs,” writes Jacob (l. 125), continuing, “like a serpent in some crevice, defying snake-​charmers” (l. 126). Several times, the woman speaks to the illness directly. She does so first when we first meet her, addressing it as “huge ulcer” (l. 145), “accursed wayfarer” (l.147), “overbearing companion” (l. 149), “evil worker” (151), and—​ employing the narrator’s metaphor—​“a serpent who has made me a hateful nest /​slinking in and escaping from snake charmers and hucksters” (ll. 153–​154). She accuses it of abusing her, for it “has lacerated and torn me to bits, demolished and made me wretched” (ll. 146). Healing—​or death—​would be an escape from a persistent and shaming foe. Through the woman’s speech, Jacob evokes a sense of unrelenting filth and contamination, as when she speaks to her bed: “Alas for you, my bed, soiled with blood and uncleanness /​the flux of the illness does not allow for you to be cleansed” (ll. 163–​164). Ephrem crafts a multisensory rehearsal of physical, embodied misery.43 Upon hearing of the healer named Jesus, the woman continues her address to her illness, threatening it with a physician who can defeat it. The poet expands and dramatizes the biblical account. In Mark 5:27, we are told, “She had heard the reports about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment”; Jacob augments this narrative action by giving her a rich inner monologue that colors how we imagine her, physically, in 43 In the final section of the hymn, when the poet articulates his figurative reading of the biblical story, Jacob resumes his graphic depiction of illness, now a metaphor for stubborn human waywardness: “the flux of wrongdoing” (l. 513) is “like a fountain of infected blood” (l. 516) through which “the whole world has become contaminated” (l. 517).

190  Staging the Sacred the moment of her approach. Cognizant of her state of ritual impurity, which would prevent her from being allowed to approach Jesus directly, he depicts her as plotting a stealthy approach: “I will act surreptitiously” (l. 245) so that Jesus’ disciples “are not aware of me” (l.248); “I will creep up among the crowd” (l. 249); and then, having touched his garment, “I will steal away” (l. 250). This interior monologue fleshes out the content of the verse, as Jacob himself tells us, “This is what the sage woman gently said (to herself) /​as she pressed in among the crowd in order to see the Son” (ll. 255–​256). This is not mere detail: it creates a rich sense of atmosphere and suggests performative physicality. The woman, infected by an illness she compares to a subtle serpent, herself moves with creeping stealth in search of healing. The density of words in the semantic realm of “slyness” suggests possibly physical elements of the performance of these passages, just as the language about her misery, suffering, and lamentation throughout the work amplify the biblical text in ways that lend themselves to not only the mind’s eye but also the performer’s body. The concluding portion of the poem also makes use of a striking list of attributes, this time not in the narrator’s voice but in that of the woman, and not describing God but the woman describing herself. In response to Jesus’ question, “Who touched me?” (Mark 5:30)—​which Jacob of Sarug repeats eight times in lines 349–​442, along with multiple additional variants on the phrase44—​the hemorrhaging woman speaks up. Jesus’ apparent rebuke of Simon (Peter) moves her to step forward, although Jesus—​knowing whom he sought—​desired to elicit her confession all along. The woman draws near and describes herself with a litany of statements all beginning with “I,” as indicated through the emphatic pronoun “I” (ana). While her monologue starts in line 456 (“It is I who touched you”), the most striking catalog occurs in lines 465–​470; the opening words make the pattern clear: I, the downcast . . . I, a sick woman . . . I, a woman in need . . . I, all befouled . . . I, a woman with an affliction . . . I, a dead corpse . . . 44 Sebastian Brock entitles this section, “Jesus’ Question, ‘Who Touched Me?’ ” (On the Women Jesus Met, 212–​223).

Imagine, If You Will  191 The emphatic use of the pronoun underscores that the woman takes responsibility for her action, punishable thought it might be. Her rhetoric works a neat trick: she speaks as simultaneously humble and assertive, contrite but grateful, powerless yet courageous. She also voices fear that her illness could return; her language is vigorous and vivid: “Excise the ulcer,” she beseeches in l. 476; “it is a wicked dog, and if you let it alone, it will kill me” (l. 478). Jesus responds positively to her poetic plea, not with the words from Mark 5 but a quotation from the parallel version, Luke 8:48, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” It is worth considering how the poet employs verbal elements as formal-​ rhetorical structuring devices, such as the woman’s emphatic use of the personal pronoun, along with words that suggest gestures, as in the woman’s description of her plan to approach Jesus furtively. He employs ekphrasis in a fashion that suggests the physicality of its performance, in the mind’s eye if not the performer’s body. The rhetoric of this poem appeals not only to the senses but to the kinesthetic imagination. “On the Leper” (Romanos, sixth c. ce): Like Jacob, Romanos found physical affliction a fertile topic for sensory imagination. In his kontakion, “On the Leper” (O. #8), Romanos draws on a different account of Jesus healing an afflicted individual. In this case, our poet takes as his source the Gospel accounts of Jesus healing a man afflicted with a skin condition (Matt. 8:2–​4, Mark 1:40–​45, Luke 5:12–​16), but where the biblical text does not offer any detail into the nature of the skin affliction (λεπρὸς), Romanos explores the experience of illness with keen fascination. Indeed, Romanos seems to revel in the depiction of this dermatological disease. The poem addresses God directly, in God’s capacity of healer: He can remedy any malady, spiritual as well as physical. All people—​not only those who outwardly manifest disease—​suffer and need God’s touch; such is the lot of fallen humanity. The prologue lays out this premise: As you cleansed the leper of his disease, O All-​Powerful, Heal the pain of our souls, as you are compassionate, At the intercession of the Mother of God, O Physician of our souls, Lover of mankind.45

The idea of “flesh” runs through the work, even as the poet acknowledges that some illnesses afflict the soul. The body provides a metaphor and symbol

45 Text is O #8 (56–​63); translation from Lash, On the Life of Christ, 51.

192  Staging the Sacred for more universal afflictions. Romanos juxtaposes the miraculously perfect flesh of the Incarnation with the diseased, corrupted flesh of the leper and the invisibly suffering soul. God’s healing of the leper represents both an example of divine power to transform an individual and God’s promise to cure humanity of its mortal affliction. Christ is the only unafflicted being, described in the refrain as “Savior and alone without sin.” The poet introduces various diseased individuals—​the blind man, the paralytic, and the hemorrhaging woman—​explaining how they inspire the leper to approach Jesus. Together, these outcasts exemplify both God’s individual grace and the promise of transformational healing to all people. The poet begins to retell the story of the leper directly in the fourth strophe. The narrator addresses the congregation: “Let us carefully contemplate what Christ says to the leper,” he says, and then he specifies that the narrative appears in “the book of inspired writers, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.” He establishes the scene and carefully sets the stage: “a large crowd . . . a vast multitude /​of many people running toward Christ.” From within this horde, the leper emerges and falls before the Messiah. It is a kinetic scene, rich with active verbs, even as it moves rapidly in order to spotlight the presence of one very particular individual from within the diffuse general mass of undifferentiated humanity. The next two stanzas focus on the leper—​elaborating not on his moral qualities or his personal history, righteous or otherwise but, rather, on his appearance. He is an entirely “external” character, defined by what can be sensed. In the fifth strophe, we are told that his affliction is “abhorrent and shameful,” and “hideous” with this “dread disease.” His flesh is “cropped by it, as though it were grass /​It spreads itself on all the limbs.” It renders him “an object of total shame” and “unclean.” The sixth stanza offers even more vivid, descriptive detail that conjures violent disfigurement; the strophe states in full: Warred on by the disease, the leper lamented through his tears. Each hour he saw that he was gaining an increase of pains, And he spoke such words as these, “Alas, my flesh has been dyed By grave illness with a terrible dye, contrary to nature, And like a stain, it spreads over my whole body. My skin has been transformed and become a hideous sight to me, Like the scar from a burn, a dreadful decay to those who see me. I have not one single hope Of salvation, unless he grants it, the Lover of mankind, Savior and alone without sin.

Imagine, If You Will  193 The leper, describing his self-​revulsion, compares his ravaged skin to that which remains after the trauma of a burn and describes how it emits the decay of death. While primarily visual—​this metaphor stresses the wrongness of the color of his skin, colored by a “dye contrary to nature” that is a “stain . . . over my whole body”—​these images also suggest offensive odors, and unpleasant tactile sensations, as well as directly experienced pain and horror. The leper’s disgust derives, in part, from his own ability to imagine himself through the eyes of others. Romanos’ stress on the visual significance of leprosy is underscored by the prominence of the blind man as the other individual who receives divine healing (mentioned in Strophes 7 and 8): only the blind man is spared the sight of the leper’s affliction. Romanos’ listeners, like the leper himself, apprehend what the blind man cannot. Just as we see the leper through his own eyes and through the eyes of others, the poet also grants him a voice: we hear from him directly. To be sure, in the Gospel accounts, the leper speaks: “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean” (Matt. 8:2 and Luke 5:12; Mark 1:40 lacks the vocative address, “Lord [κύριος]”). Romanos, however, greatly amplifies the leper’s voice; the afflicted man speaks for much of this poem, and his words are eloquent and evocative, even as they convey self-​loathing: “On the paper of my soul I have my request written” (Strophe 11), the leper laments. In the next strophe he describes himself dejectedly as “befouled” (Strophe 12) even as he expresses faith in Jesus’ power to heal him: “Only make a sign, O Compassionate One, and the leprosy flees.” Our leper is, himself, a skilled orator, who effectively expresses his despair, his condition, and his plea. In turn, the character enables his audience—​the congregation as well as other figures in the scene, including Jesus—​to see and understand his suffering. Romanos puts the ekphrasis in the mouth of a character. These two stanzas offer the greatest density of descriptive language in the hymn; perhaps unexpectedly, the depiction of his recovery is far less detailed and much less developed: “The color of his flesh regained its natural beauty” (Strophe 14) is all that we are told. Healed and healthy skin needed no description, apparently. But while health does not inspire Romanos the way illness does, illness inspires the poet to coin a disturbing but potent image of personified leprosy.46 We have already seen the leper himself use 46 Romanos’ treatment of leprosy reflects an understanding of illness that resonates with the demonic hemorrhage in Jacob’s memra, discussed earlier. This is not unique to these authors; see, among other works, Andrew Crislip, Thorns in the Flesh: Illness and Sanctity in Late Ancient Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), and the essays collected in Demons and Illness from Antiquity to the Early-​Modern Period, ed. Catherine Rider and Siam Bhayro (Leiden: Brill, 2017).

194  Staging the Sacred the language of “leprosy flees” in Strophe 12. In Strophe 14, after Jesus heals the sufferer, we are told, “he was freed from the leprosy and it fled at once.” This personification is fleeting—​literally—​but the poet develops it in Strophe 16: “Slain by the Lord’s command, the affliction of leprosy ran away /​for the disease trembled when it saw him, the Creator and Redeemer.” And in the final strophe, Romanos says that God saved the leper by “driving out his affliction with a word” (Strophe 18). The imagery personifies the illness as a demonic presence, something to be cast out rather than simply cured. It is telling that in Strophe 16, the poet compares heretical Arians, who do not even tremble at God’s power, unfavorably to the vile skin disease. Heretics afflict and, by extension, must be exorcised, to restore health to the body of the Church. Overall, this hymn offers a lively and representative example of Romano’s gift for dramatization and ethopoeia (speech-​in-​character; see Chapter 4). The poet’s descriptions of the symptoms of leprosy, however, display the means by which the authors of such works can heap up descriptors in order to create a kind of vividness—​a catalog of disease, here, reflecting a similar impulse to the catalog of trees we saw in Qallir. In his depiction of the skin disease, Romanos highlights the visual aspects of the symptoms alongside more tactile and olfactory components evoked by the sight: revulsion and decay. At the same time, the idea of demonic illness shifts our focus from the body of the afflicted to the abstract “body” of the disease, as it separates from its human host and flees, a kind of independent and unembodied entity, at the divine command. Ultimately, by moving from the general scene to the specific episode, the poet employs the conventional logic of ekphrasis, as he focuses our attention with increasing clarity on the specific moment he wishes to set before his listeners’ eyes. These poems illustrate the ubiquity of enargeia and ekphrasis as poetic techniques, and they indicate the variety of ways vivid detail can be deployed within a composition to create diverse effects. These poems existed not as words alone, however; the rich visual context in which liturgies were performed informed the poets’ visual vocabulary and shaped the reception of these works. What, we may ask, was quite literally “before the eyes” of the community at prayer as these hymns were sung? How did visual context amplify the more explicitly participatory elements of liturgical poetry?47 In 47 For a particularly useful discussion of how to read literary and visual texts together, see Alastair Fowler, Renaissance Realism: Narrative Images in Literature and Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 66–​84.

Imagine, If You Will  195 some cases, such as the woman with the bloody flux and the leper, simply having a body provides a means for understanding, by analogy or personal experience, the ways that bodies go awry. In other cases, the poets orchestrate more complex or abstract vision or draw on images from their surroundings. A full rehearsal of the visual culture of late antiquity, of course, exceeds the scope of this present study, but a few brief exemplars will sketch out the milieu in which poets composed, cantors performed, and communities received these works. The progymnasmata provide a theory for understanding the construction of vividness in the liturgical poems, while the visual context of their performance suggests elements of how that vividness was received. We thus move from the visuals within poetry to the visual context of their composition and performance.

Hymnic Ekphrasis in Its Visual Context My goal in this portion of this study is frankly speculative: if we imagine images such as those found in churches and synagogues as constituting the background of the performance of poetic liturgy, what do we learn if we imagine how those visuals might have shaped worshippers’ envisioning of the scenes the poets conjured? Liturgical poems appeal to the senses, both through their words and the cadences of their performance, but their performance was not an abstract experience. Just as proximity to other people—​the warmth of other bodies, the contagion of mood that occurs in close quarters and large groups, the resonant sounds of mingling voices amplified by reflective surfaces—​shapes the experience of performance, the built environment has subtle but profound implications for the lived reality of these works, too. While we will examine the significance of the architecture and acoustics in detail in Chapter 5 of this volume, in the context of ekphrasis, it is worth pausing to consider the visual adornment of the spaces in which these poems may have been performed. Churches and synagogues were often beautifully decorated from floor to ceiling, and many of the most magnificent surviving structures date to the same periods and places in which hymnody arose. Visual ornamentation and literary-​liturgical compositions constitute distinctive but adjacent facets of broader worldviews, agendas, and orientations. The visual traces of late antique culture preserved in these diverse sacred spaces—​particularly mosaic floors, which endure the ravages of time and vagaries of history better than many other ornaments—​highlight the

196  Staging the Sacred common visual culture of the period. It can often be difficult or even impossible to distinguish Jewish, Samaritan, and Christian images, or even spaces, from each other based simply on what is depicted or how.48 Certain items, of course, are assumed to telegraph such information: a Torah shrine, a menorah, a cross, or an image of Christ.49 Public performance spaces offered a location for the physical intermingling of communities, and similarly, the visual world of antiquity create a shared sense of aesthetics and conventions. To be sure, each community shaped the cultural standards and norms to suit its own sense of identity, priorities, and preferences; but the commonalities across traditions are evident. It should be noted that the poems do not unlock the meaning of visual scenes from their performative context, nor do images from the sanctuaries directly inspire hymns. Neither hymns nor mosaics should be understood as depending on one another; each genre of creativity is multivalent and overdetermined. Visual art, like the liturgy, represents the particularized crystallization of general societal conventions. Images and hymns together help us understand late antiquity—​to see the picture. In what follows, we will not explore the affinities of liturgical poetry and the art of sacred spaces in depth but, rather, sketch out how the specific visual settings of Jews, Samaritans, and Christians in antiquity may have resonated with the experience of reciting such liturgical works. Of particular interest are those images, geometric or naturalistic, abstract or figural, that were literally “before the eyes” of congregants. This visual environment would have enriched the experience of hearing these works, concretizing and coloring the images suggested by a writer-​performer in his words. What was “before their eyes” would have shaped the visions of the ekphrastic imagination. Poets painted verbal pictures in spaces liberally adorned with lavish 48 See B. Kühnel, “The Synagogue Floor Mosaic in Sepphoris: Between Paganism and Christianity,” in From Dura to Sepphoris: Studies in Jewish Art and Society in Late Antiquity, ed. Lee I. Levine and Zeev Weiss (Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2000), 31–​43, and, in the same volume, Herbert L. Kessler, “The Sepphorism Mosaic and Christian Art,” 64–​72. Also note Hagith Sivan, Palestine in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Reuven Kimelman, “Identifying Jews and Christians in Roman Syria Palestine,” in Galilee through the Centuries: Confluence of Cultures, ed. Eric M. Meyers (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1999), 301–​333; and Eric M. Meyers, “Living Side-​by-​Side,” in Partings: How Judaism and Christianity Became Two, ed. Hershel Shanks (Washington DC: Biblical Archaeology Society, 2014), 133–​150. Yahalom states this idea of common and mutual patterns of influence succinctly: “[T]‌here must have been common contemporary factors in the eastern prayer house and its rhetorical and cultural background that led to common—​Jewish and Christian—​developments in its poetry” (Joseph Yahalom, “Piyyut as Poetry,” in Lee I. Levine, ed., The Synagogue in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: Jewish Theological Seminary and American Schools of Oriental Research, 1987), 111–​126, 124). 49 But note the important cautions offered by Steven Fine, The Menorah: From the Bible to Modern Israel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016).

Imagine, If You Will  197 imagery and art. The two sets of “visuals” experienced together—​material and imaginary—​may well have reinforced and shaped each other.

Jewish Synagogues In Visual Judaism in Late Antiquity, Lee I. Levine observes, “Jewish art, especially mosaics, flourished in Late Antiquity as never before, much in keeping with the artistic productivity throughout the Byzantine world.”50 In the twentieth century, the discovery of multiple elaborately decorated synagogues, including in the Galilee (the seat of rabbinic Judaism), overturned the regnant paradigm of “the artless Jew” and rabbinic hostility to figurative art.51 E. R. Goodenough’s magisterial thirteen-​ volume Jewish Symbols in the Greco-​Roman Period, published between 1953–​1968, transformed scholarly appreciation for the richness of Jewish visual culture in antiquity, even if his specific interpretations of the symbols were not ultimately persuasive.52 Ongoing archaeological discoveries—​notably Jodi Magness’ work at Huqoq53—​continue to draw rapt public attention both through the quality of the art itself and its abundance in the quintessential Jewish sacred space, while art historians (notably Steven Fine) have highlighted the complexity of interpreting images and corrected the temptation to read visuals in overly reductionist ways. A systematic reading of synagogue art alongside synagogue literatures remains a desideratum, but attention to the visuality of both media together indicates how such a study will enrich our understanding of late

50 Lee I. Levine, Visual Judaism in Late Antiquity: Historical Contexts of Jewish Art (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 225. This volume is an important complement to Levine’s essential treatment of the history of the synagogue in antiquity: The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). Also essential for understanding this topic are the many publications by Steven Fine, in particular Art and Judaism in the Greco-​Roman World: Toward a New Jewish Archaeology, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), and Rachel Hachlili’s work, including Ancient Synagogues—​Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research (Leiden: Brill, 2013) as well as her two earlier volumes, Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeology in the Land of Israel (Leiden: Brill, 1988) and Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeology in the Diaspora (Leiden: Brill, 1998). 51 See Kalman P. Bland, The Artless Jew: Medieval and Modern Affirmations and Denials of the Visual (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). 52 E. R. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-​Roman Period, 13 vols. (New York: Pantheon, 1953–​1968). 53 The Huqoq excavation is presently ongoing, and publication of findings is at an early stage; see Karen Britt and Ra’anan Boustan, The Elephant Mosaic Panel in the Synagogue at Huqoq: Official Publication and Initial Interpretations (Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2017).

198  Staging the Sacred antique Jewish culture. The points of resonance are numerous, but here a few examples of major categories where the two art forms ally—​allusions to biblical narratives; nature/​calendrical cycles; and the Torah shrine—​suggest their affinities for each other. Biblical Narratives: Depictions of biblical stories and figures, such as the binding of Isaac, Daniel in the lions’ den, and David as Orpheus, are common in early synagogues, just as they form the basis of many synagogue poems.54 The synagogue at Huqoq stands out for its lavish depictions of previously unattested narratives, including the Exodus story and crossing of the Red Sea, the spies scouting out the Promised Land, Jonah and the sailors, and figures from the book of Judges, including Samson, Deborah, and Yael. This stunning (and ongoing) discovery suggests that scholars may still continue to vastly underestimate how richly synagogues were adorned, and how thoroughly biblical stories informed their imagery. Evidence for artistic adornment of the early synagogues continues to mount, and we can easily imagine how graphic depictions of the Exodus would have colored how those who stood within the structures would have visualized the numerous poems composed for holidays such as Passover, as well as poems embellishing Exodus, and the numerous liturgical references to God’s redemption, of which the rescue from Egypt was paradigmatic. Among the many intriguing discoveries at Huqoq is the depiction from the book of Daniel—​not Daniel in the lions’ den (Dan. 6:15–​24), as we find in Na’aran and Susiya (and in Christian art, as well) but, rather, what seems to be Daniel’s apocalyptic vision from Daniel 7–​9, with the series of monstrous beasts.55 In the biblical text, one gets the sense that the author is struggling against the limits of language, attempting to help his readers imagine something unlike what they have seen; the classical Jewish poets, including Yannai,56 expand on the biblical vision in their own attempt to express confidence in the promised redemption. Reading the two items, poetry and mosaic, together—​ and even more so in light of various “end time” mosaics known from other synagogues—​one begins to sense a thread of messianism running through

54 Domestic items could also be adorned with biblical scenes, in any community. See, for example, Varda Sussman, “The Binding of Isaac as Depicted on a Samaritan Lamp,” Israel Exploration Journal 48 (1998): 183–​189. 55 See the press release published by the University of North Carolina: https://​uncn​ews.unc.edu/​ 2019/​07/​01/​newly-​dis​cove​red-​1600-​year-​old-​mos​aic-​sheds-​light-​on-​anci​ent-​juda​ism/​ (accessed August 31, 2022). In this interview, Jodi Magness identifies the Daniel mosaic as that season’s big discovery. 56 See Yahalom, Poetry and Society, 81–​84 and 102–​106.

Imagine, If You Will  199 the culture at that moment. Indeed, the visual program of Huqoq—​including scenes of the Exodus, figures from Judges (Yael, Deborah, and Samson), Jonah, Daniel’s vision, and perhaps even Alexander the Great—​suggests a fondness for narratives of danger and rescue, not unlike the liturgy, and the liturgical poetry, as well. Indeed, each genre of creative expression on its own suggests the presence of a lively messianism within the community; reading the two media together suggests a significant interest in the fulfillment of such prophecies. Each genre of art—​hymn and mosaic—​succeeds entirely alone, but together they suggest something larger about the mood and inclinations of the communities that might have experienced both works together. The history of Jewish communities in the Levant is such that most of what archaeologists can recover are magnificently decorated floors. We have little clear sense of how walls and ceilings were decorated, although we can assume that they were.57 The paucity of evidence makes sites such as Dura Europos that much more precious.58 The individual scenes depicted in Dura match those of Huqoq for their variety and eclecticism: among other scenes, a nude Egyptian princess holds an infant Moses in the Nile, the hand of God plucks Ezekiel up and delivers him to the valley of dry bones, Esther holds court while Haman leads Mordecai on a horse, and Ezra reads the law and Samuel anoints David.59 We could easily select images that align with specific images in piyyutim; and as I discuss in Chapter 5, the body language of the figures here may help us understand elements of performance in antiquity. At present, however, I would note that the scenes painted on the walls—​ which often feature attentive crowds of people around a central figure—​also model and reflect the performer–​audience dynamic. The frontal poses of the figures in the frescos position them as a kind of “audience” for the activities that take place within the building. Just as the congregation turns and attends to the homilist, cantor, or Torah reader, all the eyes on the wall gaze into the room, too. The walls themselves in some fashion fade as ancestors from sacred history become both viewed and viewers.

57 See Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, 360–​364. 58 The current status of Dura Europos is unclear, but it seems likely that much of it was destroyed by ISIS in 2015; https://​www.npr.org/​secti​ons/​parall​els/​2015/​03/​10/​392077​801/​via-​satell​ite-​track​ing-​ the-​plun​der-​of-​mid​dle-​east-​cultu​ral-​hist​ory. 59 For a description of the Dura frescos, see Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeology in the Diaspora, Handbuch der Orientalistik, Part I: Der Nahe und Mittlere Osten 35 (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 119–​121. Also note Levine, The Early Synagogue, 252–​256 and, Levine, Visual Judaism, 97–​118. More comprehensively, see Sean Leatherbury, Inscribing Faith in Late Antiquity: Between Reading and Seeing (London: Routledge, 2019).

200  Staging the Sacred Nature /​Calendars /​Geometric Patterns: In Ancient Synagogues—​ Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research, the archaeologist Rachel Hachlili singles out several classes of decorative motifs commonly employed as elements of synagogue art. These motifs do not constitute robust or sustained visual programs (as would be the case with biblical scenes, Temple imagery, and the zodiac medallions) but are simply minor decorative flourishes adorning architectural features and “filler” spaces. Such images include symbolic animals, flora, birds, human figures, and geometric designs.60 The prevalence of imagery from the natural world, realistic or stylized, complements the depictions of the calendar surrounding the Helios mosaics: the depictions of the four seasons along with the signs of the zodiac, and the chariot of the sun in the center medallion.61 Hachlili catalogs a large variety of motifs, from repetitive figural patterns to singular dramatic images. Such visual details could conceivably have nourished the imaginations of synagogue attendees as they envisioned scenes from a range of liturgical poems, which can be understood as similarly rich in minor, elegant details. We can easily imagine that mosaic depictions of plants—​flowers, trees, vines—​would have shaped how Jews might have imagined the catalogs of trees and plants in the Qallir’s “Shiv’ata for Dew.” Artistic depictions of the natural world would also have functioned to underscore the significance of God’s ongoing role as Creator and sustainer of life, and His various covenants with humankind. For instance, the Helios mosaic program, with its depictions of zodiac signs (the annual calendar) and the four seasons, suggests the durability as well as the majesty of nature: the motions of the heavenly bodies, the changes of the seasons, and the stability of Creation.62 Such visual depictions of the cosmic order naturally align with the Creation stories of Genesis 1–​2, of course. But they would also have resonated with other passages, such as Genesis 8. In Genesis 8:22, we find it written: “So long as the earth endures, seed-​time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease.” That verse occurs as 60 Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 435–​472. 61 Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 354–​361. 62 No image from early synagogue art has provoked interest comparable to that of the zodiac carpet mosaics. Of particularly importance, in addition to the discussions in Levine (The Ancient Synagogue, 594–​612) and Fine (Art and Judaism, 196–​205), see Rachel Hachlili, “The Zodiac in Ancient Jewish Art: Representation and Significance,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (1977): 61–​77; Lucille Roussin’s essay, “The Zodiac in Synagogue Decoration,” in Archaeology and the Galilee: Texts and Contexts in the Greco-​Roman and Byzantine Periods, ed. D. Edwards and C. McCollough (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1997), 83–​96; Jodi Magness, “Heaven on Earth: Helios and the Zodiac Cycle in Ancient Palestinian Synagogues,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 59 (2005): 1–​52.

Imagine, If You Will  201 an important text in Yannai’s poems for the Noah cycle.63 The circular medallion, with the cycles of the zodiac and the seasons surrounding the sun (personified as Helios) on his daily circuit against a backdrop of stars, implicitly underscores the permanence and durability of the natural order. Our eyes may first be drawn to the dramatic image of Helios and, secondarily, to the zodiac figures, but these large images are composed of and embedded in numerous constituent images that themselves create an impression. We can also consider how depictions of Helios and the zodiac colored the ways in which Jews heard and understood references to the heavenly realm that permeate liturgical poems. Scholars have long noted the popularity of zodiac motifs as a structural device in Jewish poems, particularly laments for the Ninth of Av (where the twelve signs mourn the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem) and the first of Nisan (such as those JPA poems in which the zodiac signs compete to have the redemption fall during their span of days).64 More tenuously, these poems, by their nature, often address the deity directly, and they often invoke the heavenly hosts as Israel’s companions in praising God. Indeed, the Qedushta poems, as pioneered by Yannai and Qallir, and perhaps the single most important form of piyyut to emerge in late antiquity, have as a liturgical lodestar the third blessing of the Amidah, on God’s holiness, in which Israel and the angels join together in the recitation of the angelic praise overheard by the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 6:3 and by Ezekiel in Ezekiel 3:12. The stability of the natural order can be read together with the stability of the liturgical order, just as the movement and dynamism of each complements the other. Whether Jews understood the Helios image (located, peculiarly, at their feet as part of a carpet mosaic rather than in a ceiling dome) as a personified sun, a heavenly being such as Metatron, or an image of the deity is, however, impossible to know—​and likely any possible interpretation (or combination thereof, orthodox or unconventional) of the 63 See Lieber, Yannai on Genesis, 326–​329. 64 On this topic, see Joseph Yahalom, “The Zodiac in the Early Piyyut in Eretz-​Israel,” Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature 9 (1986): 313–​322, and Yahalom, Poetry and Society, 20–​24. See also the discussion in Ra’anan Boustan, “Rabbinization and the Making of Early Jewish Mysticism,” Jewish Quarterly Review 101 (2011): 482–​501, and Boustan, “Angels in the Architecture: Temple Art and the Poetics of Praise in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice,” in Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions, ed. Ra’anan Boustan and Annette Yoshiko Reed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 195–​212. Writing of the Qumranic poetic cycle, Boustan notes, “[N]‌ot only does the cycle describe the cultic art and architecture as participating in the quintessentially angelic activity of singing hymns of praise to God, but it also methodically portrays the angelic creatures in material terms as images inscribed, carved, or woven into the Temple’s walls, furnishings, and tapestries” (197). The ekphrasis does not describe static images but infuses imagery with dynamism.

202  Staging the Sacred image was, at some point, held by at least some individuals. The implicit “natural” program, of an aesthetically pleasing, enduring, and sustaining natural order, however, would also have resonated with the natural cycles of prayer, of quotidian significance—​but significance, nonetheless. Even abstract patterns—​geometric designs or stylized natural motifs of the kind common in Samaritan synagogues and churches, too—​can resonate on a deeper, structural level with liturgical poetry, as well. In particular, we might consider the affinity that these visual patterns display for poetic techniques found in the rahitim (“runners”) of the Qedushta’ot of Yannai. These highly patterned units feature techniques such as anadiplosis, in which the final word of one line opens the line that follows. An example can be drawn from the second Rahit of Yannai’s Qedushta for Genesis 11:1, where we find a sixfold acrostic augmented by the “daisy chain” element of anadiplosis (yielding a pattern of AAAAAAB—​BBBBBBC—​CCCCCCD). The opening seven lines (from alef to zayin) offer a sense of the unit as a whole: And thus, “Unified of speech . . .” (Gen. 11:1b) Unified, united, one of speech, fools of the earth, they disparaged They disparaged Him who tested their speech when they said, “Let us build a castle lofty” Loftily, haughtily—​they thought heroically—​those valley-​dwellers, arrogant blasphemers, they spoke They spoke, they galloped, they soared, stomping, trampling, the trampling of Heaven Heaven wrought their ruin; they were hung; He bent them, they were overturned and they were made fools They were made fools, tongue-​tied, unconscious, burnt, flooded, judged and this—​ This because they plotted baseness: they were scorched, agitated, and scattered far afield . . .

The composition of this unit is craftsman-​like: formal structures (multiple acrostic, fixed number of words per line, the pivot of the repeated words at the ends and beginnings of lines) drive the content, which can be seen as an audible complement to the visuals of the geometric mosaics. Similarly, Yannai’s first Rahit for Genesis 33:18 offers an example of how a poet could weave an ornate verbal tapestry. The first five lines of the unit offer a clear sense of the pattern, which involves a threefold alphabetical acrostic (one

Imagine, If You Will  203 letter across all three stichs) and three variations on the room ‫​ם‬-‫​ל‬-‫“( שש‬whole, perfect, peace”): Perfect (shalem) in his faith Perfected (meshullam) in his tent To fulfill (leshallem) his trust, a sign was spoken Perfect in his entry Perfected in his offspring To fulfill his vision, a clearly-​worded vow Perfect in his body Perfected in his soul To fulfill his promise, upholding his pledge Perfect in his ways Perfected in his words To fulfill his speech’s exalted reward Perfect in his form Perfected in his following To fulfill the honor of his meditative knowledge

The words weave the lines together much as the lines of a mosaic create a seemingly endless braid out of images of vines or ropes. There is an elegant predictability that nonetheless moves the mind, and the eye, forward: the images are hardly static. Both mosaics and poems reflect a distinctive aesthetics of delight. The mosaics are hardly unique to synagogues or other sacred spaces, but the poetry illustrates how the same sense of patterned pleasure can be found in the written and spoken word, as well. The poetry of the prayers resonates with this imagery even as it adds the element of sound and voice to the other senses—​sight, scent, and tactility—​that are present when standing as a community at prayer. Torah Shrine and Accessories: Most early synagogues also contained some version of what Hachlili refers to as a “Jewish symbols panel” as an element of their decoration; such a panel presents a cluster of motifs pertaining to Jewish ceremonial praxis, including the Torah shrine/​Temple facade, menorahs, and ritual objects including the shofar, lulav and etrog, and (in the Land of Israel) incense shovels.65 This assembly of images is located on the synagogue floor in front of where the Torah ark, containing the congregation’s scroll, may have been placed; given that synagogues in the Galilee and Golan seem to have lacked permanent Torah repositories—​the Torah would have been brought in and taken out for use—​the mosaics may, in a very practical way, have served to indicate where the ark should be placed.66 Such a function

65 Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 286–​338.

66 See Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, 351–​353.

204  Staging the Sacred of the mosaic reminds us that visual depictions and physical items shared a space, resulting in a blurring of representation and reality. Liturgical poetry, a third kind of spatial occupant, adds to this complexity. Images of Jewish symbols and ritual items bring (the memory of) elements of Temple ritual into the synagogue and explicitly connect foundational Jewish cultic practices with the material and liturgical practices of the community that gathered in the synagogue. At the same time, items such as these were not mere historical imaginings or abstractions; they would have been familiar to Jews in antiquity through living practices. Not only was the Torah shrine in regular use, but the shofar remained an important element of observance of the High Holy Days. The lulav and etrog continue to be essential to Jewish celebrations of Sukkot, even in the absence of the Temple. The menorah, in turn, had become the quintessential symbol of Judaism even as elements of its representation reflected the stylizing of contemporary lampstands.67 Even the incense shovels, while no longer a component of Jewish ritual, were common domestic objects in late antiquity.68 Some may have been acquired by tourists as a kind of souvenir or memento, while others may have been functional, used domestically for mundane tasks such as the perfuming of spaces and garments. At the same time, as Hachlili notes, in the Diaspora the incense shovel is replaced in these panels by a vase—​another familiar item, perhaps also used to augment a space’s visual and olfactory appeal, in a fashion akin to incense but lacking the ritual significance.69 Fragrant herbs or blossoms would, however, have brought the natural imagery of other motifs into alignment with the Jewish symbols panel: real greenery complementing mosaic botanicals. The synagogue mosaics depicting these items could have helped Jews who assembled for prayer envision items to which liturgical poems refer.

67 The recent bibliography on menorahs in antiquity is extensive. See, in particular, Steven Fine, The Menorah: From the Bible to Modern Israel (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016), and Rachel Hachlili, The Menorah: Evolving into the Most Important Jewish Symbol (Leiden: Brill, 2018). Also note Karen B. Stern, “When Is a Menorah Not Just a Menorah? Rethinking Menorah Graffiti in Jewish Mortuary Contexts,” Near Eastern Archaeology 83.2 (2019): 164–​171; the entire issue of the journal is devoted to “the fate of the Temple vessels in antiquity.” 68 See L. Rutgers, “Incense Shovels at Sepphoris?,” in Galilee through the Centuries: Confluence of Cultures, ed. Eric M. Meyers and Carol E. Meyers (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1999), 177–​198, and Eric M. Meyers, “The Ceramic Incense Shovels from Sepphoris: Another View,” in “I Will Speak the Riddles of Ancient Times”: Archaeological and Historical Studies in Honor of Amihai Mazar on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday, ed. Aren M. Maeir and Pierre de Miroschedji (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 865–​878; and Deborah A. Green, The Aroma of Righteousness: Scent and Seduction in Rabbinic Life and Literature (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2011), 50–​53. 69 Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 328–​330.

Imagine, If You Will  205 These poems, after all, embellish the Torah readings for Sabbaths and holidays, and the Torah is itself the source of rituals that employed these objects. Piyyutim for the festivals, such as Qallir’s qedushta’ot and shiv’ata’ot for Sukkot (Tabernacles), refer to the lulav and etrog, while Yannai’s poems pertaining to the construction of the ark and its accoutrement (a topic of much of Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) would resonate with the images of the Torah shrine, ark, and menorah, and those embellishing Leviticus with priestly implements—​as would the presence of the Torah scroll itself. The “priestliness” of these items resonates with the priestly orientation of the Avodah poems, and their shared orientation toward the imagined realization of Temple rituals stands out.70 Mosaics and hymns alike tap into the same, common repository of symbols as shorthands for evoking entire “authentic” worlds of national-​religious tradition. Beyond the basic, even linear alignment between decorative images and poetic motifs, the assembly and placement of this imagery in the synagogue suggests more global significance. Individual items would have been familiar, but the context of the performance of religious ritual would have imbued the images with deeper significance, just as the synagogue setting would have transformed techniques familiar from the theater and courts into something more existentially fraught and powerful. The resonance between the liturgical poems and “Jewish symbols panels” suggests a particularly evocative creation of ambience, not so much to the eye (e.g., mosaics as aids to envision items) but to the mind: words and images together equip the viewer to imagine something no longer visible. It is possible that the image of the Temple facade, particularly with the curtain (parokhet) in front—​often partially pulled aside—​suggests proximity not only to the Torah scroll but also to the invisible, ineffable One who gave it.71 Liturgical poems, like the liturgy itself, help articulate and embellish this sense of continuity. The harmony among the visual program of many synagogues with the readings from the Torah and the performance of the liturgical hymns may

70 See Swartz and Yahalom, Avodah, 11–​20. 71 The hangings that are common in both Jewish and Christian art of this time period have proven a fascinating area of study. See Eunice Dauterman Maguire, “Curtains at the Threshold: How They Hung and How They Performed,” in Catalogue of the Textiles in the Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Collection, ed. Gudrun Bühl and Elizabeth Dospěl Williams (Washington, DC, 2019), https://​www. doaks.org/​resour​ces/​texti​les/​ess​ays/​magu​ire, and also Sabine Schrenk, “(Wall) Hangings Depicted in Late Antique Works of Art?,” in Clothing the House. Furnishing Textiles of the First Millenium AD from Egypt and Neighboring Countries, ed. Antoine De Moor, Cäcilia Fluck, and Susanne Martinssen-​ von Falck (Tielt, Belgium: Lannoo Publishers, 2009), 146–​154.

206  Staging the Sacred have collectively conjured an experiential “memory” of the Temple and its rites. This anamnesis would have incorporated the people, assembled in the synagogue sanctuary as once they gathered in the Temple court, and drawn them near to the mysterious manifestation of God behind the curtain in the Holy of Holies. The poetry, particularly the qedushta’ot, likewise culminates in a rapturous liturgical moment that offers a sense of proximity to the divine. In short, this collection of images and the larger context they suggest—​so familiar as elements of synagogue art and routine in synagogue poetry—​may have provided a kind of access not just for imagining specific ritual items or practices but, rather, creating a sensation of proximity to the deity to whom hymns and prayers were addressed: a way of envisioning the “You” to whom they speak, in the “now”—​not just dry tribute to the practices of days of yore, although those matter, too. The synergy between images and poetry offers the possibility of imagining oneself standing not only in the Temple “as it was,” but adjacent to a memory of the Temple, and proximate to the Temple on high.

Samaritan Synagogues While we can always wish for more abundant and better-​preserved evidence of Jewish and Christian religious observance in late antiquity, remnants of Samaritan practices are particularly scarce. Any interpretations scholars offer about Samaritan synagogues in antiquity are of necessity tentative and based on very limited, often ambiguous, sources and material artifacts.72 The distinction between Jewish and Samaritan synagogues often depends on assumptions grounded in geography—​whether the structure is found in the territory of Samaria—​as much as on any distinctive iconography or features. The nature of the evidence that has survived often makes distinguishing a Samaritan structure from a Jewish synagogue challenging, or even impossible; even in antiquity, the similarities between Samaritan and Jewish synagogues were observed.73 That said, we can offer some preliminary 72 See Reinhard Pummer, The Samaritans: A Profile (Winona Lake, MN: Eisenbrauns, 2018), 91–​ 112; Y. Magen, “Samaritan Synagogues,” in Early Christianity in Context: Monuments and Documents, ed. F. Manns (Franciscan Printing: Jerusalem, 1993), 193–​230; and Levine, Visual Judaism, 360–​ 362. Also note Ze’ev Safrai, “Samaritan Synagogues in the Roman-​Byzantine Period,” Kathedra 4 (1977): 84–​112, and Oren Tal, “A Samaritan Synagogue of the Byzantine Period at Apollonia-​Arsuf/​ Sozousa?,” Religions 11.3 (2020): https://​www.mdpi.com/​2077-​1444/​11/​3/​127. 73 Epiphanius describes a Samaritan theater as “set up theater-​fashion, outdoors in the open air, by the Samaritans who mimic all of the customs of the Jews” (Panarion 80.1.5; trans. from Reinhard Pummer, Early Christian Authors on Samaritans and Samaritanism [Tübingen, Germany: Mohr

Imagine, If You Will  207 remarks, based on the excavated evidence of ten synagogues considered to be Samaritan rather than Jewish, and note that the material ambiguity aligns with aesthetic and even ritual affinities already suggested by practices (circumcision) and language (Palestinian Aramaic). The visual programs of Jewish and Samaritan synagogues may not have differed significantly at all times and in all places; it was not a boundary that was necessarily strongly demarcated or policed. Broadly—​ and tentatively—​ speaking, Samaritan synagogues in the Land of Israel favored somewhat abstracted patterns, composed mostly of geometrical and floral motifs, as well as depictions of agricultural items (grain, pomegranates, a wine press) and everyday objects (cups, amphorae).74 Two synagogues—​el Khirbe and Khirbet Samara, both near Sebaste and dating to the fourth century—​offer well-​preserved mosaics depicting a building facade (the Temple or Holy Ark) with ritual objects (tongs, shofars, incense shovels, bowls, loaves of bread) and menorahs, that is, variants of the “Jewish ritual objects” panel described by Hachlili in the context of Jewish synagogues. Much of what was said earlier, about Jewish familiarity with various objects that had both domestic and ritual use, holds true for the Samaritans as well. In both cases, the touchstone for the imagery appears to be accounts of the Tabernacle and associated ritual objects from the Torah. Samaritan synagogue Temple/​ark facades are striking for their rich detail: each consists of columns surmounted by a gabled roof, topped with a conch shell, and a partially drawn curtain. For unknown reasons, this Temple facade appears twice in the Khirbet Samara synagogue: first, comparatively poorly preserved, as part of a carpet mosaic; and a second, far better preserved, in a side hall. It is possible that the motif of “gates” in the poetry of Amram Dare and Marqe—​doorways that provide access to the divine—​would have resonated with these visual depictions of curtained doorways. Indeed, the threshold is a crucial image in Samaritan poetry, and in late antique Samaritan theology. Amram Dare’s Hymn #23, for example, distinguishes multiple gates: the Gates of Divine Kindness, the Gates of

Siebeck, 2002], 132–​133). Magnar Kartveit, The Origin of the Samaritans (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 203–​258, treats the epigraphic evidence in great detail, and he notes the ambiguity of terms such as “Israelite” and “synagogue” in the Samaritan context. 74 For a lavishly illustrated discussion of Samaritan synagogues, see Yitzhak Magen, The Samaritans and the Good Samaritan, trans. Edward Levin (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2008), esp. pp. 117–​180.

208  Staging the Sacred Divine Goodness, and the Gates of Divine Favor. These passageways complement other gates that appear in Amram Dare’s works: the Gates of Mercy and the Gates of Repentance. The imagery of heavenly gates—​as distinctive paths of access to elements of the divine nature, or ways by which certain petitions may be pleaded on high—​does not occur in the Torah but is a commonplace in Hellenistic and rabbinic Jewish writings, including liturgical works.75 The imagery, explicit in the poems and suggested by the imagery of the Torah shrine, reflects the intricate architectures of both royal space and royal power in antiquity. Heavenly gates appear in these works without fuss or fanfare in these poems precisely because they were a stock theological image. At the same time, it seems more than a coincidence that the great Samaritan reformer was known as Baba Rabbah—​literally, “the great gate” (although these poems use the term ‫תרח‬, cognate with the Hebrew ‫שער‬, for gate, not ‫)בבא‬. Baba Rabbah, like a physical gate, provided some kind of access to the divine—​as does the Torah, accessed through the doorway of the Torah shrine. The el Khirbe and Khirbet Samara synagogues, dated to the fourth century ce, overlap or slightly postdate the period when Amram Dare and Marqe likely lived, and also somewhat postdate the period to which scholars date the reformations of Baba Rabbah, when Samaritan ritual, liturgy, and literature underwent significant changes. Resonances between classical Samaritan literature and these synagogues suggest the robust religious renewal of the Samaritan community at this time, as evidenced by significant innovation and creation both material and literary, as well as attesting to a period of increased economic stability.76 The wealth of natural and naturalistic imagery in Samaritan synagogues can be read, on the one hand, simply as an aesthetically pleasant “background,” roughly as meaningful as a wallpaper or carpet pattern in a synagogue would be today. Such motifs beautify a space without drawing attention to themselves; they are not statement pieces. At the same time, we can consider that the specific elements of the patterning may have reflected a Samaritan inclination—​ why certain patterns were favored or judged 75 See Helen R. Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Their Reception: Ancient . . . Early Judaism. IJS Studies in Judaica, 14 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 344–​388. 76 For a discussion of the socioeconomic reality of Samaritans in late antiquity, as well as an analysis of the Samaritan celebration of Sukkot (and its implications for the presence or absence of images of the lulav and etrog in Samaritan art), see Laura S. Lieber, “Shabbat in the Garden of Eden: Two Samaritan Hymns for Sukkot,” in Land and Spirituality in Rabbinic Literature: Studies in Memory of Yaakov Elman ‫ז”ל‬, ed. Shana Schick and Steven Fine (Leiden: Brill, 2022), 137–​158.

Imagine, If You Will  209 aesthetically pleasing in the first place. Someone chose these patterns and not others, and choices are usually made for some kind of reason, even if not one that the person making the choice needs to reason through. The preference for geometric patterns may reflect a rejection of the images of animals and humans in synagogues and churches—​a trend toward aniconism evident in Jewish synagogues toward the end of late antiquity, as well. This avoidance of figural images is often understood as a stringency imposed in response to the Torah’s prohibitions on sculpted or graven images (Exod. 20:4), either in alignment with or reaction against trends in Christian and early Islamic art, but such a preference for abstract patterning can also be understood positively.77 The regularized, repeated patterns may subtly suggest stability and reliability (rather than the chaos of something random or irregular), and echo patterns found in creation, a stylistically distinct variant of the analysis offered for Helios mosaics in synagogues earlier. Repeated patterns, rooted in nature, can suggest the importance of seasons and an awareness of the interconnections between the heavens and the earth, as well as the symmetries typical of the natural world. Patterns are an element of the divine order, and the patterning in language that defines poetry can be understood as an echo of that same impulse—​a shared aesthetic. Even more so, the inclusion of floral motifs in these patterned motifs connects the orderliness of the physical scene with the tidiness of the creation narrative in Genesis. The creation story plays a prominent role in Samaritan poetry, where God is sometimes even referred to as “Bereshit” (“In the beginning”), the opening word of the Torah. The visual imagery of these spaces suggests that the synagogue is itself a garden, much as the Temple and Eden were images of each other.78 The interplay of abstract patterns, floral motifs, daily and ritual objects, and architectural elements in the synagogue’s space has the effect of placing the congregation in a garden (or the Garden) and in the Temple simultaneously. The iconography hearkens back not to one but to two sacred pasts and places. When they enter the sacred space, the visual 77 See Levine, Visual Judaism, 240–​242. As Levine writes, “By the very end of Late Antiquity Jewish artistic expression seems to have been shifting away from figural representation, as had happened centuries earlier in late Second Temple times. Whether the iconoclastic activity discussed above had something to do with this new tendency—​as a cause, effect, or parallel development—​must remain moot for the present” (242). Also note Sean Leatherbury’s work on geometric patterns as experiential in Inscribing Faith in Late Antiquity: Between Reading and Seeing (London: Routledge, 2019), 141–​184. 78 See the convenient summary in Peter Thatcher Lanfer, Remembering Eden: The Reception History of Genesis 3:22–​24 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), esp. Chapter 5, “Eden and the Temple” (127–​157).

210  Staging the Sacred program subtly suggests that the congregation is stepping out of time and into a place that is somehow out of time, an Edenic location in which the Temple endures. The prominence of the Temple /​Torah shrine imagery in Samaritan synagogues underscores this sense of these structures as a kind of “memory stage.” We can appreciate the significance of this imagery all the more given that Samaritan synagogues conspicuously lack the narrative and figural art typical of Jewish and Christian spaces. The unique emphasis on the Torah shrine within these spaces, with the curtain pulled back as if in motion or in use, resonates with the emphasis on the Torah and revelation in the poetry of Amram Dare and Marqe. In Samaritan ritual of this period, the Torah was not read publicly but was, rather, taken out of the ark and held aloft, in order to be beheld and revered, an act of anamnesis akin to the ritual elements surrounding the Torah reading in the Jewish synagogue.79 Absent from these mosaics, however, is any image of the Torah itself. The decision not to represent the scroll may reflect the fact that it did not need to be depicted: the community would supply that sacred item in the moment; the image of the Temple shrine formed its “backdrop.” The Torah did not need to be “present” by means of mosaics because it was present in the moment. The mosaics were, in this analysis, completed in the ritual context, when the sanctuary was populated by the people and the divine Writing was added in the moment. To be sure, this same interpretation could hold true for Jewish synagogues, as well—​where the Torah reading was itself a recapitulation of Sinai—​but the singularity of the Torah shrine image in the Samaritan synagogues does resonate with the way the Torah itself is singled out in Samaritan liturgy and liturgical poetry. The sight of the scroll aligned with the place of the Torah in hymnody.

Churches The quantity, diversity, durability, and range reflected in surviving Christian structures and texts presents scholars with an almost overwhelmingly complicated picture—​a complexity that would surely be present in non-​Christian materials, if more had survived or were excavated. Not only are more of Christian structures often largely intact—​compared with the synagogues, 79 See Ruth Langer, “From Study of Scripture to a Reenactment of Sinai,” Worship 72.1 (January 1998): 43–​67; reprinted in the Journal of Synagogue Music 31.1 (Fall 2006): 104–​125.

Imagine, If You Will  211 which we must reconstruct primarily through floor plans—​but they were also often in use in many centuries (often as churches but not always). In many cases, as a result of these long and active histories, each site presents a viewer with a palimpsest of evidence, as these were not static structures but updated and adapted over time. A few examples, however, will highlight how the visual programs of churches from late antiquity could resonate with the images of sacred hymnody; these are illustrations, not in any way exhaustive. We will draw our visual culture examples from locations in the performative worlds of our two primary Christian poets, Ephrem and the conventions of visual representation in the Syriac East, and Romanos, as the representative of imperial Constantinople, insofar as we can reconstruct their outlines. Church of Seleucia Pieria (Syrian Milieu): Despite the abundance of literary witnesses to early Christianity (and, for that matter, early Islam) in the Syriac-​speaking East, material artifacts and monumental structures from late antiquity are in general sparse, and comparatively under-​explored and under-​studied. Given the complexities of the geopolitics of the region in the twentieth and twenty-​first centuries—​including the history of European colonialism, two world wars, the rise of nationalism and independence, and civil wars—​excavations can be rare and, as witnessed in the cases of Palmyra and Dura Europos in the twenty-​ first century, profoundly vulnerable. Archaeological digs in modern Turkey are more accessible, but locations of significance to scholars of late antiquity have not been prioritized there.80 The accessible, documented traces of material and visual culture for this region in our time period remains tantalizing if slim: fragments of structures dislocated to European museums (such as the inscribed marble slab from Zenonopolis, dated to the fifth century, which can now be found in a museum in Braniewo, Poland), epigraphic traces of individuals (patrons, artists, civic figures) otherwise unknown, and a selection of well-​documented archaeological sites from across the Levant. These are the barest, most precious traces of what must have been a splendid world of mosaics and frescoes, and monumental civic and religious structures. Ephrem’s cities, Edessa and Nisibis—​both located near the often-​fluid border between the Christian Byzantine Empire and the Persian Sassanian Empire—​were known in antiquity more for their politics than their art. Both

80 See, for example, the University of Chicago Amuq Valley projects, which focus on the Neolithic period through the Bronze Age: https://​oi.uchic​ago.edu/​resea​rch/​proje​cts/​amuq-​sur​vey-​and-​rela​ ted-​proje​cts.

212  Staging the Sacred Edessa (modern Urfa) and Nisibis (modern Nusaybin, near the Turkish-​ Syrian border) are located in modern Turkey, but a thousand kilometers separates Ephrem’s world from the Greek-​speaking population center of Constantinople (Istanbul). During Ephrem’s lifetime, political turbulence in this area was particularly extreme: in 363 ce, the Byzantine Emperor Julian (“the Apostate”) ceded Nisibis, Ephrem’s original home, to the Persians, with the result that Ephrem had to flee 250 km west to Edessa.81 We currently lack significant archaeological evidence of Christian infrastructure from Nisibis and Edessa, so for the present analysis, late antique churches in Antioch (around 250 km west of Edessa) will be used as a proxy.82 To be sure, Antioch—​a prosperous Roman and then Byzantine city, as befitted its status as a trade and cultural hub in the Levant and Eastern Mediterranean—​would have been larger and more cosmopolitan than either Edessa or Nisibis, and likely more multilingual. Antioch was known in Ephrem’s time for its institutions of learning and famous for its robust entertainment industry. As Antioch was the major administrative center for the Syrian region, however, we can regard it as representing, perhaps, the aspirations of other communities in its orbit. Of particular value in light of the present study, scholars have observed how Antiochian mosaics draw upon and make explicit references to the theater, a connection between the visual and performative arts further underscored by the prominence of writings that address the popularity of mime and pantomime in the city, as attested to by Lucian (whose defense of this art form, On Dancing, was written in Antioch in the 160s ce), John Chrysostom (whose sermons frequently target the appeal of mime and other forms of entertainment), and the famed orator Libanius, whose school was located in that city.83 The Emperor Julian acknowledged the popularity of performance during his visit to Antioch, when he observed that the city teemed with “numerous dancers and flute players and more mimes than ordinary citizens.”84 Churches were part of the lively cultural scene in the city, one site of performance among many, where individuals and communities 81 Ephrem expresses his feelings toward Julian and Julian’s political, cultural, and religious programs in his five Hymns against Julian (translated in McVey, Ephrem the Syrian, 227–​257). 82 For a sense of the current state of excavations in Ephrem’s cities, both the promises and the challenges, see Elif Keser-​Kayaalp and Nihat Erdoğan, “The Cathedral Complex at Nisibis,” Anatolian Studies 63 (3013): 137–​154. This article references mosaics and mosaic carpets, but I have not yet been able to locate photographs of these items. 83 See Janet Huskinson, “Theatre, Performance and Theatricality in Some Mosaic Pavements from Antioch,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 46.1 (2003): 131–​165. 84 Misopogon §342A and B (LCL 29, pp. 442–​445); discussed in Chapter 1.

Imagine, If You Will  213 competed for status and did so through not only verbal appeals to moral, intellectual, and aesthetic qualities by arguments but by nonverbal means, as well—​including infrastructure. Much of our sense of the visual culture of late antique Antioch comes from nonreligious sites. The body of materials known as “the Antioch mosaic pavements,” dated to the second and third centuries ce (roughly contemporary with Dura Europos), offer remarkable examples of domestic decorative arts. The quality, quantity, and intricacy of these works indicate that the owners of the houses in which these mosaics were installed belonged to wealthy social elites.85 The evidence from contemporary churches in Antioch, perhaps because it is less stunning, particularly in comparison with the Antioch mosaic pavements, has received less attention from scholars. Compared with the churches of Rome, Constantinople, Ravenna, and Jerusalem, the churches of Antioch appear modest. These structures do, however, provide some sense of the visual context of the performance of hymns in the late antique Syriac East, and so we will turn our attention to the evidence we do have from these structures.86 Three locations in Antioch provide substantial evidence of the rich visual culture of late antique Antioch and its environs: the basilica of Machouka, the Kaoussie Church (perhaps to be identified with the Martyrion of St. Babylas), and—​just outside of Antioch proper—​the quatrefoil church in Seleucia Pieria, Antioch’s port. While these represent only a fraction of the religious infrastructure of Antioch during the fourth through seventh centuries, the decorative elements of these three churches are (relatively speaking) most recoverable. From the basilica of Machouka and the Kaoussie martyrion, the extant decorations consist almost entirely of geometric mosaic patterns, including large carpet mosaics, and dedicatory inscriptions (in Greek), another example of the way in which the visual preference for patterning resonates with the poetic aesthetic of repetition and variation. Geometric mosaics are also a feature of the Church of Seleucia Pieria—​as with the other two churches, many of the mosaics are geometric and abstract—​but we also have 85 Doro Levi, Antioch Mosaic Pavements, 2 vols. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1947). 86 The most comprehensive and up-​to-​date treatment of this material can be found in Wendy Mayer and Pauline Allen, The Churches of Syrian Antioch (300–​638 CE) (Leuven: Peeters, 2012). Noting that they are, by training, textual scholars and philologists, they preface their study by noting that “this is the kind of book that we had hoped someone else would provide. . . . Our aim is to fill that gap and finally to assemble into one location reference to all of the extant sources—​literary and material—​concerning the churches and related Christian worship sites at Antioch” (xv). Also essential is Sheila Campbell, The Mosaics of Antioch (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1988).

214  Staging the Sacred visual artifacts, including mosaics, carvings, and reliefs, that offer examples of figurative art. The friezes and reliefs from throughout the site of Seleucia Pieria depict figures from a selection of categories, including diverse fauna (a leopard, peacock, horse, fish, a dolphin), humans (a warrior, a horse and rider, a donkey and driver, a figure in Phyrgian dress, and swimming boys), religious figures (several images of Jesus, an angel, and an Apostle), and miscellaneous items (seashells, a cornucopia, and floral motifs). The images are well preserved but, as recovered, offer no clear sense of a singular visual program. We are not able to reconstruct how they would have been viewed, insofar as they would have been visible: we cannot discern how these images from nature, daily life, and religion fit together, or if their variety underscores the diversity of what was aesthetically pleasing or contextually appropriate. The figurative, non-​abstract mosaics, by contrast, can all be found in the ambulatory, and are of high artistic quality—​perhaps unsurprising given the elegant artistry of other mosaics from late antiquity in Antioch.87 Mayer and Allen offer a succinct synopsis of the mosaic design: [It] comprises a broad band containing two series of animals opposed back to back (that is, one series facing the out wall, the other the colonnade). They are bordered by a vine rinceau on both sides, with a frame of waves separating the animal frieze from the border. Almost all of the animals are marching toward the entrance to the wing, situated to the east. Larger quadrupeds tend to be in the outer row and smaller birds and animals in the inner. The occasional animal faces in the opposite direction, breaking up the monotony. The animals are disproportionate in size, giving the impression that they derive from a zoological copybook. The ground between the figurative elements is filled with florets in a scale pattern. Compositionally this section of the decorative program belongs to the hunting scenes found in a number of private houses at Antioch, but it is also evocative of the game parks kept by Roman aristocrats and their depictions of the garden walls of townhouses. . . . Whether the hunt scene became imbued with any specifically Christian meaning in this context is debatable.88

87 See the discussion of the Seleucia Pieria mosaics in Wendy Mayer, “The Changing Shape of Liturgy: From Earliest Christianity to the End of Late Antiquity,” in Liturgy’s Imagined Past/​ s: Methodologies and Materials in the Writing of Liturgical History Today, ed. Teresa Berger and Bryan D. Spinks (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2016), 275–​302. 88 Mayer and Allen, The Churches of Syrian Antioch, 62–​63.

Imagine, If You Will  215 The natural world—​both wild and domestic, and something in between—​is richly represented here. Following along the pathway created by this mosaic, we can imagine, would create a sensation of following along with a hunt, or, perhaps, of being in the garden of God. These “stock images” would have been available to concretize and flesh out images that populated the background of biblical stories: cities, gardens, wildlife, and beasts of burden all constituted the “scenery” of canonical tales as much as in the artisans’ present day. And yet, neither these images nor the poems that may have animated them were meant to be ordinary; as Sean Leatherbury observes, the very inscriptions located in the buildings inform viewers how to respond emotionally upon entering sacred spaces, encouraging the viewer—​soon to be the hearer—​to wonder.89 I do not here aim to offer a persuasive “reading” of this fragmentary and complicated mosaic program (if such a term can even apply to the eclectic anthology of images that survives), let alone to explain these church structures that are so tantalizing but so fragmentary in their offerings. Rather, I take seriously the ways in which context, intention, or a performer’s gesture could transform imagery from incidental to important, from background to backdrop. The apparent preference for geometric carpet mosaics throughout all these structures, even at Seleucia Pieria, may simply reflect what was regarded as aesthetically pleasing (especially if it were to function as a carpet, that is, as a surface for standing upon rather than visual art for viewing); it may have been a cost-​saving measure or a construction efficiency, as repeated patterns would require less skilled labor and less time to install; it might also subtly instill a sense of stability and predictability on an almost instinctive level through their constancy and appeal to human minds and our preferences for patterns, just as we see in the formally patterned poetry.90 No one individual explanation excludes the others, and additional emotional and cognitive responses to the abstract patterns can be imagined. Motifs that draw on nature—​vines and flowers, however stylized—​serve to bring nature into the building, but in a tamed way, transforming sacred space into a divine garden, much as we saw with the synagogues, discussed earlier. 89 Leatherbury, Inscribing Faith in Late Antiquity, 156. 90 The topic of the appeal of patterns to the human mind is vast. Several works provide entry points to the field relevant to the concerns of this study: Idan Segev, Luis M. Martinez, and Robert J. Zatorre, eds., Brain and Art (Lausanne, Switzerland: Frontiers Media SA, 2014); George Mather, The Psychology of Visual Art: Eye, Brain and Art (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Anjan Chatterjee, The Aesthetic Brain: How We Evolved to Desire Beauty and Enjoy Art (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); and Andrea Gleiniger and Georg Vrachliotis, eds., Pattern: Ornament, Structure, and Behavior (Basel, Switzerland, and Boston: Birkhäuser, 2009).

216  Staging the Sacred The inclusion of religious images—​notably crosses—​could be understood as weaving an affirmation of Christian authenticity into the literal fabric of the structure, and underscoring the way believers should see Christ permeating creation. The subtle Christian-​universalist message might underlie a general sense of aesthetic pleasure, itself deriving from the way it resonates with already-​held assumptions of triumph and superiority—​ideas reinforced by liturgy and hymnody. Such visuals aren’t crudely pedagogical, but of a piece with larger communal norms, beliefs, and ambitions. To illustrate the way that patterns appear in both mosaics and poetry, let us examine Ephrem’s hymn, “On the Nativity (#3).”91 In Hymn #3, Ephrem employs a catalog of praise language: in the first stanza, every line opens with “Blessed is . . .,” the second with “Thanks to . . .” and, at the end, “Glory to . . .,” which opens most of the lines for several stanzas, until “Blessed is . . .” returns in Stanza 6. The phrases “Blessed is,” “Glory to,” and “Thanks to” pepper the poem in runs of multiple lines until Stanza 18, where the poet adds the fixed phrase “Let us thank Him” to his repertoire. The language is not fixed or rigid—​not precisely a pattern, but noteworthy in its density of repetition. This verbal patterning offers a kind of visual analog to recurring but not-​ entirely-​regular patterns on the borders of larger, varying images in mosaics. In some ways, this aesthetic of repetition reflects late antique tastes in a more significant way than more readily identifiable and concrete resonances between this hymn and visual culture do: references to trees, harps, vines, and animals texture the text, but the pleasure of repetition constitutes the deep structure in both poem and mosaics. The figurative elements recovered from Seleucia Pieria can likewise be read in a variety of overlapping and mutually reinforcing ways. The extant examples of reliefs and mosaics do not seem to convey a particular narrative but, rather, could—​if we accept the premise that they were visible and visually coherent—​serve to inform how those who are present in that space might envision various kinds of scenes and figures. Quotidian figures such as donkey drivers help humanize and familiarize stories of the patriarchs and their servants, often depicted as traveling in such a fashion, as well as the specific episodes, such as the tale of Balaam and his talking ass (Num. 22–​24), a pericope read prophetically in the Church.92 The image of boys swimming with 91 McVey, Ephrem the Syrian, 82–​88. 92 See the essays collected in George H. van Kooten and Jacques T.A.G.M. van Ruiten, eds., The Prestige of the Pagan Prophet Balaam in Judaism, Early Christianity and Islam (Leiden: Brill, 2008), esp. Tobias Nicklas, “Balaam and the Star of the Magi” (pp. 233–​246).

Imagine, If You Will  217 fish could be a scene of humble, routine pleasure but could also shape how listeners might, in the moment, imagine drowning Egyptians or metaphorical fishermen, an image rooted in the New Testament. Visual depictions of Jesus, Apostles, saints, and angels could influence how such figures appeared in the imagination of the congregation, even as they affirmed the material reality of a world populated by unseen powers. The detailed mosaics of the natural world, meanwhile, bring the primordial garden into the sanctuary and allow the people to stand and walk within it. Viewers’ imaginations, nurtured by scripture, liturgy, and homily, could animate these mosaics as the setting for Eden, Noah’s ark, Solomon’s hunts, or Paradise restored, among other possibilities. Or they might have found in them simply a kind of visual testimony to the wonder of creation and the Creator’s power, and impressive evidence of the skill of human artisans. Background could be transformed, through imagination, into backdrop. These suggestive traces of the artistic and structural context of Church of Seleucia Pieria permit us to begin to imagine the visual experience of congregants in which they heard hymns performed, and to consider how information before their eyes colored the ways in which they envisioned pictures that words suggested to their ears. The people of Antioch, and presumably the region more generally—​or, at least, the wealthy—​were likely accustomed to the presence of such mosaics, in all kinds of spaces. Churches constituted one site within a kind of constant, immersive, fluid visual program that surrounded Antiochenes at all times, one that manifested in specific ways in spaces of religious and ritual performance and provided additional means (both accessible and authorized) for participating in the ekphrasis of the hymns. And what we imagine for this one location, we can extend to southern Anatolia and the Syrian region, as well. Hagia Sophia (Constantinople): The most remarkable religious space of Christian late antiquity, certainly in the Eastern Christian world, was Hagia Sophia, the church of the imperial capital. While Romanos was not an official poet of Hagia Sophia, his works were performed there and subsequently diffused throughout the Greek-​speaking Christian world. If the traces of sacred infrastructure from Christian late antiquity in the provinces are sparse, Hagia Sophia provides an exceptionally magnificent, albeit intimidatingly complex, example of imperial material culture from the royal seat. The Emperor Justinian commissioned the building of the cathedral in 532, on the site of a church built under Theodosius II (consecrated in 415 ce) but

218  Staging the Sacred destroyed during the Nika riots of that same year; it was completed in 537.93 Of course, the extant building’s visual program hardly resembles the interior of Justinian’s day, but nonetheless, this structure offers a remarkable opportunity to imagine the full sensory experience of the liturgy—​particularly sight and sound—​as it might have been in Romanos’ day. Our understanding of how the building appeared in the sixth century benefits tremendously from a remarkable literary work by the court poet, Paul the Silentiary, known as the Ekphrasis of Hagia Sophia, likely written at the emperor’s behest and performed at the rededication of the structure in order to celebrate its completion.94 Tellingly, in his preface to his description of the imperial church, Paul the Silentiary invokes the language of spectacle: “Unbar the door to me, reverent initiates, unbar it, unbar the shrine of Divine wonder to my tale, and offer a prayer for my verses. For as we touch the starting-​rope, we must direct our eyes toward you.”95 Paul here compares his work to a sporting event: the first phrases of the paean are the starting line. Then, in the model of the ekphrasis-​of-​place, the court poet provides a tour of the structure that would have highlighted its wonders for those physically present and able to behold them in that moment but, just as importantly, offer a “virtual tour” for those who could see it only in their imaginations. The poem—​written in a genre, “encomium of place,” that makes intensive use of ekphrasis—​celebrates the building, the builder, and the God for whose glory it was built. Romanos’ liturgical compositions developed at the same moment in time as, and conceptually adjacent to the space celebrated by, Paul the Silentiary; both poets worked within the imperial orbit, for audiences that included society’s most powerful elites but whose reach also would extend beyond their time and place.96 As art historian Bissera Pentcheva writes: 93 While a few items from the Theodosian structure have been recovered, no major excavation is likely to be undertaken, as it might jeopardize the existing structure. The site remains contested and politically charged, as evidenced by the current Turkish government’s decision to restore the building to active use as a mosque. See the summary and analysis offered by Mustafa Aykol, in his essay “Would the Prophet Mohammed Convert Hagia Sophia,” New York Times (July 20, 2020; accessed July 21, 2020). https://​www.nyti​mes.com/​2020/​07/​20/​opin​ion/​hagia-​sop​hia-​mos​que.html. See also the statement by UNESCO: https://​en.une​sco.org/​news/​une​sco-​statem​ent-​hagia-​sop​hia-​istan​bul (accessed July 23, 2020). 94 For this text in translation, see Cyril Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire, 312–​1453 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 80–​96, and Peter N. Bell, Three Political Voices from the Age of Justinian (Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 2009), 189–​217. 95 Bell, Three Political Voices from the Age of Justinian, 206. 96 Romanos’ works were likely performed in Hagia Sophia, but he seems to have served a smaller, suburban church (the Church of the Theotokos) in the Kyros district. See Alexander Lingas, “The Liturgical Place of the Kontakion in Constantinople,” in Liturgy, Architecture and Art of the Byzantine World: Papers of the XVIII International Byzantine Congress (Moscow, 8–​15 August 1991) and Other Essays Dedicated to the Memory of Fr. John Meyendorff, ed. Constantin C. Akentiev, Byzantinorossica 1 (St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg Society for Byzantine and Slavic Studies, 1995), 50–​57.

Imagine, If You Will  219 The introduction of the kontakion as a sung sermon coincided with the building of the Justinianic Hagia Sophia. Thus the genre, brought to prominence by Romanos Melodos in Constantinople, spoke directly to the architectural and urban setting in which it was performed. . . . The elite choirs perhaps chanted [hymns] with refrains, intoned by the congregation, meant to unfold in the acoustically resonant and visually aniconic interior of the Great Church.97

The poet inhabited a very specific space, shaped by beliefs about God and understandings of power. The acoustics of this space will be addressed in Chapter 5; here, we will consider the decorative elements, insofar as we can reconstruct them. The visual program of the cathedral, insofar as we can reconstruct its appearance in Romanos’ day, was dominated by richly patterned mosaics featuring geometric designs, motifs from the natural world, and Christian symbols. Various key spaces, such as lunettes (half-​moons) over doorways and facades, may have provided spaces for more figurative decorations, including depictions of Jesus, Mary, Apostles, and the imperial family, but the visible decorations, which date to the ninth to eleventh centuries, significantly postdate Romanos; based on the available material and literary evidence, however, it does not seem that the mosaics of Hagia Sophia were as robustly figurative as what we find in the western portions of the empire—​R avenna, for example, or Rome.98 Most surprisingly, the central dome appears to have been strikingly aniconic, as Paul the Silentiary attests. Paul the Silentiary describes this central portion of the ceiling—​precisely that portion of architecture so often missing from ancient synagogues and churches, in contrast the excavated floors—​as follows: At the very navel [of the church] the sign of the cross is depicted within a circle by means of minute mosaic so that the Savior of the whole world may forever protect the church; while at the base of the half-​sphere are

97 Bisssera V. Pentcheva, Hagia Sophia: Sound, Space, and Spirit in Byzantium (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2017), 166–​167. 98 For a richly illustrated and accessible study of the layers of imagery in Hagia Sophia, see Natalia B. Teteriatnikov, Mosaics of Hagia Sophia, Istanbul: The Fossati Restoration and the Work of the Byzantine Institute (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1998), https://​www.doaks.org/​resea​rch/​ publi​cati​ons/​books/​mosa​ics-​of-​hagia-​sop​hia-​istan​bul-​the-​foss​ati.

220  Staging the Sacred fashioned forty arched windows through which the rays of fair-​haired Dawn are channeled.99

We might have expected visual depictions of the heavens, or Christ represented as a lamb or surrounded by Apostles, but instead the visual program stresses the austere image of the cross enlivened not by figurative pictures but by natural light. Even at night, the space was bright, illuminated by an abundance of lamps: Thus the evening light revolves around the temple, brightly shining. And in a smaller, inner circle you will find a second crown bearing lights along its rim, while in the very center another noble disc rises shining in the air, so that darkness is made to flee. . . . Countless other lights, hanging on twisted chains, does the church of ever-​changing aspect contain within itself; some illumine the aisles, others the center or the east and west, others shed their bright flame at the summit. Thus the bright night smiles like the day and appears herself to be rosy-​ankled.100

Given that Romanos’ poems were recited in the context of night vigils, the radiant nocturnal illumination of this space holds particular significance. It surely suggested the light of truth and wisdom, but it would have also cast flickering light and shadow upon the mosaics and those who moved throughout the space, as well. Pentcheva writes at length about how Constantinople’s imperial sacred space, Hagia Sophia, has long been associated with metaphors of light and water, radiance and fluidity, transparency and reflection. The decoration of the structure does not seem to have offered direct narrative analogs to the content of individual poems, nor did it explicitly enrich liturgical ekphrases with specific images. Instead, it creates a resonant impression of numinosity, an ambience appropriate to imperial liturgy. We can imagine the scene in Romanos’ eye (and in his imagination) as he composed: visual touches of heavenly light, evocative of divine presence, its radiance and sparks of insight, flickering off the glass of tesserae; human smallness and the imperative to awe, in the face of infinite divine majesty, conjured by the vast rivers of 99 Paul the Silentiary, Description of Hagia Sophia, l. 506, trans. from C. Mango, Art of the Byzantine Empire, 312–​1453 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 83. 100 Paul the Silentiary, Description of Hagia Sophia, ll. 834, 884, trans. from Mango, Art of the Byzantine Empire, 90, 91.

Imagine, If You Will  221 flowing abstract patterns; the chants of angels and ancestors resonating and mingling with the voices of the choir and congregation, whose voices echo from above and create a sense of resonance between heaven and earth. As the eye is drawn up to search for the source of the resounding sounds, the real heavens can be discerned through the windows while the symbol of Christ hovers over all. As noted earlier, it is important to recall that Romanos’ kontakia were likely performed not in the light of day, when most modern visitors to Hagia Sophia behold the space and when photographers capture its images, but, rather, in the context of the night vigil.101 Thus, while relatively static sunlight may illumine the mosaics, we must imagine flickering lamps lending the mosaics a liveliness and sense of motion. The prevailing darkness would presumably enhance the sense of mystery, sense of vulnerability, and receptivity to mystical experience that would only be underscored by participating in poems that place the congregation into biblical stories that they themselves voice. The dynamic, flickering darkness, animated by lamps and rich with echoes and resonant sound, would help disturb the sense of “normal” time and make the act of imagining oneself into a sacred story easier and more fully sensory and thus create a sense of ritual as a transformative moment. When familiar sunlight enters the space, more familiar and routine sense perception and senses of boundaries between self and heaven, past and present, heaven and earth, would resume. The ekphrasis of Romanos’ night vigil poems relies, perhaps even unconsciously, on having one’s vision obscured by darkness, so that other senses (particularly acoustics, discussed in Chapter 5) can be amplified. At the same time, we should consider that these works flourished over the centuries and throughout the Byzantine Empire and were performed in sanctuaries far less majestic—​and perhaps quite different in their adornment—​from the space into which they were born. Just as styles of performance likely varied across time and place, the visual settings would have changed, as well. The material stasis suggested by the endurance of the written text of a hymn is ultimately largely illusory. What we can see with our eyes is only a small portion of the picture. 101 See Georgia Frank, “Romanos and the Night Vigil in the Sixth Century,” in A People’s History of Christianity, Vol. 3: Byzantine Christianity, ed. Derek Krueger (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2006), 59–​78. Also on this topic, see Ruth Webb, “Spatiality, Embodiment, and Agency in Ekphraseis of Church Buildings,” in Aural Architecture in Byzantium: Music, Acoustics, and Ritual, ed. Bissera Pentcheva (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), 163–​175.

222  Staging the Sacred

Conclusions: Poems as Literary Mosaics While modern readers typically engage liturgical poems from late antiquity as literary texts, read silently, in solitude, and often in translation, their original audiences experienced them quite differently: as specifically religious instantiations of ubiquitous modes of performance, encountered in dynamic, evocative, even numinous settings in which the body and its senses were all intentionally engaged, directly or imaginatively. Through their appeals to the senses, the poets (regardless of religious affiliation) encouraged their congregants to imagine themselves fully in the scenes depicted within the poems. Ears and eyes work together to create vivid alternative realities within the listeners’ minds, as both words and surrounding sensory inputs would shape the details of how and what was envisioned. The poets conjure images—​and, not just images, but whole worlds of experience and emotion—​ for their listeners, but not in a simple, linear way. Much like the mosaics that adorned the structures of late antiquity, these poems craft their ekphrases out of fragments of language and story, verbal shards embedded slightly askew in their poetic frames so that, like glinting tesserae, they catch their audiences’ attention. We have already seen how a comparison of late antique hymnody across traditions reveals deep affinities that, upon closer inspection, we can appreciate nonetheless embed distinctive themes, motifs, and concerns. In this diversity-​within-​commonality, the poetry resembles the visual arts: shared techniques and aesthetics, but distinctive images, motifs, and emphases. In modern times, these two ancient art forms (liturgical poetry and visually ornamented space) are generally experienced as distinctive media: texts are read in isolation from the spatial contexts in which they were originally performed; visual programs are examined, via photographs, drawings, or in situ, but devoid of the performances that enlivened them and the rituals for which they were purpose-​built, with people present in photos primarily for scale or imagistic “color.” Reading these two sources together—​sacred songs in sacred space—​enhances our appreciation of both and suggests not only the ways seeing and hearing complement each other, but also how other senses can be evoked and drawn into the experience, both through appeals to the imagination (ekphrasis at its most expansive) and in direct, physical ways: acoustics and aromas, ambience and atmosphere. In combination, text and structures constitute the extant traces of prayer and liturgy from this period that was formative for Christianity, Judaism, and Samaritanism.

Imagine, If You Will  223 While reading texts and images together requires that we let ourselves speculate, imagining these poems in their performed space and considering the interplay of their literary depictions of visual and other sensory effects help us recover a sense of their richness in deep and complicated ways and thus suggests additional avenues of exploration, including studies that consider even more ephemeral elements such as acoustics. Attention to the intangible, yet important, elements of performance brings an ever-​expanding range of potential topics to mind. Even if data and answers cannot be secured, simply asking new questions of old texts has the promise to yield new insights. Spaces helped make what was imagined more real, to make the abstract vivid and tangible. Vividness—​appeals to the senses, particularly through sight—​shaped both the composition and experience of liturgical poems. Words chosen for their vividness, as stressed in the progymnasmata and rhetorical training, were performed and received in concert with a distinctive visual environment. Together, words and images conjured imagined scenes and experiences, evoking visceral as well as intellectual responses among the listeners. Ears and eyes played a role in the way the mind understands words, and shaped by these twin senses, the congregation (like the students of rhetoric) would have been able to think themselves into the scene and imagine themselves a part of, or witnesses to, the story. If they can see the past, then history can blur into the present. In this chapter, we imagined the liturgical hymns as shaped by the rhetorical technique of ekphrasis in their composition and performed in the visual context of churches and synagogues, which further shaped how their vividness was received. Words were experienced in specific, material contexts. In the following two chapters, we will further explore the dynamics between rhetoric and space, in even greater depth, with even greater imagination. In Chapter 4, we will consider in detail an additional element of rhetoric as it was understood in late antiquity, the creation of character (ethopoeia). Ekphrasis is, from the listener perspective, a comparatively passive rhetorical technique: the author-​performer does the “work” of conveying the vividness, through the choice and delivery of words, perhaps supported by contextual elements; the audience need just be open to the suggestions, game to let their imaginations engage with the suggestions of words, sounds, and images. Enargeia relies on the performer’s energy, and the better a job he does, the more easily his audience “sees” and the less labor they exert toward understanding and sharing his vision. By contrast,

224  Staging the Sacred the emotional experience conjured by ethopoeia, when done well, draws the listeners that much closer to the story itself. Listening, having led to seeing, will soon lead to feeling. In Chapter 5, we turn our attention to the sense of hearing much more explicitly, with an examination of the acoustic environment of late antiquity, and the performative soundscapes in which this body of literature emerged.

Appendix: Ekphrasis in the Progymnasmata The term progymnasmata (προγυμνάσματα, lit., “preliminary exercises/​ training”) refers to a graded series of didactic exercises designed to prepare students who had completed their basic studies of literature (taught by grammarians) for the more advanced task of writing declamations like those they would someday present in court or in a public forum. Several remarkable textbooks delineating such curricula have come down to us from antiquity: four Greek handbooks that include works attributed to Aelius Theon (first century ce), Hermogenes of Tarsus102 (second century ce), Aphthonius of Antioch (a student of Libanius), and Nicolaus the Sophist of Myra (fifth century ce), and one remarkably detailed and lengthy Latin work, by the first-​century ce rhetorician Quintilian (his Institutio Oratoria).103 In addition to these programmatic handbooks, we also possess a significant body of exercises attributed to Libanius of Antioch (fourth century ce), which provide a concrete sense of the kinds of prompts that might have constituted a practical curriculum.104

102 Because attribution of this work to Hermogenes is dubious, the author of this handbook is commonly known as Ps.-​Hermogenes. 103 The progymnasmata acknowledge debts to Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero—​the great theorists of the field—​and offer specific exercises that build on the concepts and values articulated by these figures even as they integrate evolving conventions of delivery in specific time periods. On these textbooks, see George A. Kennedy, Progymnasmata: Greek Textbooks of Prose Composition and Rhetoric (Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2003). In “Appendix A” in Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion, Ruth Webb includes the original text and her own translations of those sections of the progymnasmata that deal specifically with ekphrasis (pp. 197–​211). See also Robert J. Penella, “The Progymnasmata in Imperial Greek Education,” Classical World 105 (2011): 77–​90. 104 For a history of the Libanius pedagogical corpus, as well as the texts and translations, see Gibson, Libanius’s Progymnasmata. See also Raffaella Cribiore, Libanius the Sophist: Rhetoric, Reality, and Religion in the Fourth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013), and Cribiore, The School of Libanius in Late Antique Antioch (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). Libanius will be an important figure in Chapter 5, on account of his careful attention to the physicality of performance in his Or. 64 (trans. available in Margaret E. Molloy, Libanius and the Dancers [Hildesheim, Germany, Zürich, and New York: Olms-​Weidmann Verlag, 1996], 142–​176).

Imagine, If You Will  225 These “textbooks” (more accurately regarded as handbooks for teachers than instruction materials for students) prescribe exercises that isolate, systematize, and sequence various discrete modes of expression, such as anecdote, commonplace, invective, and speech-​in-​character. They are arranged by level of sophistication and graded from simplest to most challenging or sophisticated; those by Ps.-​Hermogenes, Aphthonius, and Nicolaus conclude with an “introduction to law,” which suggests the next stage of a pupil’s education and the intended application of oratorical training.105 Each handbook addresses ekphrasis—​detailed, vivid description—​often as one of the more advanced exercises. The treatments of ekphrasis in these works can be summarized as follows: Theon presents ekphrasis as his seventh exercise. He defines it as “descriptive language, bringing what is portrayed clearly before the sight”106 and distinguishes between ekphrasis of persons, events, places, time periods, and objects, any of which may be vividly described. He offers exemplars of each kind of ekphrasis, quoting from or referring to passages from the Iliad and Odyssey, Herodotus, and Thucydides. The quality of ekphrasis, in his analysis, derives in terms of its clarity from “a vivid impression of all-​but-​seeing what is described.”107 Theon stresses that the image conjured by the words must be consistent and focused, with no pointless details that fail to add the sense of the whole, and without incongruent elements that muddle or confuse the mental picture. In the progymnasmata attributed to Hermogenes, ekphrasis appears as the tenth exercise; it is defined as “descriptive speech, as they say, vivid (enargȇs) and bringing what is being shown before the eyes.”108 While Ps.-​Hermogenes often quotes Theon word for word, this work also addresses the sensory components of ekphrasis: “the expression should almost create seeing through hearing.”109 Also, beyond the quality of coherence of the description—​not inserting an incongruity into an image—​the progymnasmata of Ps.-​Hermogenes stresses a

105 On the education of girls, see Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind, 74–​101. She notes, “But the exciting reality that resurfaces throughout the papyri concerning some women and education should not obscure the fact that illiterate women were the norm; further, their role in family and society revolved around domestic matters and was far more passive than that of their male partners” (76). Despite these caveats, Cribiore does construct an important picture from literary and epigraphic sources of women as both teachers (especially at early stages of education) and students in antiquity. 106 Kennedy, Progymnasmata, 45. See also Malcolm Heath, “Theon and the History of the Progymnasmata,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 43.2 (2002–​2003): 129–​160. 107 Kennedy, Progymnasmata, 47. 108 Ibid., 86. 109 Ibid.

226  Staging the Sacred more philosophical kind of coherence: “If the subject is flowery, let the style be so too; if the subject is dry, let the style be similar.”110 It is not enough for the details of the image to create a harmonious, singular image; rather, the style of how that image is crafted and presented should underscore and reinforce the impression of the verbal picture. Aphthonius’ handbook includes ekphrasis as its twelfth and penultimate exercise and offers a straightforward definition, reminiscent of Theon: “Ekphrasis is descriptive language, bringing what is shown before the eyes.”111 His description of ekphrasis is succinct, but he also adds certain elements absent the others, such as the need to move from “first things to last,” by which he means that an ekphrasis of a person should move from head to foot, that of an event from its past to its consequences, and that of objects from their outer contexts to the things themselves.112 Like Ps.-​Hermogenes, Aphthonius stresses that the description of a thing should align with the thing itself, but he introduces the notion of “compound” ekphrases, citing Thucydides’ depiction of the night battle in Sicily (7.43–​44), which consists of a clustering of descriptions. Where the other progymnasmata offered brief references to exemplars from classical literature, Aphthonius’ text includes a lengthy model exercise, “Ekphrasis of the Shrine of Alexandria, with Its Acropolis.” As recommended in the author’s instructions, this spatial ekphrasis begins with a general description of the functions of citadels and their appearance and then offers a more specific delineation of the Shrine of Serapis. The geographic location presented Aphthonius a challenge, since, as Kennedy notes, he challenges himself to describe in vivid detail a place “[he] himself may never have seen and had difficult describing clearly.”113 The exercise concludes with an expected acknowledgment of the author’s limits: “The beauty (of the acropolis) is greater than I can say, and if anything has been left out, this has been incidental to our wonder. It has been omitted because it was impossible to describe.”114 Like Aphthonius, who painted a scene unseen by means of words and imagination, Jewish, Christian, and Samaritan poets all attempt to make the 110 Ibid. 111 Ibid., 117. See also Ray Nadeau, “The Progymnasmata of Aphthonius in Translation,” Speech Monographs 19 (1952): 264–​285. 112 Kennedy, Progymnasmata, 117. Paul the Silentiary’s ekphrasis of Hagia Sophia employs this strategy. 113 Ibid., 118. 114 Ibid. Kennedy notes (n. 95), “This is perhaps to be taken as an excuse for failing to describe the temple and cult statue of the god Serapis.”

Imagine, If You Will  227 invisible real, and to articulate the ineffable. Indeed, the ability to render a scene vividly without relying on actual “eyewitness” accounts, whether a scene from the Odyssey or from the Bible, constituted an essential skill for any speaker. Aphthonius’ example of the technique illustrates both the appeal and the limits of ekphrasis; liturgical poets, touching upon the “ineffable,” confront an even more daunting challenge. Furthermore, Aphthonius’ delineation of ekphrastic “motion,” whether aesthetic or actively narrative, will certainly manifest in liturgical poems, and his notion of “compound ekphrases” provides a way for understanding some of the more complicated presentations in hymnography. Nicolaus the Sophist offers a more analytical presentation of ekphrasis than his predecessors, in that he offers a rationale for placing it as his eleventh and penultimate exercise: “And we say that ekphrasis is descriptive speech, bringing what is described clearly (enargȏs) before the eyes. ‘Clearly’ is added because in this way it most differs from narration.”115 He offers more detail concerning what makes ekphrasis distinctive: he notes how it differs from narration; stresses how details bring an image to life; explains how the technique locates one’s listeners not simply as an audience but as spectators; and addresses the usefulness of ekphrasis in all kinds of speech, whether the aim is to persuade, to prosecute or defend, or to produce pleasure and entertain. He concludes the section by noting the importance of employing a variety of ekphrases, and he highlights the powerful potential of ekphrasis in conjuring emotional experiences that derive from effective vividness, citing Demosthenes’ depiction of the suffering of Phocis (On the Embassy 19.65). Nicolaus’ attentiveness to the emotional force of well-​done ekphrasis underscores his reason for assigning this technique such significance and giving it such place of pride in his curriculum. Ekphrasis is not detail for its own sake, but vividness that conjures experiences, enabling listeners to see as if present, and feel an imagined experience as if a personal memory. Finally, Quintilian does not employ the term ekphrasis, but he does refer to the closely allied concepts of phantasia (with its particularly visual elements) and enargeia (a more general term but here, like ekphrasis, appealing primarily to sight): The person who will show the greatest power in the expression of emotions will be the person who has properly formed what the Greeks call phantasiai

115

Ibid., 166.

228  Staging the Sacred (let us call them “visions [visiones]”), by which the images of absent things are presented to the mind in such a way that we seem actually to see them with our eyes and have them physically present to us. . . . The result will be enargeia, which Cicero calls illustratto and evidentia, a quality which makes us seem not so much to be talking about something as exhibiting it. Emotions will ensue just as if we were present at the event itself.116

In this passage, the Roman-​educated Quintilian specifically refers to Cicero’s De Oratore 2.192; in that passage, Cicero describes not an orator but a particularly effective actor. The terms Quintilian favors—​phantasia, enargeia, visiones, illustratto, and evidentia—​all reflect the importance of an orator’s ability to evoke the sensation of and appeal to the sense of sight. It is not that Quintilian is averse to the use of Greek nomenclature, although he explicitly translates the terms—​indicating the pedagogical nature of his work and his own sense of audience. While Quintilian does not use the term ekphrasis; his analysis describes techniques that progymnasmata would later use that label to describe. In his rhetorical exercises, Libanius places ekphrasis in the penultimate position, after ethopoeia (speech-​in-​character) and before thesis. Libanius does not offer a “theory” or analysis of the concept, but we can consider Aphthonius’ treatment a fair representation of Libanius’ teaching, given that Aphthonius was Libanius’ student. What does survive of Libanius is thirty examples of how the technique could be used; he thus provides the most complete model of the pedagogical exercises proposed within the progymnasmata proper.117 Libanius’ exercises treat a range of topics, and at times, he offers a second treatment of a topic, thus illustrating that there is not a single “best” response to a prompt. A brief survey of his topics indicates the breadth of this technique: “An infantry battle” (#1), “A race of the heroes” (#3), and “a naval battle” (#11) exemplify large-​scale, busy narration; “a harbor” (#8), “a garden” (#9), and “a painting in the council chambers” (#2; also #4) all illustrate more static, but not still, scenes. Some topics are commonplace: “spring” (#7), “a hunt” (#10), and “drunkenness” (#6) do not stray far from familiar experiences. Others are explicitly mythological, such as “Heracles and Antaeus” (#13; and also #14), “Medea” (#20), and “Polyxena being

116 Quintilian, Inst. Or. 6.2; LCL 126, 58–​61. 117

These are collected in Gibson, Libanius’ Progymnasmta, 428–​507.

Imagine, If You Will  229 slaughtered by Neoptolemus” (#18), although intriguingly in these cases, Libanius reflects not on the imagined scenes directly but on how sculptors have depicted them.118 Similarly, his ekphrasis on “beauty” (#30) dwells not on abstraction but on the image of a girl sighted through a window the day before. Whether he beheld such a girl in reality or imagines and deploys her as a rhetorical pretense is not an inquiry that matters; the student’s task is to convince his audience that they, too, can “see” her in their minds and thus acquire not only a definition of beauty, but also a sense of the experience of being in its presence.

118 He notes that the sight of sculptures evokes strong emotions; in his depiction of “The Trojan Woman Turned Aside” (#17), he concludes, “These things do not alienate viewers from the misfortune; for it is not possible to see the woman without shedding tears” (Gibson, Libanius’ Progymnasmata, 467). See the discussion of statues that “speak” in Chapter 5, particularly the discussion of Christodorus of Coptus’ ekphrases on the statues of the bathhouse in Constantinople, preserved as chapter two of Cephalas’ Greek Anthology.

4 Method Acting: Ethopoeia and the Creation of Character —​One man in his time plays many parts Shakespeare, As You Like It (Act 2, Scene 7)

The second-​century ce Christian author Tertullian expressed a disdain for theater but reserved a particular horror of the way actors would adapt themselves to perform various roles. He writes: Will God be pleased with the man1 who changes his features with a razor, faithless to his face—​which, not content with remodeling it now after Saturn, now Isis or Bacchus. . . . In the same way, the devil makes the tragic actor taller on his cothurni, because “nobody can add a cubit to his stature”; he wants to make a liar of Christ. And then all this business of masks, I ask if God can be pleased with it, He who forbids the likeness of anything to be made, how much more of His own image? The Author of Truth loves no falsehood; all that is pretend constitutes adultery in His sight. The man who counterfeits voice, sex or age, who makes a show of false love and hate, false sighs and tears, He will not approve, for He condemns all hypocrisy. In His law He denounces that man as accursed who shall go dressed in women’s clothes; what then will be His judgement upon the pantomime who is trained to play the woman?2

The source of Tertullian’s anger—​perhaps even revulsion—​is the actor’s ability to change himself into whatever role he plays: comic or tragic, mortal or divine, male or female, tall or short. Actors, he argues, are liars, with the ability to deceive their audiences into believing what is false. Simply watching a performance becomes complicity in the gravest of sins, as viewers are 1 Here Tertullian describes the comic mime. 2 Tertullian, On the Spectacles §23 (LCL 250, pp. 284–​287).

Staging the Sacred. Laura S. Lieber, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780190065461.003.0005

Method Acting  231 corrupted by the experience of witnessing, and thus believing and becoming complicit in, something untrue. Acting involves not merely lying voices, but, as we will see, transgressive bodies, as well; actors sound and seem artificial, deceiving ears and eyes. A skillful performance seduces viewers into enjoying and affirming transgression. A performance, when successful, generates within its audience a certain amount of sympathy for the performer: a speaker or actor so persuasively inhabits her character (even if the role she plays is herself) that the audience can see the entire scene, whether recent memory or national myth, as if witnessing what the other holds in her imagination. When the actor or orator delivers his lines (a combination of voice and body language), he enables his listeners to feel as if they are hearing not his own voice, but that of the figure he embodies, and seeing actions and events through that figure’s eyes and experiencing his emotions. Skillfully performed theater and declamation seed a contagion of imagination: actors and speakers color how people see and what they remember once a show is over. Performance shapes impressions of truth, and this ability to transform artifice into actuality alarmed Christian writers such as Tertullian. By conjuring what might otherwise seem fanciful or unreal an impression of proximity and tactility—​a sense of “I could have seen it with my own eyes” and “it was as if I heard her speak”—​speakers effectively move their audiences, appeal to their sympathies, and persuade them to their cause. The stage and its techniques fade as themes and motives and messages move to the fore. The power of effective mimesis granted performance tremendous influence. Even now, we may remark on the cognitive dissonance when an actor known for a particular role—​as a villain, a stutterer, or simply someone from New York—​is revealed in an interview to be a humanitarian, an eloquent speaker, or from Australia. We realize, in such moments: they persuaded us. We believed them in the role and saw them as they wanted in that moment to be seen, and they thus shaped how we perceived them in reality.3 We may be taught to employ such techniques ourselves, with such adages as “fake it ’til you make it.” Pretend often enough and hard enough, and the act becomes real.

3 See the discussions in William B. Worthen, The Idea of the Actor (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), esp. pp. 131–​228 (Chapter 3, “Self-​Betrayal: The Optics of Modern Acting”), and more recently, Linda Haverty Rugg, Self-​ Projection: The Director’s Image in Art Cinema (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), esp. pp. 99–​140 (Chapter 3, “Actor, Avatar”).

232  Staging the Sacred Actors’ powerful mimesis led the church fathers to decry its influence as demonic, because through it, performers could persuade listeners of bad causes and make what religious authorities believed untrue and evil seem logical, right, and genuine. Performance manifests a unique kind of power, and when a performer successfully engages his listeners’ imaginative faculties, he could profoundly shape their perception of reality, temporarily or forever. Tertullian writes of how the Devil and theater are one entity, acting in opposition to God and the Church.4 Imagination is powerful, and its consequences are very real. Performers were able to persuade an audience to see the world through another’s eyes by appealing to sight and to other senses—​that is, the varieties of vividness labeled ekphrasis and enargeia by students of rhetoric in antiquity.5 Hearing a character’s voice, feeling as if one has stood in the presence of another and experienced the truth of their enacted “witness,” is another. Visual vividness, essential to persuasive performance, was treated in the previous chapter. In this chapter, we turn to a different mode of expressiveness, one quintessentially associated with theater and oratory: “speech-​in-​character” (ethopoeia and prosopopoeia). Ethopoeia represents a fundamental technique on the stage but one also essential to the rostrum. Characters’ stories—​whether canonical or invented—​are brought to life through the voices and bodies of speakers, and listeners become eyewitnesses to events to which they would not otherwise be privy because they took place in the past, in the heavens, or in private quarters. To be sure, third person narration has a place in performance, but the training of public performers—​orators and actors alike—​in antiquity stressed the empathetic skill of speaking, plausibly and persuasively, in another’s voice. Without the breath and body of a living speaker, the voice and emotions of a character exist only in the mind’s eye (the realm of ekphrasis, when done well and vividly). An actor or orator, by deploying

4 Tertullian recounts a case as follows: “What is to save such people from demon-​possession? For we have in fact the case (and the Lord is witness) of that woman, who went to the theater and returned devil possessed. So, when the unclean spirit was being exorcised and was pressed with the accusation that he had dared to enter a woman who believed; ‘and I was quite right, too,’ said he boldly; ‘for I found her on my own ground.’ It is credibly affirmed, too, that to another woman, on the night following a day when she had listened to a tragic actor, a linen sheet was shown in a dream, the actor was named, and she was rebuked; nor was that woman alive in the world five days later. How many other proofs indeed can be drawn from those, who, by communion with the devil in the shows, have fallen from the Lord? ‘For no man can serve two masters’ (Matt. 6:24); ‘What has light to do with darkness? What have life and death in common?’ (2 Cor. 6:14)” (On the Spectacles §26 [LCL 250, pp. 290–​291]). 5 See discussion in Chapter 3.

Method Acting  233 his breath and limbs as animated by his own imagination of how a character would think and feel, quite literally breathes life into the words he speaks, whether he is their author or whether he speaks words scripted by another. In doing so, he narrows the gap between plot and perception even as he intensifies the power of his performance by offering his audience an embodied interpretation of the action. Initially, we may associate ethopoeia and prosopopoeia primarily with stage actors, whose job could be defined as speaking in the voices of others.6 The emphasis on speech-​in-​character in the progymnasmata, however, reminds us that speakers of many types and occupations regarded the technique as essential to their success. Orators, as their training indicates, benefited from expertise in ethopoeia as a means for bringing the voices of clients, victims, and perpetrators to life before public audiences and jurors. When done well, ethopoeia enabled orators to engage the emotions of their listens, engendering sympathy for a wronged party, anger at an aggressor, or grief at another’s loss.7 All three modes of performance considered in this study—​theater, oratory, and hymnody—​share a concern with the compelling presentation of story that appeals both to the senses and to emotions, to body and mind and the entanglements between them. Hymnody, however, occupied a distinctive stage from either theater or oratory. All three modes of performance sought to persuade listeners to see episodes from particular perspectives, but hymnographers can be imagined to have sought more enduring conveyances of worldview and lasting understandings of not just the past, but sacred history and existential truths. Furthermore, hymns drew on a distinctive body of narratives and characters, which not only afforded them a new body of 6 A third category of “speech-​in-​character” is eidolopoeia, in which the speaker is dead; see Apthonius §§44–​45 (in Kennedy, Progymnasmata, 115–​116). In this case, what matters is the status of the speaker at the time of the speech, in that a speech given in the voice of Herakles while he is alive is ethopoeia while a speech given by Herakles from beyond the grave would be eidolopoeia. Eidolopoeia is more common in tragedy than in oratory (Greek and Roman—​see, also, Hamlet and Macbeth), and the technique was parodied in comedies such as Plautus’ Mostellaria (“The Haunted House”). Cicero’s speech in the voice of the ghost of Appius Claudius Caecus (Pro Caelio §§33–​34 [LCL 447, pp. 446–​449]) stands out for the forensic use of the technique. 7 Cicero was a master of painting the victim as guilty and the accused as victimized, as evidenced in his damning portrait of Clodia Pulchra in Pro Caelio and of Sassia in the Pro Cluentio. The prominence of male advocates speaking in female voices has received significant study in recent decades, including the landmark monograph, Maud W. Gleason, Making Men: Sophists and Self-​Presentation in Ancient Rome (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), and Erik Gunderson, Staging Masculinity: The Rhetoric of Performance in the Roman World (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000). Also, we may note examples such as the fact that the entire second part of Andreas Serafim, Beatrice da Vela, and Sophia Papaioannou, eds., Theatre of Justice: Aspects of Performance in Greco-​Roman Oratory and Rhetoric (Leiden: Brill, 2017) is devoted to ethopoeia.

234  Staging the Sacred plots and characters but also empowered them to speak in the voices of cultural heroes, villains, and even the deity. Speech-​in-​character was more than “mere artistry” for our liturgists; from the perspective of religious leaders, whether Christian, Jewish, or Samaritan, the stakes of effective liturgical performance could not be higher. Hymns could demonstrate truth, model righteousness, and teach how one should live in the world—​whatever those values might be in any particular moment or community—​using the same persuasive tools that orators deployed in service of individual ambitions and theater employed to disseminate its appealing lies.

Ethopoeia and the Pedagogy of Public Speech Ethopoeia consistently appears among the more advanced and sophisticated exercises in the progymnasmata. As Maud Gleason notes, “every veteran of sophistic training had extensive practice speaking in the voice of another—​this was, after all, the essence of declamation.”8 In the commentary attributed to John of Sardis, we find ethopoeia described as both powerful and ubiquitous, for it is that which “makes the language alive and moves the hearer to share the emotion of the speaker by presenting his character. . . . Ethopoeia occurs in almost all the previous exercises and is a part of each.”9 Ethopoeia synthesizes the mimetic elements of classical education, even as it weds this intrinsically performative skill to the entire canon of learning the student was expected to master.10 Interiority, chronology, voice/​physical expressiveness, and gender constituted the performative nexus of ethopoeia, and each aspect imbues the exercise with specific potency in a performance. Interiority: Speech-​in-​character surfaces inner thoughts, moods, and perceptions of figures. The various progymnasmata delineate various categories of ethopoeises, including “ethical” or “indefinite,” “pathetic” or “definite,” and “mixed.”11 “Ethical (or ‘indefinite’) ethopoeia” describes 8 Gleason, Making Men, 151. 9 John of Sardis §194 (Kennedy, Progymnasmata, 213). 10 Raffaella Cribiore notes that in addition to the expected prompts for ethopoetic exercises drawn from the Greek and Latin canons, we also find biblical texts such as “Cain and Abel” in Christian contexts (Gymnastics of the Mind, 230). 11 See Kennedy, Progymnasmata, for examples from the progymnasmata of Ps.-​Herm. §§20–​22 (pp. 84–​85), Aphthonius §§34–​35 (pp. 115–​117), Nicolaus §§64–​67 (pp. 164–​166), and Theon §§194–​209 (pp. 213–​217). See also Gibson, Libanius’ Progymnasmata, 355–​425. Libanius, to whom twenty-​seven exercises are attributed, offers examples of ethical, pathetical, and mixed ethopoeia.

Method Acting  235 the performance of general, unspecified scenarios, such as “a general speaking to his troops before battle” or “an inland dweller’s first sight of the sea.” In these cases, the speech reflects character, position, or occupation. “Pathetic (or ‘definite’) ethopoeia” refers to the performance of emotionally charged scenes by specific, named individuals in more concrete settings: “Hecuba responding to Troy’s destruction” or “Andromache upon seeing the body of Hector.” In this case, emotion takes precedence over general personality. A “mixed type” draws both ethical-​indefinite and pathetic-​definite varieties together, as in the prompt “Achilles speaking over the corpse of Patroclus.” In the latter scenario, Ps-​Hermogenes notes, “there would be pathos because of the slaughter of Patroclus and ethos in Achilles’ plans for the war.”12 In each case, the speaker’s task is to convey the interior experience of a figure audibly and visibly, so that listeners can imagine that what they are witnessing is real and even imagine the experience themselves. Chronology: The authors of several progymnasmata highlight the importance of time as a structural element of effective ethopoeia. Ps-​ Hermogenes and Aphthonius the Sophist both specify that a student should construct his exercise so that it moves from the present, to the past, to the future.13 Nicolaus the Sophist notes that “there has been much difference of opinion about the division of ethopoeia,” but he concurs with “the prevailing view, which is that it is divided into discussion of three times, present, past, and future.”14 This chronological component of organization reflects the orators’ psychological astuteness, for its moves from where the figure is in the moment when she or he speaks, and then leads the listeners into the memories and mind of the speaker and culminates in his or her vision of the future—​whether hopeful or (more commonly in the progymnasmata) visions of doom. A scene constructed according to this program constitutes a complete narrative arc in miniature, and it deepens the richness of the present dense by coloring in a richly emotional context. It is a chronological structure that applies well to liturgical settings, as well, and helps explain the rhetorical effect that hymns achieve when they begin not only in character (even if the character of a narrator) as well as in medias res.



12 Ps.-​Her. §21 (Kennedy, Progymnasmata, 85).

13 Ps. Her. §§21–​22 (ibid.) and Aphthonius §35 (ibid., 116). 14 Nicolaus §65 (ibid., 165).

236  Staging the Sacred Voice and Physical Expressiveness: The demands of ethopoeia on the speaker would be considerable: character performance relies on the body, not just the voice. Students were asked to conjure forceful emotions—​wonder, rage, fear, grief—​in a fashion that conveyed, however fleetingly, the larger stage upon which the scene occurs. The speaker must select precise words and appropriate, deft allusions that convey the emotions of present, past, and future, and while body language and exclamations would have been important, they would not have been sufficient on their own. Nicolaus the Sophist recommends that the speaker use short, forceful phrases, and he notes that “to be fussy about style is alien to emotion . . . a person careful of beauty in diction will not seem to have suffered on such an occasion.”15 In sum, effective ethopoeia may require stilted, ungainly speech as a mechanism for amplification. The goal is not simply to narrate emotion but to mirror it in an exaggerated yet recognizably authentic way. It is to seem real by being, in some sense, more than real. Embodied Gender: In terms of physical expression, it is striking how many of the model exercises stipulate that the speaker inhabit the mind and body of a woman: Hecuba, Andromache, Niobe, and even a generic prostitute. To some extent, the interest in female voices arises from the prominence of women in the classical canon, and it also reflects the gendered associations of certain emotions, particularly women with grief and lamentation. But training to embody female personae anticipates the reality that would confront orators: they would be called to speak in the voices of women, to bring the inner reality (as they imagined it and as their listeners expected it) to life before an audience of men and women. Aphthonius the Sophist offers the most complete model of how such an exercise might be performed. In response to the prompt of what Niobe might say over her dead children, Aphthonius concludes: Where can I turn? What can I hold to? What kind of tomb will suffice for the destruction of so many dead children? My honors have ended in misfortunes. But why do I lament these things, when it is possible to ask the gods to change my nature for another? I see but one escape from my misfortunes, to change into a substance that feels nothing. Yet I am more fearful lest even in that form I may continue weeping.16

15 Nicolaus §66 (ibid., 166).

16 Apthonius §36 (ibid., 117).

Method Acting  237 Lamentation over the dead is a quintessentially female activity, and such extreme grief is only appropriate to a woman.17 This is, quite literally, the performance of gender.18 Effective performance in such a context requires that the speaker understand the outward expression and performable characteristics of “feminine” and “masculine” physiognomy, physiology, and psychology and be able to express them verbally and physically. Such a task was complicated by the fluidity of gender, and its decoupling from physical markers of sex, in antiquity. Gender was, as Maud Gleason phrases it, “on a sliding scale.”19 Voice, bearing, gait, gesture, and facial expression were all distinctly gendered and could thus all be deployed in the performance of masculine and feminine. Gender was a first-​order element of character creation, an essential component of the more subtle and variable presentation of emotional affect. We should remember, of course, that the progymnasmata primarily envision written exercises, but these written expositions anticipated speech and trained students to speak as orators. A telling anecdote was recalled by Libanius in a letter for a friend, in which he recounts how skill as an actor—​ effective reading of lines—​enhanced the classroom: The usual (teaching) texts were in my hands and I was considering who was the proper actor for the plays: he was discovered, and turned out to be a young fellow who was being nurtured by my labors, for everybody chose him as soon as they heard him.20

Libanius, as a teacher, expected his students not merely to declaim written texts, but to act them; the students in the class were well capable of evaluating one another’s performances. Skill as an orator benefited from at least informal experience of and practice as an actor. Both professions expected mastery of ethopoeia.

17 Margaret Alexiou, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition, 2nd ed., ed. Dimitrios Yatromanolakis and Panagiotis Roilos (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), and see Anthony Corbeill, Nature Embodied: Gesture in Ancient Rome (Princeton, NJ, and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004), 67–​106. 18 See Francesca Santoro L’Hoir, The Rhetoric of Gender Terms: “Man,” “Woman,” and the Portrayal of Character in Latin Prose (Leiden: Brill, 1992). 19 Gleason, Making Men, 59. An essential text in this regard is Polemon of Laodicea’s treaties on physiognomy; see Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul: Polemon’s Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam, ed. Simon Swain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 20 Libanius, Letters 190.2 (LCL 478, 436–​437).

238  Staging the Sacred

Liturgical Voice Speech-​in-​character appears in a variety of genres and practices physically and conceptually adjacent to hymns: homilies, prayers, scriptural readings, and speech acts accompanying rites and rituals. The fact that so many kinds of liturgical performance draw on distinctive characters from sacred history—​patriarchs and matriarchs, kings and prophets, redeemers and villains, exemplars positive and negative—​lends the attribute of “voice” to the intrinsic performativity of these writings. Even nonhuman figures, such as “Wisdom” and “the Land,” speak in the Bible and thus easily acquire voices (i.e., prosopopoeia) in post-​biblical writings. All these modes of writing indicate the absorption of general expectations for “how one performs tradition”—​whether Greek tragedy, Roman comedy, or historical drama—​in the religious sphere. The effect within a religious setting may seem to us bolder than civil oratory or theatrical performance—​the poets write in the voice of God—​but the technique itself remains recognizable. Homilies: In homilies, ethopoeia occurs with regularity, as a common feature of persuasive rhetoric and lively presentation.21 Orators such as John Chrysostom and Gregory of Nazianzus translated declamatory skills to the church, helping to transform the sermon into a central genre of religious expression.22 Similar homiletical mastery, particularly in the creation of voice, can be discerned in rabbinic prose midrashim and in the Samaritan text of Tibat Marqe, as well.23 Homilies educate and edify, but they only work 21 Richard Hidary highlights the affinity of rabbinic legal rhetoric for Roman forensic oratory; see Richard Hidary, Rabbis and Classical Rhetoric: Sophistic Education and Oratory in the Talmud and Midrash (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). In this work, he builds on the important work of Martin Jaffee, as presented in his Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism 200 BCE–​400 CE (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 22 In addition to the works of Blake Leyerle and Ruth Webb, see essays such as Čelica Milovanović, “Sailing to Sophistopolis: Gregory of Nazianzus and Greek Declamation,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 13.2 (2005): 187–​232; Sean Hannan, “Nineveh Overturned: Augustine and Chrysostom on the Threat of Jonah,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 28.1 (2020): 61–​87; Jeffrey Wickes, “Between Liturgy and School: Reassessing the Performative Context of Ephrem’s Madrāšê,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 26.1 (2018): 25–​51; and Gerard Rouwhorst, “The Original Setting of the Madrashe of Ephrem of Nisibis,” in Let Us Be Attentive! Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of the Society of Oriental Liturgy (Prešov, Slovakia), 9–​14 July 2018, ed. Harald Buchinger, Tinatin Chronz, Mary Farag, and Thomas Pott (Münster, Germany: Aschendorff, 2020), 207–​223. 23 Hidary analyzes Acts 14:13–​31 as an example of a Jewish sermon that aligns with Roman rhetorical norms and then focuses on the proem/​petichta, yelammedenu-​genre of midrash, and the Passover Haggadah as forms of rabbinic homiletical rhetoric displaying affinities for classical oratory (Rabbis and Classical Rhetoric, 41–​77). See also Martin Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth. The rhetoric of Tibat Marqe has not been thoroughly studied, but recent studies such as Michael Tzvi Novick, Piyyuṭ and Midrash: Form, Genre, and History (Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2019) suggest increased interest in this text from broader, comparative perspectives.

Method Acting  239 if they engage their listeners, and part of expanding on a biblical text will often be putting new words in the voices of familiar figures, filling in gaps, resolving problems, and drawing out lessons. As Sarah Gador-​Whyte writes of Christian authors (with her point applicable to Jewish and Samaritan contexts, too), “Greek and Syriac preachers used characterization to make the congregation participate in the new creation . . . bringing the narrative to life before the eyes and making them identify with [the] Gospel character.”24 In prose exegesis and homilies, speech in character is ubiquitous. Authors freely depict characters, from inanimate objects and animals to ancestors and the deity, as speaking according to the exegete’s imagination of their words. In doing so, the interpreter shares with his audience at least one of the ways in which he imagines hearing scripture’s characters. Prayer: Prayers often occur in proximity to other modes of religious discourse, at times even framing other forms of speech and practice. But ethopoeia in prayer differs from speech-​in-​character in homilies, exegesis, or speech-​acts. In prayer, the “character” to whom the writer gives voice is often the people, speaking collectively (“we, us”), or the deity, responding to human prayers. Prayer, in the sense of optative speech, serves a distinctive function: it is neither primarily instructive nor edifying (although it implicitly teaches those at prayer what they should want and for what they should be grateful), but transformative. Prayer assumes and asserts claims on the nature of reality. It does not so much instruct, argue, or persuade as it does insist and demonstrate. The use of ethopoeia in prayer has not often been scrutinized, but speech-​ in-​character constitutes a fundamental mode of Jewish, Christian, and Samaritan prayer in antiquity: phenomenologically, the act of prayer is inherently performative and dialogical (a liturgist leader speaks to the people, the people speak to God, and God’s word is read aloud), and often this discourse slips into conventional or even scripted roles. Indeed, prayer can be understood as originating in the same forensic context as oratory, in that it mounts a “defense” of one’s case before a divine Judge, seeking justification or mercy; more subtly, audiences are asked not merely to understand past events but to witness them, through the speaker’s eyes and voice.25 The dynamics of 24 Sarah Gador-​Whyte, Theology and Poetry in Early Byzantium: The Kontakia of Romanos the Melodist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 171. 25 See Shalom E. Holtz, Praying Legally, Brown Judaic Studies 364 (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 2019). Also note Peter A. O’Connell, The Rhetoric of Seeing in Attic Forensic Oratory (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017).

240  Staging the Sacred prayer, specifically the dialogical and ethopoetic elements, formed a foundation for hymnic creativity in late antiquity. Scriptural Readings: Scripture occupied a central place in all three traditions studied here, so it bears noting that the Bible itself “speaks” in a number of voices, notably those of God, the people, and key individuals, both friend and foe. Whether scripture is understood as the Samaritan Torah, the Hebrew Bible, or the Old and New Testaments, numerous characters present themselves in intrinsically dramatic settings and with memorable, evocative speech. Sacred texts were not read in silence, however, and oral delivery demands that the reader assume, in some fashion, the voices of Abraham, Moses, Pharaoh, and Joseph, as part of bringing the passages to life and conveying the vigor of their messages. The congregation, in turn, then experiences some sense of being “witnesses” to the gift of divine knowledge: each hearing is a new revelation. Similarly, the prophets of the Jewish Bible/​Christian Old Testament are by their nature declamatory, exhorting the people to attend and act, and reading them aloud invited the lector to imbue the words with pathos, even if the phrases are not the reader’s own invention. Narrative works such as Esther, Ruth, and Jonah likewise appeal to the dramatic impulse, as do the diverse genres of the New Testament in the Christian context. Still other works, particularly Psalms, seem to have constituted early elements of liturgy and worship and lend themselves to dynamic performance, with elements of call-​ and-​response and refrains. The sacred texts are not antiquarian curiosities; they lived because readers breathed into them. Ritual Speech Acts: It is not scripture alone that speaks in voice. In some cases, biblical phrases are recited, outside of their original context, in a ritual setting. Examples of this re-​embedding of verses include the Shema (an affirmation of God’s oneness) from Deuteronomy 6:4, of central importance in Judaism, and the Sanctus (also known as the trisagion or qedusha), from Isaiah 6:3, important in both Judaism and Christianity.26 In these cases, the congregation, in a dynamic with a prayer leader, steps into the role of the speakers of the biblical verses: in the case of the Shema, they speak the words that Moses addressed to the Israelites, while in the case of the Sanctus, they borrow the words of the heavenly hosts overheard by the prophet on 26 See A. Gerhards, “Crossing Borders. The Kedusha and the Sanctus: A Case Study of the Convergence of Jewish and Christian Liturgy,” in Jewish and Christian Liturgy and Worship: New Insights into Its History and Interaction, ed. A. Gerhards and C. Leonhard (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 21–​41. The complete Shema consists of Deut. 6:4–​9, 11:13–​21, and Num. 15:37–​41.

Method Acting  241 high. The words are biblical but belong to the people, an auditory inheritance that is activated upon recitation. At the same time, while the words belong to the congregation that recites them, the words exceed the capacity of possession—​they are more than mortal and cannot be time-​bound—​and are, rather, imbued with power from the past and the heavens. Other rituals from the early church and synagogue also appeal to the power of “role playing” more broadly in the liturgical context. Two practices particularly stand out: the rituals surrounding the Torah’s presentation (Samaritan practice) or public reading (Jewish custom), as both rituals symbolically re-​enact the Sinai revelation, and the Christian Eucharist, which similarly recasts the events of the Last Supper in the present tense for the Christian communities.27 In each case, ritual brings the contemporary community into a foundational historical event, collapsing the gap between mythic past and present. In a real sense, the people join their ancestors at the foot of the mountain and receive revelation, or they attend their lord’s final meal and stand among the apostles. Other rituals, such as the night vigil in Christianity, the Avodah rite of Yom Kippur in the synagogue, and the Samaritan and Jewish observances of the Passover (for all their marked differences from each other) reflect similar impulses to integrate the community into the sacred communal story, as much through action as through scripted words.28 Ritual speech and acts locate both officiants and congregation within the sacred narrative and provide them with lines to speak—​in a sense, with roles to play. If played well—​that is, persuasively—​the ritual “works.” Through the power of bodily action and active verbalization—​that is, anamnesis—​communal 27 See the discussion in Ruth Langer, “From Study of Scripture to a Reenactment of Sinai: The Emergence of the Synagogue Torah Service,” Worship 72 (1998): 43–​67. Langer’s essay reads the Jewish Torah service through the lens of the concept of anamnesis, central to ritual understandings of the Eucharist (discussed below). We can see modern, “secular” transformations of such practices in the concept of “experiential learning,” particularly where the past is recreated in highly dramatized, participatory terms, as with certain (controversial) re-​enactments of the American antebellum period. John Lucas writes about organizations that make use of such recreations, and he notes, “But how does one ‘teach’ slavery as a matter of experience? The rise of remembrance culture created an imperative not only to honor but in some way to relive. . . . A poet addresses the army as though we were not only ourselves but the ancestors incarnate” (Julian Lucas, “The Fugitive Cure,” New Yorker 96, no. 1 [February 17, 2020]: 40–​47, https://​sea​rch-​ebscoh​ost-​com.proxy.lib.duke.edu/​login.aspx?dir​ect=​ true&db=​a9h&AN=​141572​431&site=​ehost-​live&scope=​site [accessed June 16, 2022]). Scholarly resources on this topic include the peer-​reviewed Journal of Experiential Education and multiauthor volumes, such as Innovative Approaches in Pedagogy for Higher Education Classrooms, ed. Enakshi Sengupta and Patrick Blessinger (Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited, 2022). 28 Georgia Frank’s analysis of the night vigil is particularly useful for its attention to ritual theory: “Romanos and the Night Vigil in the Sixth Century,” in A People’s History of Christianity, Vol. 3: Byzantine Christianity, ed. Derek Krueger (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2006), 59–​78.

242  Staging the Sacred past becomes collective memory, and the congregation experiences their own sacred history. This is a version of what Elizabeth Freeman terms “temporal drag”—​the past is pulled into the present, while the people also put on the “costumes” of past times and ideas.29 Ethopoeia, fully embodied and imagined speech, is a gateway for the imagination.

Hymnic Ethopoeia: Speaking atop Mount Moriah Preachers and homilists commonly employed ethopoeia (“speech-​in-​ character”) in the course of composing their sermons and exegetical works.30 In prayer texts, what we would recognize as ethopoeia is pervasive but often unflagged, as befits its intrinsic proclivity for collapsing the sacred past into the present moment (ἀνάμνησις, “recollection, calling to mind”): the prayer leader and congregation speak in words and personae borrowed from scriptural contexts in a fashion that conflates the present moment with key episodes from sacred history, re-​enacting (and thus reaffirming and re-​experiencing) transformational experiences for themselves.31 The first-​person voice of a traditional text, directly quoted or embedded in a new frame, effortlessly translates into the individual’s voice, and experience, of the present. To cite an example from the Yom Kippur liturgy: when Moses asks God to “please, forgive!” (Num. 14:19) he provided later generations with a petitionary vocabulary to make their own; God’s assurance, “I have indeed forgiven” (Num. 14:20), provided assurance to those in the present that prayers could be answered. Hymnographers likewise deployed ethopoeia with great intentionality, and as a result of their dynamic, participatory medium—​shaped by prayer dynamics as well as their own audience-​ engaging techniques such as rhythm, rhymes, and refrains—​they did so in a fashion even more explicitly akin to theater. Romanos and Jacob of Sarug stand out for their effective creation of character and voice; already in this study we have encountered compelling voices, including those of Hades and Satan, the Samaritan woman, the woman with the hemorrhaging flux, and Mary, the mother of Jesus. But many poets, in 29 Elizabeth Freeman, Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010). 30 Sermons, homilies, and scriptural lessons as we have them now surely reflect careful editing and can (indeed, should) be regarded as “written” compositions, although such genres have their roots in spoken performance and oral delivery. 31 On the term anamnesis, see LSJ, s.v. ἀνάμνησις.

Method Acting  243 works representing the entire corpus studied here, employed versions of speech-​in-​character as a key tool for composing poems. All the poets here understood that ethopoeia (whether they would have recognized that label or not) effectively brought their congregations into the dramas they were staging. Where narrative can articulate powerful poetic visions—​witness the majesty of the largely descriptive, yet sweepingly dramatic, Avodah poems32—​“speech-​in-​character” offers another means by which poets could appeal to their listeners and draw them deeply into the emotional vividness of biblical scenes. Many biblical texts provided exegetes, working in poetry and prose, with abundant fodder for the imagination of voice and personality. The biblical text is notably laconic, even cryptic, and offers only occasional glimpses into the inner lives of characters, but rather than finding such lacunae an obstacle, these gaps practically beg exegetes of all kinds to imagine more rounded, complexly interior personalities for figures. Even now, reading silently to ourselves, we almost effortlessly generate prompts for ethopoeia in the model of the progymnasmata, but rooted in biblical sources: How did Eve mourn Abel’s death? What did Rachel do on Leah’s wedding night? What were Moses’ last words? How did Mary speak to Jesus as he walked to his death?33 (We realize how much work our imaginations have done when we encounter an adaptation by someone else that somehow gets it “wrong”—​meaning that another’s imagined scene differs from our own.) Minor characters can be given extended soliloquies, and cryptic parables become fully fleshed out. The possibility of filling such gaps in the stories with the voices of familiar, or less familiar, characters was irresistible. For the rich creation of character as it manifests through speech, the famously laconic episode known as “the binding of Isaac (akedat yitzhaq)” 32 As will be discussed later, Avodah poems are often punctuated with direct speech, commonly paraphrases of scripture altered to suit the poem’s line length, rhythm, and rhyme. These allusions, despite their brevity, serve as a shorthand for fuller biblical narratives and highlight specific aspects of a character’s story (biblical, or rabbinic expansions). In addition, in the Avodah poems, passages from the Mishnah provide the “script” for the High Priest’s words and for communal responses and thus embed direct speech in the composition. Because these passages of direct speech do not stress the creation of character—​understood here as conveying emotionality and interiority—​they are not treated as ethopoeia, per se. 33 Of particular interest in this regard is an Egyptian papyrus containing what appears to be a school exercise of ethopoeia, in verse, on a biblical theme (the words of Cain at the death of Abel); see J. L. Fournet, “Une éthopée de Caïn dans le Codex des Visions de la Fondation Bodmer,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigrafik 92 (1992): 253–​66. See also Kevin Kalish, “Imagining What Eve Would Have Said after Cain’s Murder of Abel: Rhetorical Practice and Biblical Interpretation in an Early Byzantine Homily,” Bridgewater Review 31.2 (2012), https://​vc.brid​gew.edu/​cgi/​view​cont​ent.cgi?refe​ rer=​&htt​psre​dir=​1&arti​cle=​1299&cont​ext=​br_​rev.

244  Staging the Sacred (or, after the Hebrew term for binding, simply called “the akedah”) in Genesis 22 provided poets with a dramatic canvas for displaying their virtuosity in ethopoeia.34 The tension between the powerful drama of the action and the near silence of some key figures (Abraham, Isaac, even God) along with the absence of others (notably Sarah) constitute the famous “gaps” in the text that poets, like other exegetes, delighted in filling.35 Romanos’ version of this story (Kontakion #41, “On Abraham and Isaac”) illustrates the theatrical possibilities of this pericope. Two Syriac memre (“verse homilies”) illustrate the intensive use of speech and dialogue as the Akedah was imagined in the Eastern Christian context.36 A brief poem in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic—​used in the Shavuot service as an illustration of the commandment “honor your parents”—​highlights, in turn, how a short lyric can make use of ethopoeia in its own powerfully evocative way: without constructing elaborate dialogues it nonetheless sketches for listeners, with efficient brushstrokes, a clear sense of personality upon a stark, imagined stage. But first, a brief examination of how the Akedah is treated the Avodah poems for Yom Kippur illustrates an alternative model to the ethopoeia highlighted by these other works. This examination will close with a reading of Jacob of Sarug’s memra on Jephthah’s daughter, which models how a poet who did not make use of dramatic ethopoeia in his hymns on Genesis 22 nonetheless drew on Akedah-​like imagery and characterizing. Ethopoeia infuses his poem embellishing the biblical tale of a daughter’s willing sacrifice with pathos, even as it employs language and images associated with late antique readings of the son who was spared.37

34 Three synagogues—​Dura Europos, Beit Alpha, and Sepphoris—​preserve depictions of the Akedah. On this visual motif, including a discussion of the peculiar posterior depictions of individuals in the Dura fresco, see Abigail Massarano, The Akedah in Late Antique Synagogues: The Function of Figurative Art in the Expression of Localized Jewish Identity (unpublished MA thesis, University of Washington, 2021): https://​digi​tal.lib.was​hing​ton.edu/​resear​ chwo​rks/​han​dle/​1773/​48404. 35 On the “gapped” nature of the text, the canonical source remains Erich Auervach, “Odysseus’ Scar,” Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard Trask (new and expanded ed.; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 3–​23. The critical introduction to this revised version of Auerbach’s classic work by Edward Said (pp. ix–​xxxii) provides important contextualization, but Auerbach’s insights into the uneven silences of the biblical text remains valuable. 36 Sebastian Brock has argued that these works likely influenced Romanos’ famous treatment of the passage; see Sebastian Brock, “Two Syriac Verse Homilies on the Binding of Isaac,” Le Muséon 99 (1986): 61–​129. 37 Jacob of Sarug’s Homily on Jephthah’s Daughter, trans. Susan Ashbrook Harvey and Ophir Münz-​ Manor (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2010).

Method Acting  245 Avodah Poems: Ethopoeia occurs in multiple forms and with varying elaborateness, from simply embedding quotations that are direct speech in their original setting and remain so in their hymnic context, to invented but relatively undeveloped speech, to fully dramatized realizations. An examination of how three Avodah poems employ direct speech in the context of the Akedah will help clarify some of the nuances of ethopoeia in hymnody.38 The simplicity of ethopoeia in these works establishes a baseline for understanding ethpoeia in its most essential form. In both “Atah Barata” and “Azkir Gevurot Eloah,” the only speaking voice that we hear in the Akedah unit belongs to God.39 In “Atah Barata,” God says, “Offer him up /​before Me as a burnt offering” (alluding to Gen. 22:2; Strophe 9) and “So shall your descendants be” (Gen. 15:5, the promise of Isaac’s birth; Strophe 11); in “Azkir Gevurot Eloah,” He says, “Do not harm the boy /​the deed is accepted /​as a sacrifcer and sacrifice” (allusion to Gen. 22:12; Strophe 95). These brief utterances adapt biblical language to suit the formal constraints of the poems, and while such allusions can be analyzed in terms of their theology and the divine persona they construct, in the context of the passages, they are not ethopoeia on their own. They are too laconic to convey character on their own but, rather, move the narrative forward and orient listeners to their place in the historical narrative. The brief biblical passages quoted—​ direct speech from the scriptural source employed directly as speech in a hymn—​provide not only words, however, but through their allusiveness they pull the larger biblical context into the world of the poem. The speech-​in-​character here does not create a personality within the context of the poem per se but weaves the new composition into the traditional text and lets the old words speak afresh when pulled out and embedded in this new setting. The third Avodah poem that features direct speech in the context of the story of Abraham, “Az Be’en Kol,” offers a fuller picture of Abraham.40 This poem voices Abraham in a fashion that suggests an interiority absent from

38 The other extant Avodah poems do not feature direct speech in the context of the Akedah at all, indicating that speech-​in-​character, even of a minimal sort, was hardly essential to these compositions. 39 The poem “Atah Barata” is found in Swartz and Yahalom, Avodah, 44–​51; the poem “Azkir Gevurot Eloah” is found in the same volume, 222–​289. 40 This poem is found in Swartz and Yahalom, Avodah, 96–​219.

246  Staging the Sacred the biblical text; in this piyyut we find two strophes that can be seen as an abbreviated kind of ethopoeia: His insides were in turmoil /​and his thoughts articulated: “Who is dearer to a man—​/​his flesh, or his creator? “I went down to the fire and hot coals /​and I said ‘Bah!’ ”41 “But now, this commission /​shall I not respond gladly?” (Strophes 497–​498)

In these few lines, the anonymous poet characterizes Abraham as resolute and faithful, although not entirely free of misgivings, which the poet suggested by describing his physical angst as he ponders the divine request. Despite their brevity, these lines offer a clear interpretation of the biblical story and, in the course of doing so, sketch for listeners a more complicated picture of the patriarch than we find in his scriptural source material. For our poet, Abraham is not silent in the face of God’s difficult request but, rather, acts with pious, and thought-​out, fortitude. We must also consider the role of delivery in shaping how these lines would have been heard: it is possible that a skilled, or more theatrically inclined, performer could imbue even these few words with personality—​emphasizing agony or resolution or fear—​in ways that another cantor might not. Romanos: Where the Avodah poetry presents an Abraham who is almost as laconic as his biblical source, many other hymns find the passage an appealing location for exploring the potential for composing in direct speech. Romanos’ kontakion “On Abraham and Isaac” offers a sterling example of this poet’s skill as a constructor of theatrical dialogue and compelling voice.42 In the prooimion, the poet indicates the hymn’s narrative setting (“the sacrifice of innocent Isaac /​presented by his father”). Through his direct address of the deity (“You”) in this first strophe, Romanos establishes a performative conceit according to which God is the hymn’s audience, and the people, through their participation in the refrain, somewhere between eavesdroppers and a chorus. 41 Lit., “I did not speak in pain.” Swartz and Yahalom render it “I react with dismissal” but suggest in a footnote the translation “To hell with it!” (Avodah, 169). 42 This poem is O #41 (322–​330); the translations here are adapted from Mikhalis Moskhos, “Romanos’ Hymn on the Sacrifice of Abraham: A Discussion of the Sources and a Translation,” Byzantion 44 (1974): 310–​328. Looser but worth reading is the translation by R. J. Schork in Sacred Songs from the Byzantine Pulpit: Romanos the Melodist (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1995), 147–​157. It is interesting to consider Moskhos’ understanding of the delivery of this piece; he rejects the idea that it was a “religious drama,” or a hymn chanted by antiphonic choirs with musical accompaniment; rather, he sees it “as a religious hymn utilizing dramatic dialogue, and not as a theatrical piece” (317).

Method Acting  247 The refrain is phrased as a descriptor of the deity: “Giver of good things, savior of our souls,” which lacking a verb lends itself to being voiced by a variety of speakers.43 It is worth noting that Schork and Moskhos both alter the refrain in Strophes 22 and 23—​the two strophes in which God speaks—​in order to have God refer to Himself as, “Giver of good things, savior of your souls.” While this integration of the divine voice into the kontakion’s refrain has rhetorical appeal—​God directly addressing those who have been speaking to Him—​in the absence of any indication that such an alteration was made to the fixed text, I would propose that the refrain functions as the community’s expression of wonder and gratitude at all that has transpired, and the tremendous reward they reap from the actions of those “on stage.”44 The community is, indeed, integral to the composition, not merely as spectators but as active members of a kind of chorus. Romanos introduces the communal voice explicitly (“our souls” [τῶν φυχῶν ἡμῶν]). The use of “our” (ἡμῶν) underscores the communal presence in the performance of the hymn—​and thus locates the congregation in the kontakion’s narrative. In the body of the hymn, through this refrain, it participates in the delivery and speaks in multiple voices. Through the presentation of characters, the poet constructs a satisfying rhetorical arc: God who is spoken to as the poem opens finally responds as the poem concludes, with the voices of the community weaving the composition together into a unified whole. Indeed, while God is the rhetorical audience in the opening strophes, spoken to directly as “You,” the final strophe (Strophe 24) speaks again in Sarah’s voice, real and not imagined, and then merges her words with those of the narrator and the community, returning the congregation to the present moment, but not unchanged, for they have witnessed wonders. A linear reading of this kontakion is useful, in that it foregrounds the experiential aspects of the poem. In its original setting, this text would have been heard straight through rather than studied, and a reading that attends to that performative reality highlights how the poet plays with voice and character throughout the work. The first strophe and the beginning of the second are 43 That is, the refrain can be translated either in the second person (Ὅτι μόνος άγαθὸς [εῖ =​you are] ὁ σωτὴρ τῶν ψυχῶν ἡμῶν) or the third (Ὅτι μόνος άγαθὸς [εστι =​he is] ὁ σωτὴρ τῶν ψυχῶν ἡμῶν). The grammatical decisions a translator must make would be conveyed to listeners through tone, body language, etc., in the course of delivery in a live performance. 44 An analogue to this phenomenon can be discerned in the audience participation in early modern and modern Passion Plays. See Dana Sue McDermott, “Ritual and Reification: The Passion Plays at Oberammergau and Eureka Springs, Arkansas,” Drama and Religion 5 (1983): 255–​271; and more generally, James Shapiro, Oberammergau: The Troubling Story of the World’s Most Famous Passion Play (New York: Knopf, 2007).

248  Staging the Sacred in a first-​person voice, putatively the poet’s perspective but functioning akin to a personified prologue or self-​aware narrator, a device that would become popular in medieval theater and common in Renaissance theater.45 The “audience,” however, has shifted from where it began, in that Romanos now speaks in an individual voice (the singular “I”), directly to Abraham, not to his congregation or the deity. He does not create a dialogue with the patriarch, however; he seems to address the biblical figures from afar; there is a sense of distance between the poet and the patriarch. The poet joins Abraham in medias res; he is already on the road to Moriah. It is as if the poet pulls back a curtain and explains to his listeners the scene before their eyes, even as he speaks to the figures on the stage. The listeners see the scene through his eyes: “I, though young, wish to imitate you, old man” (Strophe 1). Our guide describes himself, so that we can see him properly as young and paralyzed, a coward, and inferior to Abraham, who is aged but vigorous, strong, and brave.46 Maintaining the conceit of speaking directly to Abraham, a conceit that transforms the performance space into an imagined stage, the opening lines of the second strophe continue to express the narrator’s wonder at Abraham’s fearless obedience. The congregation, in turn, can also be understood as speaking “in character,” only they function here as a chorus, perhaps reassuring the narrator of the tale’s happy ending, as they affirm divine benevolence, for God is “Giver of good things, savior of our souls.” The poet’s observation of Abraham and his company on the road to Moriah leads him to reflect back to what came before this moment and revisit the beginning of the story (following the classical chronological pattern of ethopoeia from present to past). Romanos’ narrator paraphrases Genesis 22:3, God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice his son, but stresses the emotional cost of the request: “Take the son of your loins /​whom you had as comfort in your old age, and sacrifice him to Me.” At this moment, the poet employs apostrophe, turning aside from Abraham in order to speak directly to the congregation; he exclaims, “Oh, what grief was in these words!,” explaining 45 Shakespeare’s inventive use of the personified prologue, sometime performed by the chorus, has been the topic of robust discussion, both for how he resonates with medieval models and how he innovates. See Michael Ingham, “‘Admit Me Chorus to This History’: Shakespeare’s M.C.s and Choric Commentators—​How Medieval, How Early Modern?,” Neophilologus 103.2 (2019): 255–​271. 46 On the idea of the narrator’s “self ” as a character in late antiquity, see Derek Krueger, Writing and Holiness: The Practice of Authorship in the Early Christian East (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), especially Chapter 4, “Hagiography as Devotion: Writing in the Cult of the Saints,” 63–​93; as well as Sarah Gador-​Whyte, “Self-​Construction: ‘Auto-​Ethopoeia’ in Romanos’ Kontakia,” Melbourne Historical Journal 39.2 (2011): 23–​37. See also Alastair Fowler, Renaissance Realism: Narrative Images in Literature and Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 66–​84.

Method Acting  249 how God drew out the request to “spur the feelings of the old man /​for only He is the giver of good, savior of our souls.” In these final lines of the second strophe, the poet speaks intimately of Abraham but from within his community because (as the community itself affirms) it is “our souls” that are saved. The refrain transforms the hymn into a kind of duet between the performer (poet, prayer-​leader, or cantor) playing one role and the community another. The congregation speaks their single line over and over but fills it with new character upon each iteration. We can hear the narrator’s voice of these opening two strophes as a specific kind of ethopoeia: speech in the character of an “everyman,” but one privileged by intimacy with both the biblical figures and the congregation. It is the voice of a mediator and master of ceremonies, a contextually constructed persona who stands between the congregation, unable to see as clearly as the poet-​narrator does, and the biblical scene itself. The first-​person may be deceptive—​it is tempting to conflate the narrator with Romanos—​but it is as much a role the performer steps into as any of the more explicit characters he plays in the following strophes. Indeed, the most remarkable aspect of the ethopoeia of this poem is the way it layers speech within speech: as the poem continues, the narrator speaks in the voice of Abraham, who in turns imagines the voice of Sarah. For most of this poem, the narrator imagines Abraham speaking to himself. The remaining twenty-​two strophes consist almost entirely of speech in the voices of key biblical characters at moments of great tension and emotional intensity: Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and God. While teachers of rhetoric would likely recognize these speeches as examples of pathetic ethopoeia (or, perhaps, mixed), Romanos’ framing of the addresses reflects the organic demands and complexities of the specific composition. In the first line of the third strophe, the poet resumes his speech to Abraham, addressing him directly as “you, old man” and affirming that “God was indeed dearer to you than your child.” The poet’s wonder, even bafflement, expresses emotions that any observer might voice, and it is precisely the narrator’s imagination that ventriloquizes the patriarch: “How did you not ask, ‘Why did You call me “father,” O Lord, /​and not “murderer” ’?” This ethopoeia expresses the response of a person other than Abraham; it continues the voice of the poet’s Everyman. The narrator leads the congregation into the drama, drawing their eyes and ears to the scene. But once the stage is set, more familiar characters come to the fore, and distinctions between the narrator’s voice and that of his imagined Abraham begin to collapse. The entire fourth, fifth, and sixth stanzas are

250  Staging the Sacred entirely spoken by the patriarch. In the fourth strophe, the poet imagines Abraham addressing God—​continuing his imagined response to the divine command of Genesis 22:3—​and he depicts him expressing a father’s tenderness. Abraham, as the narrator describes for his listeners, recounts gentle domestic scenes of the past and lingers over the heartbreaking cost of the test even as he (with some reluctance) accepts the challenge. Abraham asks, with a vivid intensity of grief, “How shall I bind and murder the one whom I wrapped /​in swaddling clothes?” In the fifth strophe, Abraham continues to speak, but his audience is now his son, whom he addresses meditatively, much as the narrator spoke to Abraham in the opening strophes. He writes: Whenever I catch sight of your beauty, my child, I am filled with joy but when I hear the Master My joy turns to mourning and tears Alas, dearest heart, when the hand of he who fathered you sacrifices you It will render mute your prattling tongue . . .

The sixth strophe, in turn, consists entirely of rhetorical questions, addressed to Isaac but as much to himself. The poet blurs any boundary between articulated speech and overheard thoughts. The narrator makes us privy to Abraham’s thoughts as he muses to himself, as he intensifies his own agony. In the seventh strophe, Romanos descends even more deeply into this nesting of voices. He imagines Abraham imagining Sarah’s response had he told her, and Sarah’s voice speaks exclusively through Strophe 11. Initially, he anticipates Sarah’s passionate objections, her questioning God, who gives and takes away, and her assertion that killing Isaac will kill her. He depicts a Sarah fierce in her expressions of maternal love and sympathy for her struggle with infertility. She asks to hold Isaac—​a protective embrace—​and articulates resistance to God’s command: “If He who commanded you needs sacrifices, let Him take sheep. . . . He will have to kill me first, if he is to murder you” (Strophe 9). In Strophe 10, she speaks to Isaac directly: “You are my light, the sparkle in my eyes . . . You are a plump grape of the blossoming vine. Your father shall not extinguish you, nor cut you off!” Her words to Isaac—​or, rather, the narrator’s vision of how Abraham might imagine Sarah speaking to Isaac—​culminate in an angry accusation in Strophe 11: “By no means shall I be the one to mourn your death /​by obeying that murderer, your father.” Sarah’s extensive defiance crescendos with a statement of powerful refusal.

Method Acting  251 We can only wonder if Abraham here displaces his own horror by putting the words he cannot say into Sarah’s voice. Thoroughly immersed in the poem’s setting of domestic dialogue, Romanos opens Strophe 12 in Abraham’s voice; he (in his imagined exchange with Sarah) rebukes his wife and thus affirms his own decisions: “Do not, woman, anger God by speaking thus!” Echoing her wish to cling to Isaac, Abraham undermines her: “God has the power to slay him as you hold him in your arms” (Strophe 12). And yet, the patriarch is not cruel; he admits in Strophe 13 that he, too, will water the earth with his tears, and he chides her for acting as if Isaac is hers alone. Indeed, Abraham expresses what may be self-​pity or self-​horror at what he must do. Asking Sarah, “Is he not my son?,” he goes on to note with deep, perhaps even bitter, irony and powerlessness in the face of God’s will: “I sowed him, and I shall reap him /​He who ordered this, wife, rules over all” (Strophe 13). Sarah is more resigned than chastened: in Strophe 14, she glosses “your father” with “I mean, your murderer. . . . But somehow I have faith: fathers do not kill.” Nonetheless, Sarah accedes to God’s demand, and her speech concludes, “Embrace your mother, O my Isaac, and be off /​though I have enjoyed no recompense for my labor pains” (Strophe 15). In these few words, she stresses the intimacy of her bond and all that she loses in submitting to God’s command. And yet, in Sarah’s strophes as a whole, we hear a complicated and real woman’s voice and the echoes of a wrenching and unresolved domestic dispute. Sarah clings to her son but barely acknowledges her husband as they leave her. Romanos’ Abraham imagines a defiant, reluctant, torn Sarah who has lost more than a son upon their departure. At the conclusion of Strophe 15, the poet ceases writing in the voices of biblical figures. Our narrator summarizes the conversation, which has shifted from speculative to factual: Such, then, were Sarah’s words, and the old man Must have said more in addition to these But they did not prefer their son to their Lord For He is the giver of good, savior of our souls.

Gone is any pretense of this being imagined speech; events are reported as if the conversations in prior strophes actually transpired, despite the fact that each layer of the kontakion expressly acknowledges its own hypothetical nature. In each case, we hear a parent express reluctance to fulfill the

252  Staging the Sacred divine command, a perspective with which the listeners are encouraged to sympathize, moved by the concrete, vivid tenderness and emotional appeals of the speeches. And yet in the end, Abraham persuades himself and Sarah, and Sarah lets Isaac go with her blessing, and the beneficiary of this suffering is the community: their courage and sorrow are part of what saves “our souls.” Having explored this fraught moment in his own imagination and Abraham’s, the poet narrates most of the rest of the kontakion, and ethopoeia recedes. Strophes 16–​19 of the kontakion hew closely to the biblical narrative, with the narrator’s omniscient view highlighting the action and expressing amazement at all that transpires. What direct speech there is consists of biblical paraphrase: the poet fitting biblical words to his poem’s formal constraints. It is worth noting the brief but dramatic passages in Isaac’s voice, first in Strophe 17, where Isaac’s question, “what/​who (τις) is going to be sacrificed?” (a paraphrase of Gen. 22:7), is described as “tempting” or “testing” Abraham, leading the narrator to wonder that “Abraham did not soften, but was even urged on” (Strophe 17).47 We hear even more of Isaac in Strophe 18, where the young victim expresses qualms about his father’s intentions: O father, have you sharpened the knife for me? For I see the altar as a tomb, O father; As though in a mirror I see you binding and slaying me. If, then, what I perceive is true, tell me; Do not slay me against my will if you wish to find In me, your son, an acceptable sacrifice.

In the biblical text, Isaac expresses what might be heard as some suspicion in Genesis 22:7; Romanos expands upon this scriptural source and in doing so lends Isaac a visionary, unworldly, or otherworldly quality. The lad seems to ask only for knowledge, and his expression indicates awareness of his likely fate and, if so, a desire to be an acceptable sacrifice. Complementing Isaac’s stoicism, in Strophe 19, the poet narrates with cool dispassion Abraham’s silent, physically vigorous near sacrifice of his son. The narrator’s voice betrays no horror; seeing the scene through the narrator’s eyes, we behold only something awesome. Our guide has journeyed with Abraham into the 47 Isaac’s use of the nominative masculine τις instead of the nominative neuter τι suggests that Isaac may harbor some awareness of Abraham’s intent.

Method Acting  253 drama and his listeners are bystanders with him. Isaac does not speak again in this poem. As the poem concludes, Romanos introduces and immediately gives prominence to God’s voice. Previously, God has been spoken of and to, but Strophes 20–​23 consist almost entirely of divine utterance. God halts the sacrifice of Isaac, praises Abraham for his faithfulness, and draws out the analogies between these events and the crucifixion of Jesus that lies in the future. The final biblical voice to speak, however, is Sarah, who expresses her own joy at seeing her son unexpectedly return to her alive. The poet’s voice then resumes, and the poem concludes much as it began, except that now the narrative turns to petition. The poet still speaks to God from within the congregation, but as the poem ends, he explicitly links Sarah’s unexpected joy to their own hopes for “a happy ending.” With the introduction of the divine perspective and the anticipation of the larger-​scale salvation foretold by the Akedah, Romanos completes the conventional chronology of ethopoeia: having spoken of the present and then the past, he turns to the future at the composition concludes. This lengthy synopsis indicates what complicated and sophisticated use Romanos made of voice in this kontakion. He nests speeches within speeches, and these speeches become dialogues. Characters, distinctly sketched and voiced, multiply, and their moods and stances change within the work. Emotions shift rapidly, even as they are swiftly and efficiently drawn; the poet displays particular sensitivity to the relationship between Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac: a picture of a tender family being tested in a terrible way. Romanos composed much of this kontakion in direct speech; as noted, even the narrator has a persona, and Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and God are all voiced in ways that grant them personality. The layering of speech within speech, and the fluid shifts from hypothetical speech to words indicating “real” speech and actions to scriptural quotations serve to draw the listeners in as witnesses to the depicted scene: unreality is acknowledged but then overwhelmed by the power of the performed voice. The poet grants the congregation access to conversations the biblical text left out. Through the narrator’s eyes and ears, his listeners identify with father, mother, and son, feeling their grief and resolution and, along with the narrator, wonder and ultimately joy. This poem offers the most complex and even theatrical “staging” of the Akedah of the works examined here. Two Syriac hymns (memre) on the periscope illustrate how speech-​in-​character can be used in slightly more

254  Staging the Sacred straightforward ways, while remaining dramatically effective in a liturgical setting. Syriac Memre: In 1986, Sebastian Brock published annotated translations of two Syriac verse homilies (memre) on the Akedah, which he dated to the mid-​to-​late fifth century ce and singled out for their remarkable use of what we would classify as ethopoeia. He writes, “a prominent feature of the homiletic treatment of Genesis 22 in fifth and sixth century writers, both Greek and Syriac, is the employment of speeches and dialogue.”48 As we saw in Romanos, the famously laconic biblical text inspired later exegetes to insert conversations, using speech-​in-​character to create some sense of how the drama transpired in terms of not only action, but also emotion. Reading these memre in light of Romanos’ kontakion sheds light on the role of speech-​in-​character in the two sets of poetry, notably the preference for third-​person narrative material in the Syriac poems, and the reliance on direct speech in the Greek. Often, the authors of the memre insert substantial portions of narrative between sections of dialogue; these narrative runs both convey actions and describe the internal experiences of the individual figures; they “tell” rather than “show.” Short narrative passages can also serve as connective tissue between speeches; the authors of these works often specify the precise mood and tone of speeches before the words are uttered: “Sarah saw (them) and terror seized her /​and she spoke as follows” (Memra I, l. 14); “while the pyre gave rebirth to Isaac /​Abraham rested in joy //​he greeted him with the words” (ll. 37–​38); “Sarah took her only child /​and began to speak to him as follows //​words full of wonder /​and with a groan” (Memra II, ll. 31–​32); and “Abraham showed him the bonds /​and Isaac folded his hands” (l. 64). These phrases, which link speeches spoken by specific characters, specify speakers but also anticipate emotional nuances of speech and even performers’ body language. This telegraphing of emotion limits the potential ambiguity of the work—​or, to think of it in a different way, restricts the performer’s freedom to interpret by means of delivery. It ensures that the listeners understand the meanings that speeches convey, even as it reinforces 48 Sebastian Brock, “Two Syriac Verse Homilies on the Binding of Isaac,” Le Muséon 99 (1986): 67. The two memre share a common form (the 7 +​7 syllable counts per line common in the genre), and both adhere to the same narrative outline. Each work follows a similar, largely linear plot structure: an omniscient narrator (as in Romanos’ hymn) sets the scene by rehearsing the miracle of Isaac’s birth in order to emphasize the trial imposed on Abraham; he then retells the events of Genesis 22 with additions along the way, particularly the figure of Sarah. Each composition culminates in the restoration of Isaac to his mother, with Sarah given the pride of place in the concluding peroration (and, in the case of Memra II, the final word). The narrative arcs are straightforward, and, for all their inventiveness, they can be easily mapped onto the biblical original.

Method Acting  255 the emotional intonation of the characters’ words as potentially conveyed physically through performance. Perhaps the most striking element of these two poems from the perspective of ethopoeia emerges from how the figures of Abraham and Sarah are fleshed out. To be sure, the Syriac compositions may not strike modern readers as being as sophisticated as Romanos: the voices in the Syriac works speak straightforwardly and are not layered into ethopoetic palimpsests, the narrator isn’t the tantalizing “character” that he is in the Greek work, and the narrative passages diminish some of the productive ambiguity of performance. Nevertheless, these two works indicate how ethopoeia can create a sense of theatrical staging within a liturgical work: as character’s speak—​to each other, to the congregation, and to God—​we are invited to imagine them in some kind of space, inflecting their words with not only tones but also gestures, postures, and other nonverbal cues of inner life and meaning. The Akedah poems remind us in particular of how the poets made use of direct speech in conformity with expectations of gender performance, for example, how maternal grief, anxiety, and joy can all be felt; competing wifely and motherly duties experienced; and female piety expressed. The words offer the barest elements of the “character” they create, which would have been fully embodied. We can see the two main characters as offering opportunities to display nuances of ethopoeia: the speeches by Abraham reflect a kind of “ethical” ethopoeisis, as he is the voice of intellect, dispassion, and reason; the words of Sarah, by contrast, deploy “pathos” and reveal richly emotional nuances associated with maternal grief. According to the progymnasmata, “ethical ethopoeia” describes the speech of character “types” in specific situations, such as how a leader (even a specific figure such as Achilles) plans for war, or how a person would respond upon seeing the sea for the first time. While it is not necessary to imagine that the authors of these memre had such categories precisely in mind, this framing helps us understand why depicting Abraham in certain ways would make sense. In this case, while the situation is extraordinary, Abraham’s behavior is exemplary, and we can imagine a prompt, such as “How does the model father respond to a divine command to sacrifice his heir?” In neither memra does Abraham express ambivalence, nor does he hesitate to fulfill the divine command. He deceives Sarah—​strikingly, in Memra II he tells her that he sacrificed Isaac, in order to test her, to see how she would have responded to the trial had it been carried out—​but his individual commitment never falters. The patriarch exemplifies an ethos of piety and unquestioning

256  Staging the Sacred submission to the divine will. The narrator in Memra I tells us, “Abraham heard His voice /​and he did not sorrow over his beloved //​(but) laid his hand on the child /​and they set off to go with speed” (ll. 12–​13). Similarly, in Memra II, the narrator states, “Abraham heard His word /​and brought the knife and sharpened it.” Abraham’s words and character align. In Memra I, Abraham asserts: “God has authority over his own /​if He bids, who can prevent him? . . . And if He bids concerning the child /​let us give him to Him without hesitation” (l. 41, 43). As he continues to speak, he expresses no hesitation: “If He kills His own, He has authority to do so /​whereas if He let him go, then praise to His name” (l. 45). In Memra II, Abraham is markedly taciturn: he does not share his plan with Sarah, saying simply, “This secret today /​women cannot be aware of ” (l. 18), nor does he respond to her questions or demands; he only speaks to Isaac words of vague reassurance that paraphrase Genesis 22:8 (l. 54); and he prefaces his sacrifice of Isaac with a brief liturgical rubric, “Bless, O Lord” (l. 75). Only the detail that Abraham “cried out” (from the root, q-​r-​‘) the blessing suggests the strength of his paternal emotions, for all that the poet stresses how dear and beloved Isaac was to his father. Abraham, remembered as one who fiercely demanded a son from God (“I will stand here another hundred years /​I will not depart unless I receive a son!” [Memra II, l. 7]), exemplifies a stance of radical fidelity to God. The fact that he speaks so little in this poem, particularly in comparison with Sarah (and particularly in Memra II), suggests that for Abraham, or any person (i.e., any man) confronted with such a test, not speaking is “speech-​in-​character.” Where Abraham models pious reticence, Sarah—​who never appears in the biblical text at all—​displays dramatic flair and emotional volubility. We can imagine her speech posed as an exercise, as well: “Sarah’s words when she suspects Abraham intends to sacrifice Isaac.” Sarah poses pointed questions that go unanswered: “Where are you taking my only-​begotten? /​Where is the child of my vows off to?” (Memra I, l. 15); “Why are you sharpening your knife? /​What do you intend to slaughter with it?” (Memra II, l. 15). In both memre, she questions Abraham’s presence of mind, accusing him, “You are drunk with the love of God” (Memra I, l. 37; Memra II, l. 23). Sarah demands and resists, fiercely, before acquiescing. In Memra I, our narrator simply tells us, “Abraham persuaded Sarah” (l. 57), giving him the last word in the theological argument; in Memra II, by contrast, Sarah speaks at length, and in her address to Abraham, she concedes to the plan but with theatrical pathos: “Let me see my only child being sacrificed //​If you are going to bury him in the

Method Acting  257 ground /​I will dig the hole with my own hands . . . the lock of my white hairs in old age /​will I provide for his bonds” (ll. 25–​26, 28). She pleads to accompany him at least to the foot of the mountain. Without waiting for Abraham to respond, or assuming he has no response—​here, the performer would have some freedom to interpret—​Sarah then turns to Isaac and instructs her son to heed his father: “and if he should actually bind you /​stretch out your hands to the bonds //​and if he should actually sacrifice you /​stretch out your neck before his knife” (ll. 34–​35). Her final words before their departure she addresses to her son are “Go in peace: //​May the God who gave you to me /​return you to me in safety” (ll. 40–​41). Through the course of her speech, we witness her emotional trajectory from fear, to anger, to desperation, to acceptance and a glimmer of hope. Her speech follows the contours of ethopoeia exercises, moving from present, to past, to future. Just as the anonymous Syriac poets introduce Sarah as a major voice before Abraham and Isaac depart, they also grant her extensive speeches upon her husband’s return. In Memra I, she greets her son with tenderness and a string of rhetorical questions upon his return, before turning to the servant boys with further questions, primarily about the remarkable fleece with which they have returned. She offers a delighted, triumphant peroration of thanksgiving upon the poem’s conclusion: “Welcome in peace, light of my very self /​ who has added new light to me //​for you were slain by Abraham /​but God in His mercy gave you back!” (ll. 79–​80). Memra II also concludes with an otherwise unfamiliar motif: not a miraculous fleece, but a peculiar deception. In this text, Abraham asks Isaac to stay back, so that Abraham can tell her that Isaac is dead, in order to discover how Sarah would respond to the sacrifice of her only child: “I will see how she receives me /​I will spy out her mind and her thought” (l. 96). Sarah, upon seeing him unaccompanied, concludes what must have transpired, and her actions reveal an intriguingly complicated response to the implicit prompt: “How would a mother respond to God commanding her husband to sacrifice her only child, born in their old age?” Sarah greets Abraham, “Welcome, O slaughterer” (l. 101), and then asks for the details of her son’s death. Abraham responds by rehearsing for her the act, neglecting to mention the divine interruption. Sarah then praises her son for his fidelity to her command to let himself be sacrificed but laments her absence from his last moments. She then expresses her regret at the lack of mementos (proto-relics?): a bit of his blood, a lock of his hair, or his clothes—​vivid sensory evocations of his (she thinks) now departed life. The poet paints a picture of dignified, stately maternal mourning: Sarah is less

258  Staging the Sacred erratic in her actual grief than she was in her anticipation of her loss. When Isaac at last enters the room, upon their reunion mother and son again speak with each other. Isaac (verging on eidelopoeia) explains how God called off this sacrifice, at which point Sarah concludes the hymn, praising God. In this final portion of Memra II, Sarah’s mood, as revealed in her words, shifts from grief and lamentation (her piety struggles with maternal impulses—​she does not regret the sacrifice so much as her absence from her son’s side) to surprise and thanksgiving. The emphasis on speech over narration here permits the performer latitude in how he interprets Sarah’s responses to Isaac’s reappearance and her sudden shift from stoically accepting loss to surprise at the revelation that her son was not lost at all. These two memre have much in common, for all the differences in their details. The characters of Abraham and Sarah, in particular, are drawn in comparable ways and speak with similar voices. As if responding to prompts for exercises in the technique of ethopoeia, each poet creates a character for the patriarch and matriarch (and, to a lesser extent, their son), all of whom comport themselves according to the conventions of how fathers, mothers, and sons should ideally behave: the father, a model of pious reason, firm in his convictions and trusting his God; the mother, highly emotional and deeply attached to her son, but ultimately aligning her will to that of husband and God; and son, both inquisitive and obedient, an exemplar of filial but also religious piety. The precise content and structure of the speeches varies, but the sense of their character consistently rings true to type. From within extraordinary circumstances, they speak as they ought. JPA Poem: The two anonymous Syriac hymns, like the Greek kontakion by Romanos, follow the contours of Genesis 22:1–​19 in its entirety. The JPA hymn on the Akedah models a different rhetorical approach to the same material. Like Romanos’ kontakion, the JPA poem (JPA Poem #14) consists almost entirely of direct speech, words in the voices of characters rather than third-​person narration.49 But the entire JPA composition (shorter than either the kontakion or memre) does not treat the entire narrative; instead, it takes place between two verses, Genesis 22:10, in which Abraham takes up the knife, and Genesis 22:11, when the angel interrupts the slaughter. The JPA poem, furthermore, is almost entirely through Isaac’s eyes and in his voice.

49 Translation from Lieber, Jewish Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity, 49–​51.

Method Acting  259 This work offers a model of scene-​depicting clarity even as it exemplifies a dramatic—​indeed, theatrical—​use of characterization. Given the brevity of the full text, it is possible to present the entire text here; it is a simple alphabetical acrostic of twenty-​two bicola, and given this structure, we know the work is complete. The concision of the whole highlights the effective use of voice and direct address in the composition: Isaac said /​to Abraham, his father “How lovely is the altar /​which you have built for me, my father; “Quickly, stretch forth (your hand) /​and take up your knife “While I pray /​before my Lord. “Bare your arm /​and gird your loins “Like a man who prepares /​a feast for his lord “This is the day /​about which they will say “A father showed no pity /​and his son did not delay. “(Otherwise,) how will you go and say /​to Sarah, my mother, “How will you leave me (be) /​and go home?” Then Isaac kissed /​Abraham, his father, And he commanded him /​and thus he said to him: “Dash my blood /​upon the altar, “Gather my ashes /​and bring them to my mother; “Life and death: /​all is in His hand, “And I am grateful to Him /​that thus He has chosen me. “Happy are you, father, /​for they will say “I am the lamb of the offering /​of the Living God “May your passion overpower /​your compassion, father “So that you may become a man /​who feels no pity for his son. “Like a cruel man /​take up your knife “And slay me (quickly) /​lest you render me unfit; “Do not weep /​lest I cause you to hesitate “For I will not take myself /​from your hand.” “Why do you weep?” /​Isaac asked Abraham, his father. “Happy am I whom He chose, /​the Lord of all the cosmos “Let (her) spirit be at ease—​/​that of my mother, Sarah “How we went forth, the two of us /​with a perfect heart!

260  Staging the Sacred “Your knife, my father /​give to me, so that I may feel it; “Please! /​Do not render me unfit “My eyes see /​the wood, all arranged; “The fire burns /​on the day of my sacrifice. “Open your mouth /​and make a blessing, father! “I will listen /​and say ‘Amen’! “My neck is stretched forth /​father . . . “And that which pleases you, /​arise and do it!” The angels arose /​to entreat their Lord: “May it please You, /​have mercy on the lad! “Of his father’s love /​we remind (You) “This is the man who shared /​his table’s salt with us.” The Almighty said to him, /​“Do not fear, lad! “I am the Redeemer /​and I will redeem you!” God is strong /​and His deeds are mighty There is no other like Him /​and none resembles Him!

The manuscript tradition associates this poem with the commandment “Honor your father and your mother” (Exod. 20:12), and it has been included to the present day in published liturgies for the holiday of Shavuot, which celebrates the revelation of the Torah and features a reading of the Decalogue.50 Its original performative context, however, is unknown. Most of the poem consists of dialogue; narrative intrusions are brief and serve primarily to reinforce the intensity of exchanges between Isaac and Abraham. The opening line, which says simply, “Isaac said /​to Abraham, his father,” prefaces nine lines of direct speech; that discourse, in which Isaac encourages Abraham to act decisively, is “This is the day /​about which they will say //​‘A father showed no pity /​and his son did not delay’!” (ll. 7–​8). Isaac’s declamation is then interrupted by a brief description in which the narrator describes how Isaac kissed his father and then repeated his command to his father to fulfill the divine commandment (ll. 11–​12). By means of speech, the poet creates an Isaac who is not merely a picture of filial piety, 50 See, for example, Machzor Shavuot: According to the Custom of Ashkenazim in All Their Branches, ed. Yonah Fraenkel and Daniel Goldschmidt (Jerusalem: Koren, 2000), 467–​470. These Aramaic poems were often subsequently rendered into Hebrew and other languages (including Yiddish), which indicates their enduring popularity. On the translation of such poems into Yiddish, see Jerold C. Frakes, Early Yiddish Epic (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2014).

Method Acting  261 a willing sacrifice, but an eager one. It is Abraham who seems reluctant. The poet conveys Abraham’s hesitation indirectly; the patriarch never articulates resistance to the divine command but instead we hear Isaac’s repeated encouragement: “May your passion overpower /​your compassion, father” (l. 19), the son urges. In line 25, we are told, “ ‘Why do you weep?’ /​Isaac asked Abraham, his father.” This line underscores the patriarch’s presence even as it suggests his hesitancy or reluctance. Of the poem’s first 35 lines, 32.5 consist of Isaac exhorting his father to slay him. In contrast to the Greek and Syriac poems presented earlier, the JPA poem does not give Sarah a voice, or even feature her directly. She is not, however, entirely absent: Isaac invokes her twice, and in both cases, he suggests she will take pride in their actions, “for indeed we went forth, the two of us /​ with a perfect heart” (l. 28). Isaac’s language suggests that he has imagined his father disobeying God’s commandment out of concern for Sarah, a source of inner conflict Isaac preemptively resolves. In a fashion, this poem takes the precise opposite tactic of Romanos, whose Abraham so vividly imagined Sarah’s objections that her word became real; here, neither Sarah’s voice nor Abraham’s is ever heard, except insofar as we imagine it in the background of Isaac’s speech, their actions—​real and imagined—​conveyed through Isaac’s responses. In the final two stanzas, we hear voices other than Isaac’s, but the poet maintains a clear focus on the son atop the altar. The penultimate stanza follows immediately after Isaac orders his father: “My neck is stretched forth /​father. . . //​And that which pleases you /​arise and do it!” (ll. 35–​36). At this dramatic moment—​son with neck extended, anguished father with knife upraised—​we are told, “The angels arose /​to entreat their Lord” (l. 37). The angels appeal to God, with two entreaties: first, to have mercy on Isaac; and after that, to remember Abraham’s love and hospitality. Both human characters should move God to pity. In the final stanza, God responds, but He speaks neither to Abraham (as in Gen. 22:12), nor to the angels (whose outburst we just heard), but to Isaac: “The Almighty said to him: ‘Do not fear, lad! //​I am the Redeemer /​and I will redeem you!’ ” (l. 41). The final two lines of the poem offer a theological peroration, praising God’s power and singularity, and depict God as responding to the voice that was most audible in the composition. At its simplest level, this poem can be read as if it were an exercise in ethopoeia, an exegetical response to the prompt “What would Isaac say atop the altar?” We should, however, also appreciate this poem’s subtle artistry,

262  Staging the Sacred evident in the way that Isaac’s speech indirectly characterizes both Abraham and Sarah. While neither parent speaks in the hymn, through Isaac’s words we apprehend a father who hesitates to slay his son and a mother who would take pride in it. The poet paints Isaac as a portrait of both filial piety and manly courage; Sarah, seen through Isaac’s eyes, models a kind of heroic maternal fortitude, a Jewish mother of Sparta; Abraham, by contrast, appears tender, fond, and reluctant. Not only is Isaac a willing sacrifice, but the lad is also eager to fulfill God’s will and bring honor to his parents; in his vision, their immediate grief will be tempered by pride and joy. It is Isaac’s nobility, his courage in the face of self-​sacrifice, that moves the angels, and Isaac’s stoic piety leads God to finally speak. Indeed, Isaac is the hero of the Akedah, and his heroic monologue indicates that he has passed the test, with more enthusiasm than his reluctant father. Abraham—​abashed?—​never utters a word. Isaac’s character takes shape through speech, and Abraham’s through silence. Jacob of Sarug on Jephthah’s Daughter: In closing out this section, a poem embellishing a passage often linked to the binding of Isaac, the tragedy of Jephthah’s daughter (Judg. 11) can help us appreciate the sophisticated use of ethopoeia in hymnic writing. Rabbinic literature frequently links Abraham and Jephthah, and Isaac and Jephthah’s unnamed daughter, although we find no early piyyutim that treat the pericope.51 Jacob of Sarug, however, composed a remarkable memra on this passage.52 In this metrical homily, Jacob alludes to Genesis 22 in ways that resonate not only in terms of analysis—​ how one understands the tragedy—​but also in terms of character and performance. In the biblical account of Jephthah, we find the story of an Israelite war leader with a troubled past, Jephthah the Gileadite, who vows in the midst of battle with the Amorites that he will offer as a sacrifice the first thing to cross the threshold of his house to God, should God grant him and his men victory. Jephthah swiftly triumphs, but his joy turns to grief when his only child, an unnamed daughter, is the first to greet him upon his return. Jephthah’s daughter accepts her fate, although she requests a delay of two months, to permit her and her companions time to mourn that she will die an unwed virgin. After two months, “she returned to her father, and he did to her as 51 On this topic, see Yael S. Feldman, “On the Cusp of Christianity: Virgin Sacrifice in Pseudo-​ Philo and Amos Oz,” Jewish Quarterly Review 97.3 (2007): 379–​415. 52 This poem, with the text in Syriac and English translation, accompanied by a robust introduction and commentary, can be found in Susan Ashbrook Harvey and Ophir Münz-​Manor, Jacob of Sarug’s Homily on Jephthah’s Daughter, Texts from Christian Late Antiquity 22 (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2010).

Method Acting  263 he had vowed” (Judg. 11:39). Unlike Abraham, neither Jephthah nor his daughter is granted a reprieve, and according to most—​although not all—​ Jephthah’s daughter was sacrificed. The account in Judges 11 lacks the fraught sense of mystery of Genesis 22 and is, instead, more like an Israelite analog to Greek tragedy: a flawed man, a rash vow, a slaughtered daughter, and a sense of doom hanging over it all. And yet, the drama of a courageous father called to slay a singular child makes it easy to bring the two passages together. While Jacob of Sarug wrote at least two memre on Genesis 22, they focused more on theology than on character.53 His treatment of Judges 11, by comparison, stands out for its creation of a sense of spectacle. His memra on Jephthah’s daughter is lengthy—​over five hundred lines—​and constitutes a complete drama. The poet’s voice bookends the work: it opens with an invocation (ll. 1–​26) and concludes with a lengthy peroration that reflects on the poet’s task in transforming such a tale into a hymn (ll. 421–​459), offers a mercilessly graphic description of the daughter’s death (ll. 460–​508, a superb example of ekphrasis in which blood flows from the neck, bespatters the father, and wets the knife), and ends with a benediction (ll. 509–​510). Between these bookends, much of the poem consists of narrative rather than direct speech, but Jacob chooses to deploy speech-​in-​character at four key moments, in order to highlight four key characters: his treatment of Jephthah’s vow (ll. 93–​110), the voice of Justice (ll. 215–​226), Jephthah’s monologue (ll. 235–​244 and 261–​283), and Jephthah’s daughter’s speech (ll. 284–​309). These speeches offer listeners insight into the interior states of Jephthah and his daughter and, through the voice of personified Justice, a defense of divine actions. These four voices trace the emotional arc of the drama as a whole and deepen the emotional impact of the tragedy and color the story with memorable individuality. Jacob gives Jephthah two major speeches: one in the midst of battle, and one in the midst of tragedy. The poet begins the first speech by quoting from Judges 11:30–​31, which he then amplifies. When Jephthah makes his vow to God, as Jacob envisions it, he uses a string of binaries that express trust in God’s will and his own obedience to following it, such as: “Whomever You set apart, I will sacrifice without hesitation /​Whatever You choose from all that is min, I will give to You” (ll. 103–​104). It is a voice of confidence and piety, even as its exuberance—​conveyed by repetitions 53 See Maria E. Doerfler, Jephthah’s Daughter, Sarah’s Son: The Death of Children in Late Antiquity (Los Angeles and San Francisco: University of California Press, 2020), esp. 111–​118, where Doerfler treats Jacob of Sarug’s memra on Jephthah.

264  Staging the Sacred and reiterations—​suggests both earnestness shading into recklessness. It is, implicitly, the mirror image of the interpretation of Genesis 22:5—​“the lad and I will go there, worship, and return to you”—​in which the father accidentally speaks prophetically when he assures his attendants that “we” will both come back. Abraham’s words anticipate Isaac’s rescue, while Jephthah’s seal his daughter’s doom. Jephthah’s inner struggle, as he confronts what he must do to fulfill his vow, constitutes Jephthah’s second speech, which is the heart of the poem. It is, as Doerfler astutely observes, “a spectacle of affect.”54 Jacob depicts the father’s grief with full-​throated empathy: Your going out this day—​oh!—​has deprived me of heirs My daughter, you have caused me to suffer and—​oh!—​I am standing in grief And arrows of love for you—​oh!—​are striking me from every side!” (ll. 240–​242)

Three times, a keening, inarticulate grief—​ “oh!” (hiy)—​interrupts the father’s words, even as he moves from a kind of self-​pity (stressing the harm he suffers) to his crippling pain of love. And yet, for all his grief, Jephthah will not break his oath. Instead, he affirms his love for both child and God in an extended speech directed to his daughter: You are my beloved, for you are my one and only daughter But love of the Lord is even greater for me than love of you . . . My innermost parts cry out because of love for you, because I should kill you But not to do to you as I swore—​this I cannot do I will not turn back from the promise made before the Lord” (ll. 275–​276, 281–​283)

Jacob imbues Jephthah’s speech with a kind of tragic heroism: two kinds of love and duty are in conflict, but piety triumphs over affection and lineage. Jacob does not soften the father’s grief and ambivalence; he sharpens it, to make the cut of his decision keener. Indeed, the poet seems most interested in the agony of this moment before the sacrifice, as the slaughter itself occurs rapidly and without direct speech in the final section of the poem.

54 Doerfler, Jephthah’s Daughter, Sarah’s Son, 113.

Method Acting  265 Jephthah’s daughter speaks fewer words than her father. She plays the part of the stoic martyr, resigned to her fate: dying, at her father’s command, an act that resembles the sacrifice of Christ. Her relatively brief speech follows immediately after the conclusion of Jephthah’s declaration; she affirms his decision wholeheartedly and exhorts him to act but not to grieve. She alludes to Job 1:21—​“He gave me to you and you should not be sad that he takes me back again” (l. 287)—​and frames her acceptance of her fate in terms that his military victory on behalf of God makes it worthwhile. She embraces her exceptional path and lauds how it will reflect back on her father: “Father of a virgin” many people called you And after a little while, “[father] of a husband’s wife,” full of sorrows But from now on, “father of a slain girl who became a sacrifice” (ll. 298–​300).

An unwed daughter, a conventional fate—​ marriage and its mundane struggles and griefs—​had awaited her. Her father’s vow, far from being tragic, has secured them both fame. Like Isaac in the JPA poem, she uses priestly language to urge her father to act decisively. In the narrative portions that follow her speech, the poet tells us that “the ranks [of soldiers] marveled at her courage in the face of the knife” (l. 318) while Death—​in anticipation of Christ’s sacrifice and triumph that this child’s willing death foreshadows—​ trembles at her words (ll. 328–​345). The poet gives Jephthah’s daughter a heroic persona; while her father rescued the people through the conventional mechanism of battle, her valor redeems him through an extraordinary embrace of death. Jacob grants the maiden a bearing that is dignified, proud, and courageous. He presents her father, in part as a consequence of his speech and our access to his interiority, as a more rounded, complex character; he speaks with conviction and piety despite the rawness of his grief, and the community accompanies him along his emotional journey from confident naivete, to anguish, to grim determination. Jephthah is the emotional pivot of the story, not his daughter. In each case—​Jephthah’s vow and dismay, and his daughter’s stoic acceptance—​Jacob expands on biblical speeches. The third speaker in this drama, however—​ personified Justice (kanuta)—​does not appear in the biblical text. It is noteworthy that what we might regard as a divine attribute speaks (an example of prosopopoeia), while God is silent; in some fashion, we might understand the figure of Justice as a version of the angelic voices in Genesis 22—​only those

266  Staging the Sacred are voices of compassion, mercy, and alarm. Justice enters the story at the moment when Jephthah realizes the tragedy that has just transpired: that his daughter, his only one, has been first to cross the threshold and greet him. Her first words affirm the legitimacy of God’s claim: “At the time of crisis, the Lord answered you, just as you asked of him” (l. 215). Justice tells Jephthah that he must overcome Nature (kina), which Justice describes as “attacking” him, and triumph in this interior struggles: “[God] conquered the [enemy] hosts; now conquer the suffering and fulfill your vow” (l. 220).55 Jephthah made his choice when he swore his oath, and Justice appears in order to compel him to fulfill it. Justice is personified as fierce and pitiless; her words do not instigate the sacrifice directly but precipitate Jephthah’s anguished monologue. Our human actor does not immediately accept the words of Justice but, instead, struggles between competing impulses. We do not, however, hear the voice of God or one of God’s angels telling Jephthah to stay his hand. Justice, it seems, speaks a harsh but compelling—​an unanswerable—​truth. These three characters are the only voices in this poem, aside from the poet’s own at the beginning and ending of the composition. (Jacob, it bears noting, is very much a “character” as well—​a self-​conscious, self-​aware exegete and member of the faithful community.) It stands out that the two feminine voices (the daughter and Justice) are consistently stern and stoic, and they resist the emotional agony of Jephthah. It is the father—​not a mother, not a girl—​who articulates grief. The daughter’s lamentation—​rooted in Judges 11:37—​is described, but by narration and not speech-​in-​character. And yet, the poet does not depict the father’s grief as a flaw or weakness. It does not represent impiety, nor is it cast as inappropriately feminine; it is depicted as “natural.” The poet displays sympathy and takes seriously the nuances of the father’s emotions. In this poem, Jacob has implicitly set himself a task that can be framed as a rhetorical exercise: “How does a father mourn a daughter his own foolish oath has doomed? How does a daughter respond to her fate?” Jacob responses sincerely and with nuance. But the poem does not revel in the drama of grief and sacrifice simply as an exercise; Jacob uses his mastery of ethopoeia to serve a larger purpose: Jephthah can mourn, but grief must be overcome; his daughter can accept her fate, but she receives no reprieve. In Jacob of Sarug’s memra, Jephthah’s daughter, like Isaac in the Akedah, stretches forth her 55 See the treatment of this poem in Susan Ashbrook Harvey’s lovely essay, Bride of Blood, Bride of Light: Biblical Women as Images of Church in Jacob of Sarug (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2009).

Method Acting  267 neck; unlike Isaac, she is not spared, and the hymns final lines are marked vividly by her blood. These five poems, in Greek, Syriac, and Jewish Aramaic, illustrate ways in which poets of diverse backgrounds and for distinctive contexts responded to shared common exegetical impulses: to fill in gaps, flesh out stories, and offer access to interiority and invisible emotions. The poets met this challenge through the technique of ethopoeia, by giving silent, even absent, characters distinctive voices. They expanded upon stories and developed nuanced characters through the power of direct speech, words expressing character’s own thoughts and feelings, or imagining the voices of others and how they might speak. Each poet used speech-​in-​character in a distinctive manner: Romanos created a palimpsest of nested voices, with his narrator himself a distinctive figure who imagined Abraham imagining Sarah; the anonymous Syriac memre offered more “theatrical” pieces, with voices that were distinctive and consistent, mediated by a neutral narrator; the JPA poem presented the entire drama through Isaac’s eyes and, at the end, his ears, letting us be privy to Abraham and Sarah as figures only indirectly. And Jacob’s depiction of Jephthah and his daughter illustrates how speech can selectively highlight specific characters and features, slowing down the drama at key points, rounding out and surfacing the interior lives of figures at pivotal moments. The vast corpus of liturgical poetry is, of course, replete with figures granted speech-​in-​character. Biblical figures, including God, are commonly voiced, and examples of ethopoeia are easy to find throughout late antique hymnody, as in other genres of Jewish, Christian, and Samaritan writings. While we have no Samaritan poem on the binding of Isaac, the Samaritan poets found other occasions inspiring of speech-​in-​character. We find a striking example of ethopoeia—​specifically, speech in the voice of Moses—​in Amram Dare #9.56 In that poem, Amram Dare gives voice to Moses as the one who mediates between the community and God; while the poem lists a lineage of human intercessors, from Adam to Joshua, Moses is the only figure who speaks. In the hymn, as in the Torah, Moses’ voice dominates. Speech-​in-​character is not, however, limited to the voices of scriptural characters in the most literal sense. It can also describe personification of 56 Ze’ev Ben-​Hayyim, The Recitation of Prayers and Hymns, Vol. 3, pt. 2 of The Literary and Oral Tradition of Hebrew and Aramaic amongst the Samaritans (Jerusalem: Academy of the Hebrew Language, 1967), 59–​62 (Hebrew). An English translation is available in Laura Suzanne Lieber, Classical Samaritan Poetry (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2022), 63–​65.

268  Staging the Sacred collective and nonhuman figures who acquire the vividness and distinctive voices of individuals. We considered this technique implicitly in Chapter 1, where Death and Hades functioned as characters in poems elaborating on the “harrowing of Hell,” and where cities, including Zion and Shechem, were personified, and we saw it in Jacob’s treatment of Jephthah’s daughter, where Justice was one of three speaking roles. Indeed, the technique of prosopopoeia—​personification through speech—​was routinely employed by poets in late antiquity. And while it can be understood as a variant of ethopoeia, its use in hymnody merits a closer examination.

Prosopopoeia: Voicing the Voiceless Poets frequently employed a specific subset of ethopoeia—​specifically, “speech in the voice of inanimate objects or abstract concepts” (prosopopoeia)—​in late antique liturgical poetry. Abstract concepts, such as Death, were personified by both Ephrem and Romanos, and as early as in the Psalms, elements of nature speak (and dance, and tremble); entities such as “body” and “soul” also become characters. Other objects of personification, however, are somewhat less abstract: the collective people of Israel or the Church; the land of Israel; the Torah and the Cross. In some cases, poets do not develop the personalities of figures they personify, employing prosopopoeia more as a rhetorical or formal device, but in many cases, abstract or nonhuman entities appear in hymns as fully realized characters. While the examples chosen to illustrate ethopoeia reflect a variety of poetic engagements as refracted through the lens of a common pericope (and, in the case of Jacob of Sarug, an analog), the texts that follow highlight the range of techniques that listeners in antiquity might have recognized as prosopopoeia or adjacent phenomena. The selection emphasizes a variety of ways we can discern “personification” as an important tool in a poet’s kit, in a diverse array of poetic forms and performative settings. JPA and Rhetorical Prosopopoeia: While the JPA poems gave us one of the finest examples of ethopoeia in the poem examined earlier, in Isaac’s voice, this body of poetry also offers examples of what we might call rhetorical prosopopoeia: speech that personifies nonhuman figures but not to an extent that they acquire or display full-​fledged personalities. We see this technique employed particularly in forms of dialogue or debate poems. For example, in one poem (JPA Poem #2), Moses argues with the personified Sea at the

Method Acting  269 time of the Exodus.57 The Sea speaks in a fashion appropriate for an antagonist: it derides Moses as “son of Amram” (ll. 17, 34), refers to him as “of woman born” (ll. 18. 30), and refuses to comply with Moses’ order to stand aside. We are told of the Sea’s emotionality: it is filled with “great wrath” (l. 15) and thus it “began to rant” (l. 16) against Moses. The sea complains—​“be not so boastful!” (l. 34)—​and, at the end, we are told it is “bereft” (l. 43). The poem offers a sketch of a powerful, prideful foe in defeat, but not a fully fleshed out picture. Such “rhetorical” speech appears in a number of poems, such as JPA Poem #29, in which a variety of trees refuse to become the wood from which Haman’s gallows will be built.58 Eight different trees speak and offer reasons, primarily explicating historical associations (e.g., the fig refuses because it is a source of first fruits and provided the first garments to Adam and Eve; the olive tree begs off, because its fruits supply the oil for the Temple lamp; and so forth). The reasons offered by the trees vary, but for all their different excuses, the simple act of negation undercuts any real sense of individuation among the voices. We find a similar rhetorical rather than prosopoetical use of voice and personification in JPA Poem #39, in which the various months vie for the date of the Exodus.59 Each month exerts a claim and argues its advantages, but the only real tone is boastfulness. JPA Poem #37 sharpens our appreciation for the thinness of character voice in these poems.60 In this poem, Nisan spars with the other eleven months for the honor of hosting the Exodus; this poem, however, is entirely in Nisan’s voice after an opening complaint by the other months: “ ‘Violence’ we cry /​because of Nisan! //​We are eleven /​but he triumphs over us” (ll. 3–​4). The remaining forty-​one lines are in Nisan’s voice, as he mocks and dismisses the other months and, in the end, boasts of his own qualifications. Despite its quantity of speech, the personality of Nisan remains undeveloped. All that we really learn and could recognize of its persona from this poem is that Nisan is capable of a good insult and does not lack self-​regard, although it comes by its self-​worth through the divine word. Still, simply having all the months spoken for in a single voice, rather than twelve months speaking briefly, each on its own behalf, lends the poem a strong sense of consistency 57 Translation from Lieber, Jewish Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity, 21–​23. 58 Translation in ibid., 100–​102. 59 Translation in ibid., 140–​142. The alignment of the months with the calendar images in synagogue artwork may suggest richer imagination of these figures than the poem alone offers. 60 Translation in ibid., 135–​138.

270  Staging the Sacred of tone. The poet here invests in uniformity more than in significant individuation. Nevertheless, recalling that these words are akin to the script on the page, we can imagine how a performer might inhabit these personified elements and voice them differently. If, in the context of performing these works, he brought each to live in a distinctive fashion, as a series of distinct figures (whether trees or months), elements of persona could take shape. The performer could offer his listeners twelve different kinds of body language and intonation, as a way of reinforcing words alone. The final example, in which Nisan is the speaker, the performer would need to convey a kind of play within a play: a singular figure speaking to eleven distinctive “audiences” within the narrative as well as the human audience beyond it. Perhaps the most intriguing example of rhetorical prosopopoeia in this corpus is a JPA variant of the classic dispute between body and soul in a eulogy poem, JPA Poem #57.61 The dialogue appears in the final portion of the poem (ll. 30–​45, of the poem’s 49 lines). The spirited disagreement between the two parties over who bears responsibility for sins committed while alive musters fairly commonplace arguments: the pure soul claims it was defiled by the body’s transgressive acts, while the body claims that the soul vexed and diminished its power. Neither has a particularly distinctive “voice,” although the soul notes that she is feminine (referring to herself as “wife” in l. 33), and we can discern a certain gendering of the characters: the soul “chatters” (l. 34) while the body “cries out” (l. 38); the soul uses language of defilement and violation while the body favors imagery of sacrifice and power—​details that suggest (gendered) characteristics if not (individuated) character. As with the other examples of rhetorical prosopopoeia, the most vivid sense of personality in this brief vignette may have emerged not from the words but from their performance; character is a latent potential within the poetic script. Consider how a performer may have used subtle physical and tonal cues to act out the argument, as well as the divine voice that, in the final two lines, puts the quarrel to rest: “The both of you /​are destined to be judged //​for 61 Translation in ibid., 193–​195. The body–​soul dispute was a popular motif in antiquity and would lend itself to a rhetorical exercise; see b. Sanh. 91a–​b and LevR 4:5 (87–​91), as well as Joseph Yahalom, “Body and Soul Argumentation in Syriac, Aramaic, and Hebrew,” in Meḥevah le-​Menaḥem: Studies in Honor of Menahem Hayyim Schmelzer, ed. Shmuel Glick, Evelyn M. Cohen, and Angelo M. Piattelli (Jerusalem: Schocken, 2019), 171–​179 (Hebrew). Also important is Ophir Münz-​Manor, “Jewish and Christian Dispute Poems on the Relationship between the Body and the Soul” (Hebrew), Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature 25 (2013): 187–​209. More generally, see Dispute Poems and Dialogues in the Ancient and Mediaeval Near East: Forms and Types of Literary Debates in Semitic and Related Literatures, ed. G. J. Reinink and H. L. J. Vanstiphout (Leuven, Belgium: Department Oriëntalistiek, 1991).

Method Acting  271 every single matter /​on the day of reckoning!” (ll. 48–​49). Ultimately, words can do only some of the work of character creation, particularly when the script provides only a brief character sketch. Yannai and Personification of the People: Not all examples of hymnic prosopopoeia are as reliant on delivery for the activation of latent nuance as we see in the previous examples. Personification in liturgical poems, expressed through speech, can be subtle and expansive, and we see this technique at work in passages where the poet speaks in the collective voice of “the people”—​whether understood as the Jews or the Church. This is not conventional prosopopoeia; speaking in the voice of the people can also, or at least typically, be understood as simply personifying the collective “we” constituted by human individuals. But viewing this use of poetic voice as a form of personification helps us appreciate and articulate the power of distinctive rhetorical stances within a composition. A particularly lovely example of the poet “personifying” the people while still speaking in a communal voice occurs in Unit 4 of Yannai’s qedushta for Genesis 29:31.62 This poem embellishes the Torah portion that focuses on the matriarch Leah, and that opens with the evocative phrase, “Then the Lord saw that Leah was hated . . .” As is expected in a qedushta, the composition displays a variety of voices and perspectives within its diversity of formal structures. In Unit 4, the poet aligns the people (“we” and “our”) entirely with the maligned matriarch. The unit states in full: Our eyes are weak with longing love for You, O Lover We are hated by a hateful foe O please, see our suffering at home (within) And heed how we are hated outside (without) Like Leah, whose suffering You saw Heeding how she was harassed by hate At home (within), her haters were against her And outside (without), they were making her hated more Not all the lovable are loved And not all worthy of hatred are hated There are some who are hate below but beloved on high Your haters are hated and those who love You are loved We are hated because we love You, O Holy One.

62 The text and translation can be found in Lieber, Yannai on Genesis, 541–​551.

272  Staging the Sacred The poem does not inhabit the voice of Leah here; the people do not say “we are Leah” but, rather, that they are “like Leah (‫)כלאה‬,” and the poet reads the congregation through the specific lens of the matriarch’s biography. Yannai identifies his community, collectively, with the emotional contours of their foremother’s tale of tragedy and triumph. Several aspects of this quasi-​ personification stand out. In speaking for the people, the poet speaks to the daily lives of his audience, affirming and conveying not only their experience in the world but also how they should understand and interpret it: whatever rejection, shunning, and animosity the people experience should be recognized not as a sign of disfavor but as a symbol of love—​love that the poet pleads God see in the present as He saw in the past, lest it be unrequited. The matriarch’s loneliness and the abuses she suffered provide the poet, and thus the people, with a means for understanding the baffling injustice of the world. Yannai models a piety that is rooted in love of God and relentlessly focused on the object of their desire: “our eyes are weak with longing,” the poet opens, and he prays for God’s gaze in return. The poem speaks to a divine audience, addressing God directly as the poem begins and ends: “O Lover!” (l. 1) and “O Holy One” (l. 13). In practical terms, of course, the human congregation also constitutes an audience for this work, and Yannai engages them as well, but indirectly, by co-​opting them into the voice of the character. The people are not object, but subject; not spoken to, but speakers. The poet does not ventriloquize God—​he offers no reassuring voice from heaven or counternarrative from the prophets, aside from the affirmation that “some . . . (are) beloved on high”—​but he does give the community a collective voice and stands them in conversation with God. When the poet concludes, “We are hated because we love You, O Holy One,” he instructs God how to see the suffering of the people, and the people how to understand as individuals and a collective their experience of the world. At the same time, precisely because it is an appeal to God and spoken through the lens of the biblical story, it reorients the listeners to view themselves and their situation from a greater historical and spatial remove. The “we” of the poem is not merely the present generation, in the current moment, but a “we” that has already endured through time and will continue to do so, weakening their eyes in a relentless gazing upward. The persona Yannai creates for the collective community speaks in a distinctly feminine timbre. Yannai made a similar exegetical move in his poem for Genesis 12:1, where he employs explicitly feminine imagery for Abraham and who, in keeping with conventions of figurative reading, identifies

Method Acting  273 the female lover in the Song of Songs with Israel in his Passover poetry.63 What stands out here is the way the poet unselfconsciously leverages the disempowered elements of femininity. Yannai does not stress Leah’s fecundity, argue for her intellect, or even grant her agency in any recognizable sphere; he does not seek to counterbalance her vulnerabilities and flaws with conventional virtues or unconventional strengths, nor does he implicitly empower her with anything more than a voice. Leah, and thus Israel, is hemmed in, forced to be physically passive, and left gazing out the window in the classic Near Eastern image of the woman within the house. This image is well attested in the Bible: Sisera’s mother (Judg. 5:28); Michal, King David’s wife (2 Sam. 6:16); and Jezebel, Ahab’s Phoenician wife (2 Kings 9:30). It is a motif that extended well beyond the Israelite world, however, appearing in Canaanite and Phoenician art and evident in the worlds of Greece and Rome, as well, as in the Senecan tragedy Phaedra, Virgil’s Dido in the Aeneid, and in early Christian narratives such as the Life of Thecla.64 And yet, she is not silenced. For all the powerlessness of Leah and the people in this poem, the stance of stillness and confinement (both “within” and “without”) while gazing up in hopefulness of connecting with God, mimics the congregation’s location at the time of prayer: a sacred space both of the world and yet at a remove. In the context of the Jewish liturgy, power comes from words, thoughts, and intentions: eyes gaze heavenward (whether lifted up or oriented downward, given the likelihood of zodiac mosaics on the floor) and voices recite, multiple times, the passage of Torah known from its opening word as the Ve’ahavta, “And you shall love the Lord your God” (Deut. 6:5), which follows immediately after the recitation of the Shema (Deut. 6:4), a verse understood to affirm God’s oneness. Together, Shema and Ve’ahavta assert a monogamous union between God and Israel. Israel, like Leah, is faithful and awaits (at times impatiently) her beloved’s affirmation. A biblical story about

63 For the text and a discussion of this poem, see Laura S. Lieber, “‘Arise, My Beloved, and Come Away’: The Eros of Genesis 12 in an Early Jewish Liturgical Poem,” in Abraham as Ritual Model, ed. Thomas R. Blanton IV and Claudia Bergmann (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, forthcoming). 64 Seneca, Phaedra, esp. Act Two; Acts of Paul and Thecla, 7–​10; and Aen. 4:586–​587. Useful here is Helen Lovatt, The Epic Gaze: Vision, Gender and Narrative in Ancient Epic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Also see Don Seeman, “The Watcher at the Window: Cultural Poetics of a Biblical Motif,” Prooftexts 24.1 (2004): 1–​50; Lloyd Llewellyn-​Jones, “House and Veil in Ancient Greece,” in “Building Communities: House, Settlement and Society in the Aegean and Beyond,” British School at Athens Studies 15 (2007), 251–​258. The image of the woman gazing through the window in the Assyrian ivory from Arslan Tash (northern Syria; ninth–​eighth c. bce) is a famous early visual representation of the motif, one that is common in Greek and Roman funerary art, as well.

274  Staging the Sacred a forlorn wife provided Yannai with a language for imagining his community and his people as patient, sympathetic beloveds. Qallir and the People Personified: Yannai’s personification of Israel through the lens of Leah does not fit a conventional definition of prosopopoeia—​it sits somewhere between prosopopoeia and ethopoeia—​but that text does help us appreciate how Israel could be collectively depicted as a singular, specifically feminine, figure. We see a similar impulse in Christian works, such as Ephrem’s On the Nativity 25, with its refrain, “Blessed are you, O Church!” “Church” represents the congregation—​akin to Knesset Yisrael—​rather than a physical structure, and this personification anticipates the role of Ekklesia in Christianity (along with her antithesis, Synagoga).65 The association of a community with an eponymous ancestor (particularly Adam and Eve, e.g., “son of Adam” for mortal, and Jacob-​Israel, with “child of Israel” as Israelite/​ Jew) occurs within the biblical text itself and underlies figurative readings of texts that may not seem initially inclined toward allegory. Personification also provides a powerful rhetorical mechanism for explicating and personalizing historical events, theological concepts, and cultural values with the efficiency, concreteness, and clarity (misleading as it can be, whenever a metaphor is pushed too far) of relatability on the human scale. Yannai personified Israel by associating the people with a particular ancestor, Leah, and using her experiences as a lens through which the community could see their own. Such was far from the only possible mechanism for personifying the community as a whole, however. Eleazar ha-​Qallir, for example, composed a lament as a conversation between Jeremiah and a mysterious woman who turns out to be Lady Zion. This personification offers a more fully developed example of prosopopoeia (alongside Jeremiah, who can be read as an example of rhetorical ethopoeia).66 The full text of the poem is as follows:67

65 For a study of this imagery in visual art, see Nina Rowe, The Jew, the Cathedral and the Medieval City: Synagoga and Ecclesia in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge/​New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 66 On the relationship of this poem to prose midrashim, see Fotini Hadjittofi and Hagith Sivan, “Staging Rachel: Rabbinic Midrash, Theatrical Mime, and Christian Martyrdom in Late Antiquity,” Harvard Theological Review 113.3 (2020): 299–​333. This poem can be read as a prefatory companion piece to the lament by Qallir discussed in Chapter 1, in which Jeremiah accepts the commission to raise the ancestors from their graves. 67 The Hebrew text is in Daniel Goldschmidt, Seder Qinot for Tisha b’Av (Jerusalem: Mosad ha-​Rav Kook, 1968), 101–​102 (Hebrew); also available online through the Ma’agarim database (https://​maaga​ rim.heb​rew-​acad​emy.org.il/​Pages/​PMain.aspx?mishib​bur=​600​018&mm15=​00304​5050​010%20 00&mismi​lla=​[3,4]; accessed January 12, 2021). The text of this poem and the one treated in Chapter 1, with English translation and commentary (including parallels with Pesiqta Rabbati 26) can be found in Tzvi Novick, “Between First-​Century Apocalyptic and Seventh-​Century Liturgy: On 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch,

Method Acting  275 When her quota68 is filled, she who is lovely as Tirzah Then the valiant ones will have cried from beyond69 The son of Hilkiah,70 going forth from the Palace A woman, lovely to see, in filthy rags, he found: “I charge you, in the name of God and man, “Are you the most demonic of demons,71 or a human being? “Your beauty is that of flesh and blood, “But your terrible fearsomeness is like that of the angels alone!” “In truth, neither a demon am I, nor a thing of base clay “Once I was known for my ease and tranquility “And, indeed, I belong to three, and to seventy-​one, “To twelve, and to sixty, and to one.” “The ‘one’ was Abraham “Who was one of the ‘three’ patriarchs “The portion of the ‘twelve’—​these, these are the tribes of Yah “The ‘sixty’ were the multitudes,72 and the ‘seventy-​one’ the Sanhedrin of Yah.” “Heed my advice, and repent! “Given how important once you were “It is fitting for you to rejoice in delight and goodness “And no longer shall you be called ‘faithless daughter.’ ” “But how can I rejoice; and my voice—​how shall I lift it? “Indeed, my babes have been handed over to foes, “My prophets beaten and dragged off “My kings exiled, and my princes and priests in chains?” “Because of my sins, my holy dwelling is wrecked, “My Beloved of old has fled, been driven off “My peaceful tent, against my will, was sacked “She who was great with people—​how lonely she dwells!”

and Qillir,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 44 (2013): 356–​378; see also T. Carmi, The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse (New York: Penguin, 1981), 224–​226, and Lieber, “Theater of the Holy,” 350–​351. 68 Of grief; that is, when Zion has paid her debt in full. 69 From abroad, that is, from Exile. 70 Jeremiah. 71 The phrase “‫( ”שד לשדים‬lit., “demon of demons”) may allude to “‫( ”שיר השירים‬Song of Songs). 72 Who left Egypt.

276  Staging the Sacred “Entreat your God, O prophet Jeremiah, “On behalf of the storm-​toss, flogged, afflicted one “Until God responds and says, ‘Enough!’ “And saves my children from the sword and servitude.” He prayed his pleas before his Creator: “You who are full of mercy, have a father’s mercy upon his son!” He cried out, “Woe to the father who exiles his offspring! “And woe, as well, to the son no longer at his father’s table!” “Rouse yourself, Jeremiah! Why are you still here?73 “Go, call to the patriarchs, and Aaron and Moses, “Let the shepherds (of the people) come and raise a dirge, “For the desert wolves have ravaged the flock.” Jeremiah the prophet went roaring At Machpelah, he growled like a lion “Raise your voices in lamentations, O fathers of the splendid one74 “Your children have strayed and lo, they are now captives!”

This poem imagines a dialogue between two distinctive figures: the prophet Jeremiah (regarded by tradition as the author of Lamentations) and personified Zion (recalling feminine personifications of cities in antiquity, notably Zion in Lamentations 1).75 An introductory stanza describes how Jeremiah encounters a mysterious woman (both “lovely” and “filthy”) on the road—​a symbol of exile. These lines set the stage for the encounter that occupies the rest of the work. The bulk of the poem consists almost entirely of direct speech. The prophet takes center stage at four junctures: first, he adjures the woman to reveal her nature (ll. 5–​8); when he learns her identity, he urges her to repent so that she may again rejoice (ll. 17–​20); then, moved by the woman’s plight, he prays on her behalf, employing a tone that shades toward both lament and rebuke, expressing both anger and grief at God (l. 34, and perhaps also ll. 35–​36); finally, he appears at the cave of Machpelah, roaring the ancestors awake from their slumber (ll. 43–​44). The words scripted for Jeremiah suggest a vigorous 73 Lit., “Get yourself up, Jeremiah! Why are you silent/​inactive?” 74 The word ‫צבי‬, translated as “splendid one,” could also be “gazelle.” 75 See Alexiou, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition, 83–​101. Also note Lucy Grig, “Competing Capitals, Competing Representations: Late Antique Cityscapes in Words and Pictures,” in Two Romes: Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity, ed. Lucy Grig and Gavin Kelly (Oxford/​ New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 31–​52.

Method Acting  277 character, a bit fierce and perhaps a bit fearful, a voice of alarm. He directs all his words at others who seem, in some sense, perhaps unlikely to respond: a woman who may be a demon, a God who has not yet acted with mercy, and patriarchs who lie asleep in their graves. The prophet is outlined in bold, and a fine example of ethopoeia. The woman, who reveals herself to be Zion personified, speaks more lines than Jeremiah, with more pathos. In response to Jeremiah’s query, the woman answers “in truth, neither a demon am I, nor a thing of base clay” (l. 9); she follows this non-​answer with a riddle (l. 12), which she immediately deciphers (ll. 13–​16). Jeremiah urges her to repent, but Zion ignores his counsel and pleads with Jeremiah to intercede on her behalf. Penitential acts will not redeem her, only enduring some mysterious quantity of suffering; as in Deutero-​ Isaiah (e.g., Isa. 40:2), relief must preface repentance. Zion is too distraught to atone. With this portrait of Zion, Qallir offers a twofold example of prosopopoeia: Lady Zion is both the people personified and grief given form and voice. A maternal figure, Zion mourns her children, but she is also a bereft wife, stricken at the absence of her divine Beloved. Her refusal simply to act on the prophet’s advice and her insistence that he intercede for her suggest a combination of integrity and stubbornness. In performing the role, it is easy to envision how the body language of maternal mourning and feminine supplication could be employed. Intriguingly, Qallir does not often explicitly identify speakers within the poem (e.g., by a cue, “So-​and-​so says . . .”). When reading the text, the context and content of the lines make clear who speaks, but we can assume that during performance, changes in persona would be communicated by delivery, as well. In the case of ll. 37–​40 (“Rouse yourself, Jeremiah! . . .”) we cannot be sure who speaks the lines: it is either God, responding to Jeremiah’s invocation, or Zion, filling the silence that has met the prophet’s plea. If we hear it in Lady Zion’s voice, it marks a change in her persona, from passivity to action and even indignation. Alternatively, if we hear it God’s voice, it indicates a divine response to the prophet’s plea, although a strangely indirect one. How were listeners supposed to understand this command? A clue to how this passage was meant to be heard can be found in the prose midrash Lamentations Rabbah; within this longer piece, we read: The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Jeremiah, “I am now like a man who had an only son, for whom he prepared a marriage-​canopy, but he died

278  Staging the Sacred under it. Do you feel no anguish for Me and My children? Go, summon Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and Moses from their graves, for they know how to weep.” . . . There and then Jeremiah went to the cave of Machpelah and said to the patriarchs of the world: “Arise, for the time has come when your presence is required before the Holy One, blessed be He!”76

The midrash and piyyut differ in important ways. In the poem, the ancestors are presented as potential intermediaries, whose grief may move God to relent—​ an interpretation that makes Zion the most logical speaker. In this midrash, God wishes to learn how to mourn, for the angels have refused to allow Him to grieve as He wishes and find human ways of mourning beneath the dignity of heaven. Further complicating the assignment of lines, both poem and midrash preface the commandment to seek out the patriarchs with a parable about a father who exiles his children. The parable and instructions suggest that lines 35–​40 are entirely spoken by God. And yet, the parable also makes sense, in its own right, as being spoken by the prophet. Which is more daring, for God to compare Himself to a failed father, or for His prophet to do so?77 Yose ben Yose and the Poet as the People: Ambiguity also plays a role in Yose ben Yose’s shofarot poem, “Let Me Flee to [my] Helper (‫)אנוסה לעזרה‬.”78 Yose composed this entire poem in the first-​person singular; from that perspective, the complete work (sixty-​one strophes) can be seen as an exercise in speech-​in-​character, but that begs the question: Which character? The poet exploits the ambiguity of that “I”—​does the poet speak for himself as an individual or for each distinct member of the congregation, or does “I” represent some larger collective? This poem lacks even the narrative hints of the Qallir poem just examined, and the congregation must discern who the speaker is, and for whom he speaks, as the poem progresses. 76 LamR Pet. 24 (Vilna ed., 6a–​7b); see also PesR 26, and the discussion in Chapter 1 (pp. 82–88). 77 My interest here is not in determining which character is the correct or intended speaker of the lines; intertextuality and close readings can be mustered in support of either interpretation. From a performative perspective, what matters is that because the speaker is never clearly identified—​ not in l. 35, where the parable begins, nor in ll. 37–​40, where the prophet is ordered to seek out the ancestors—​the choice must be made by the performer. A performative context makes “ambiguous neutrality” far less viable an option. How listeners understood this passage depends on the performer’s interpretation of the words, as well as his skill in ethopoeia and prosopoeia: the ways in which intonation and body language, as much as words themselves, shape character. Written words alone do not suffice to clarify the poem’s meaning. Performance is crucial to interpretation, and to making personification convincing and meaningful. 78 An annotated translation of this poem is available as an appendix to the online essay by the present author, “Let Me Flee to My Helper: A Rosh Hashanah Love Song,” for TheTorah.com: http://​ theto​rah.com/​let-​me-​flee-​to-​my-​hel​per-​a-​rosh-​hasha​nah-​love-​poem/​ (published September 29, 2016; accessed June 21, 2022).

Method Acting  279 The entire composition focuses on the theme of “voice/​sound,” as it constitutes the celebration of the shofar blasts and culminates the tripartite “shofar service” ritual on Rosh Hashanah afternoon.79 Each strophe of this poem (a somewhat elaborate alphabetical acrostic) ends with the acclamatory one-​word refrain, ‫“( קול‬voice, sound”). The opening strophes of the poem could be heard as a simple expression of individual piety: Let me flee to my Helper /​I will find (Him) right in front of me God is close to me /​whenever I call out with (my) voice In the congregation of God /​so near me He stands And here, in the small sanctuary /​I chirp to Him with (my) voice.   (ll. 1–​ 2)

The wish expressed here, for proximity to God, echoes scriptural texts, such as Psalm 16:8. The references to “the small sanctuary” and “chirping” suggest the act of prayer in the synagogue, standing “in the congregation of God.” Nothing indicates anything other than a personal perspective, one that the poet could assume individual congregants would share. And yet, simply through congregational participation in the performance of the poem, in the recitation of the fixed-​word ‫“( קול‬voice”), the “I” of the poem becomes more complicated. The speaker is, at the very least, the voice of every individual in the community, at the moment when they participate in its recitation. As the poem continues, however, the sense of collective, communal identity becomes even more complex. The pastoral imagery in the poem draws on the language of the Song of Songs, which tinges the piyyut with the ambiguity of that provocative biblical text. After all, the Song of Songs seems to be a love song between two human figures, but it was read figuratively by Jews very early on, and its vocabulary acquired connotations of covenantal fidelity and grand historical sweep. We can hear this a few strophes later: My seers and my scolders: /​they are my mother’s sons (Song 1:6, 8:8) And then they rebuked me /​so that I would listen to (His) voice And during their watches /​they stood and cried aloud, That He might reveal to them the secret; /​and He answered them by voice80 (ll. 11–​12) 79 I treat this poem at length in my article, Laura S. Lieber, “With One Voice: Elements of Acclamation in Early Jewish Liturgical Poetry,” Harvard Theological Review 111.3 (2018): 401–​424. 80 I.e., aloud.

280  Staging the Sacred Who, in Yose’s day, would recall having “seers” and “scolders”? Who is the mother, and who the sons? The sense that the speaker is personified Israel, informed by allusions to the Song of Songs, becomes increasingly strong, and the reference to watchers, who cry aloud, strengthens the sense that the poet here refers to the Temple and the people’s sacred past. This becomes even clearer in passages such as Strophe 18: “I sullied the loveliness /​of His dwelling and He departed //​but on the day of the full moon He will come: /​ in my ears will be (His) voice.” Given that these words were written centuries after the destruction of the Temple, the voice here must be that of Israel personified, the people whose sins drove God from the Temple, and who—​ collectively—​stand in the sanctuary yearning to hear news of communal redemption. Subsequent strophes make the exilic nature of the speaker’s current state clear, and dreams of restoration hearken back to Sinai, recalled not as a distant historical event, but as an individual’s memory: “Forever let Him set me /​as a seal upon (His) heart (Song 8:6) //​just as when, beneath the apple tree /​He aroused me with (His) voice (Song 8:5)” (Strophe 30). This line, a reworking of Song of Songs 8:5–​6, speaks of the bond between God and Israel created when God revealed the Torah to Moses, in the hearing of the people. A redemption from the past—​the Hasmoneans’ triumph over the forces of Antiochus—​gives the speaker hope for the future: Beneath the sons of Zion /​did the sons of Greece bow down You made their arrows into lightning /​and You confounded them with (Your) voice May You thunder against those who scorn me; /​Sound the shofar In the whirlwinds of the south /​and then will go forth a voice! (ll. 60–​61)

The singular voice—​“those who scorn me”—​persists until the very end of the poem. It is as if here we have an entire soliloquy by Qallir’s personified Zion: a people granted a singular voice. It is, furthermore, a distinctive voice, richly textured by the language of multiple biblical texts but especially the erotic, evocative Song of Songs. Only the transition in the manuscript, the liturgical cue “Thus may You protect all Your people Israel with Your peace,” explicitly identifies the speaker of the preceding piyyut as Israel personified. In practical terms, Yose’s listeners were undoubtedly aware of the identity of the speaker of this poem; the liturgical setting is intrinsically communal, and personified Israel hardly an exceptional perspective. This poem, the third in the series of shofar poems written for Rosh Hashanah, rewrites the Song of

Method Acting  281 Songs. The first poem in the series, “Let me praise my God” (‫)אהללה אלהי‬, on the theme of divine kingship, is rooted in Exodus 15 (the Song of the Sea). It blends the poet’s own voice with that of the people, but with a focus on God’s redemptive power and an orientation toward retelling sacred history. The second poem, “I am afraid on account of my deeds” (‫)אפחד במעשי‬, on the theme of divine memory and fidelity, draws on the priestly imagery of Exodus and Numbers, as the poet adopts the persona of the High Priest in the sanctuary, thus highlighting the rituals of repentance and atonement. In each composition, the poet-​performer adopts a specific persona, but in each composition, he speaks entirely in the first-​person singular. The Song of Songs, the primary intertext of this final of the three compositions, ends the series on a resoundingly optimistic note. If we approach this poem through the lens of prosopopoeia and late antique rhetorical theory, we can imagine it as a response to a prompt along the lines of “How does corporate Israel speak to her God on the solemn but joyful occasion of the New Year?” While not a conventional assignment, it accounts for the poem before us. Israel’s speech reflects a range of moods; her words express regrets, sorrow, and wistfulness, but also hope and confidence. The narrative of the poem adheres to the conventional chronology of speech-​in-​ character: it moves from the present (the congregation standing in prayer), to the past (Sinai, the Temple rites, exile), to the future (the restoration). The events depicted span centuries, and the narrative “I” addresses a deity who defies mortal intellectual capabilities, but the use of personification lends the historical and theological sweep of this poem a familiar sense of immediacy and intimacy, much as the figurative reading of the Song of Song does. When the people join their voices to the performer’s, his story becomes theirs, his “I” speaks for them, in their own voices. The scale of the poem balances the cosmic and the individual. Where Yannai voiced a Leah-​like Israel with whom his congregation could identify emotionally, and Qallir created a Lady Zion with a vivid and forceful personality who advocated on their behalf, Yose offers a personified nation whose singularity contains the multitude. Ephrem and Suggestions of Prosopopoeia: In Ephrem’s hymn, “On the Crucifixion (#4),” we find a number of inanimate objects acting, and being described as speaking, although the poet does not provide us with the verbal content of their speech.81 The poem describes the cataclysms that manifested 81 Philippus J. Botha, “Ephrem the Syrian’s Hymn, On the Crucifixion 4,” Harvard Theological Studies 71.3 (2015): https://​hts.org.za/​index.php/​HTS/​arti​cle/​view/​3012. Botha suggests that Ephrem’s interest in the Temple in this hymn may have reflected his polemical engagement with Julian, who had sought to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple.

282  Staging the Sacred at the moment of Jesus’ death on the cross, with the final stanzas (12–​18) exemplifying a kind of prosopopoeia. Stanza 12 focuses on the motif of the veil in the Temple tearing at the moment of Jesus’ death on the cross.82 The visual image comes from the synoptic gospels (Matt. 27:51, Mark 15:38, Luke 23:45, and also Heb. 10:19–​22); Ephrem adds to the visual of his source material the idea of sound: the audible ripping of the cloth. He then further transforms that sound into a voice (playing on the fact that Syriac, like Hebrew, uses the same word—​qala—​for both sound and voice). Stanza 12 reads in full: The veil which was torn (became) a voice of mourning against the sanctuary, /​it was a voice of lament that it would be uprooted and become desolate /​The temporary priest /​tore his frock, a symbol of the priesthood /​which the true priest came and put on. /​The sanctuary tore its veil. It is a symbol, for behold, he clothed (he prepared) /​also the holy altar for his service.83

The veil actively mourns and laments; it models for the priest how to respond to trauma and tragedy, with an action—​ripping fabric—​that can simultaneously express and manifest outwardly forceful emotions of anger, despair, grief, and finality. The veil is not merely described as feeling grief; it acts like a mourner when it rends itself in a ritual gesture of bereavement. The sound of fabric rent asunder is a sound deeply associated with human practices of mourning, particularly in antiquity, and it is a sound of permanence. It is a speech that relies not on words, but on almost tactile memory, and it could evoke powerful feelings for anyone in the community who has mourned in this fashion.84 In the stanzas that follow, other inanimate objects are all animated by grief: the earth, distraught, shakes the Jews into exile with a visceral flinch (Stanza 13); the sun veils itself in darkness, unable to watch, while Sheol vomits up the dead (Stanza 14); sun and moon proclaim Jesus’ divinity (Stanza 15); and in the final stanza, Jesus’ burial shrouds speak, “Even his 82 Ephrem anticipated this motif in Stanza 6, where he wrote, “the curtain (or veil) proclaimed, with the sound of its tearing the final devastation.” 83 Translation from Botha, “Ephrem the Syrian’s Hymn, On the Crucifixion 4,” 4. 84 While the practice of rending or cutting a garment is today largely associated with Judaism, in antiquity it was more ubiquitous. See, for example, Kelly Olson, “Insignia lugentium: Female Mourning Garments in Roman Antiquity,” American Journal of Ancient History 3–​4 (2007): 89–​130; and the essays collected in Memory and Mourning: Studies on Roman Death, ed. Janet Huskinson and Valerie M. Hope (Oxford: Oxbow Press, 2011).

Method Acting  283 linen cloths proclaim his way of life, which shines forth brilliantly” (Stanza 18). Ephrem gave none of these figures words but, rather, seems to suggest that even objects, mute though they may be by human norms, were moved by what they saw to “speak.” Ephrem depicts their action with dynamism and agency and suggests that the world is full of voices that largely go unheard, too unmoved, perhaps, by quotidian dramas to voice themselves. Marqe and Indirect Prosopopoeia: Prosopopoeia is less common in liturgical poetry than ethopoeia, as scriptural traditions are rich with appealing characters whose stories provide much of the source material for hymns. And yet, as we have already seen, abstract concepts associated with ritual observance can themselves be imbued with personality, including the calendar (through the months), life and morality (via body and soul), and congregation and community. The Samaritan hymn (Marqe #20) reminds us that ritual objects can be personified, as well—​an object of veneration akin to the Cross in Christian tradition.85 Indeed, although “the people” constitutes an important category in Samaritan philosophy and exegesis, Marqe #20—​a hymn addressed to the Torah—​offers the clearest example of prosopopoeia in classical Samaritan hymnody. The refrain of this hymn, “There is no Writing as great as you!,” addresses the Torah as both an abstraction and a ritual item, but rather than speaking about the scroll or the idea of revelation, this poem speaks directly to scripture. Fidelity to the covenant and understanding God’s word as emblematic of divine presence among the people, while essential to Jews and Christians as well (in distinctive forms, whether Oral Law or Logos theology), takes on a distinctive form among the Samaritans.86 85 A translation of this poem is available in Lieber, Classical Samaritan Poetry, 201–​203. Anticipating the modern study of animism, Cicero, in De Inventione, talks about orators addressing “mute and inanimate objects” such as a horse, a house, or a garment (§55 [109] [LCL 386, pp. 160–​161]). 86 Jewish analogs to the Samaritan hymn to the Torah occurring during the ceremonies surrounding the reading of the Torah when, as in Samaritan practice, the physical scroll is honored as a symbol of the bond between God and Israel. Two particularly resonant examples include the recitation of “It Is a Tree of Life” (Prov. 3:18) in the presence of the open ark upon the Torah’s return to its niche, and the practice of lifting the scroll for the community to see the sacred writing (either before the Torah is read, in Sephardi custom, or after, among Ashkenazim). While the specifics cataloged in Soferim 14:13–​14 differ somewhat from medieval and modern practices, much remains familiar from the minor tractate’s depiction, where it states, “The scroll of the Torah is immediately unrolled a space of three columns and is elevated so as to show the face of the script to the people standing on the right and on the left. Then it is turned round towards the front and towards the rear; for it is a precept for all men and women to see the script.” In synagogue custom, both before the open ark and in the presence of the open scroll, the Torah is recognized in the third person: “This is the Torah” (with a gesture of pointing customary, reflecting the deictic particle “this”) and “it is a tree of life”—​not direct address as we have in the Samaritan poem, e.g., “you are the Torah” or “you are a tree of life.”

284  Staging the Sacred As the use of apostrophe (direct address) in this refrain tells us, this is not an example of prosopopoeia per se. Marqe does not write in the Torah’s voice; instead, in this poem the congregation directly speaks to a personified Torah. Implicit here, however, is an idea that the Torah has spoken, through the words written within it; and through those words, it continues to speak. This poem constitutes one voice in an ongoing dialogue. By late antiquity, Torah was already personified, as we see in the Logos tradition in early Christianity, in the similar term memra (“the word”) in Targum Neophyti, and through the Torah-​Wisdom traditions in Hellenistic and early Rabbinic writings. We can trace all of these interpretations to the biblical Wisdom traditions, particularly texts such as Proverbs 1–​9, where Wisdom and Folly are personified as women and given distinctive voices. Addressing the Torah directly assumes, in some sense, that it can be an audience: it has spoken, and it can hear. The way Marqe addresses the Torah in this poem suggests elements of its “personality.” Perhaps its most abundant quality is its greatness: the intrinsic awe Torah inspires having been written by the hand of God (l. 8) and bearing within it God’s Great Name (l. 11). It is a powerful text—​“woe to the one who swears falsely by you!” (l. 16)—​but also, like its Author, life-​ giving (l. 19). It calms anger and brings healing (ll. 31–​32) even as its power makes mountains shake (l. 58). To a significant extent, the Torah stands in as a proxy for God: the poet addresses it as “our Maker and our Creator” (l. 22), for it is the source of knowledge about God and creation, and in “the nations gave praise when they heard /​your commanding words” (ll. 61–​62), responding to the Torah as a tangible manifestation of the divine. And finally, Torah is active and displays agency—​it nourishes, crowns, heals, and descends—​even as it is also a passive conduit between the God who wrote and bequeathed it, and the prophet who ascended and received it. It is a symbol that acts. This hymn by Marqe offers us an indirect characterization of the Torah: we see Torah through the responses of Israel, the angels, the natural world, and the nations to the presence, or even idea, of God’s revealed word. What makes Marqe’s personification of Torah in this poem distinctive, however, is the combination of indirectness and intimacy. The scroll is not only directly addressed; it is tangible, visible, and audible among the people. The Torah’s voice—​quotations from scripture—​constitutes an integral part of the Samaritan liturgy, while the physical Torah scroll is an object of great reverence among Samaritans in ritual settings, a symbol of the divine in their midst. Unlike the abstractions we may associate with prosopopoeia

Method Acting  285 in hymnody, the Torah’s presence is concrete and immediate. The writing the congregation acclaims is both an idea, a mythic aspect of the sacred reality, and a tangible presence that speaks to all and to which all have access. Speaking to the Torah expresses reciprocity; after all, the Torah—​and thus God—​spoke first. These examples of prosopopoeia reveal a variety of ways in the personification can expand the resonances of key items and topics, including concepts such as the land, the community, and scripture, all of which shape an individual’s identity and the sense of community. While there are affinities for figurative readings of scripture, prosopopoeia functions not only to articulate an intellectual alignment between ancient texts and the present, but also to draw the community into the narrative emotionally. Prosopopoeia brings essential concepts and familiar objects to life and imbues them with the personality, perspectives, and memories like human individuals; through personification, the poet enables the congregation to engage with ideas and abstractions both imaginatively and through liturgical participation. At the same time, the use of personification in these poems does more than just edify or inculcate values. The JPA poems that speak in the voices of the months, for example, display wit and humor, even as they align the liturgy with the visual program of the synagogue, which often features a zodiac carpet mosaic; similarly, Marqe’s hymn dramatizes the Torah that is omnipresent in the ritual and liturgy they celebrate. In both cases, the personification within the poems serves to integrate the congregation into narratives that are cosmic in scale, and magnificent. The passage from Yannai’s qedushta on Genesis 29:31, spoken in the voice of the congregation itself but as a personified collective, shares a richness of affective pathos with figures from classical tragedy, but the heroine is the one with whom the synagogue congregation deeply identifies and sees as an ancestor. It is a Jewish counterpart to a familiar Greco-​Roman type, and for all its feminine disempowerment, it stakes a distinctively Jewish claim in a larger world of entertainment. Yose ben Yose’s poem draws the community members even more deeply into the experience, by speaking in the first person singular (“I”), a persona they adopt as they recite the fixed-​word refrain. Finally, Eleazar ha-​Qallir’s conversational poem, featuring the voices of the prophet, Lady Zion, and God, constitutes a tightly performed drama, one that engages intellectually as well as emotionally, and that, through the figure of Zion personified, draws the congregation into the historical sweep of the story.

286  Staging the Sacred

Conclusions: Character beyond Words If, as indicated by the progymnasmata, speech-​in-​character was important to professional declamation and forensic oratory, it was essential for much of the profession of acting, to the fundamental mimesis of the stage.87 Orators borrowed compositional and delivery techniques from theater, which in turn distilled and exaggerated conventions from the larger society, to convey distinctions of setting and context, including gender and class. Orators imagined the words figures would speak, even as they anticipated delivering them. Actors may not have written their own lines—​although they surely interpreted the characters and words regardless of the manner in which they learned their scripts88—​but they nonetheless imagined themselves fully into their roles. Actors often made use of costumes and props, and ancillary performers who affirmed their role playing may have embellished their delivery, but the individual performer bore the responsibility for creation of character. Bodies and voices, words and gestures, played a role in ethopoeia. Public speakers could temporarily step into characters; actors would inhabit them. Each kind of performer, speaking to a living audience in the moment, relied on persuasively imagining the voices and experiences of the characters they played. If they couldn’t persuade themselves, their audiences would hardly follow them into the conceit of the performance. Effective delivery had to go beyond words; when speech and body were aligned, the mimesis could be powerful. In the monograph Demons and Dancers: Performance in Late Antiquity, Ruth Webb carefully articulates the challenge a performer’s fully embodied character performance presented to an audience in a world where body and identity were deeply entwined. As Webb summarizes: The pantomime who adopted the postures and gestures coded as feminine (the fluid spine, the nodding head and bent neck) could therefore be understood to be truly endangering his masculinity. Similarly, the mime actor (or

87 Pantomime, famously, starred a mute dancer, who excelled at a kind of “embodied eloquence.” But we know that in practice there were “mixed” forms of performance, featuring dancers alongside speaking actors. 88 On the emergence of theatrical/​performative “scripts” in Greek antiquity, see Joanna Hanink, “Knowledge Transmission: Ancient Archives and Repertoires,” in A Cultural History of Theatre in Antiquity, ed. Martin Reverman (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), 181–​195. Also note the discussions in Kelly Iverson, ed., From Text to Performance: Narrative and Performance Criticisms in Dialogue and Debate (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2014).

Method Acting  287 actress, in Theodora’s case) who suffered degrading treatment on stage was actually degraded, and the actress who adopted provocative gestures and pronounced sexually explicit words was herself a whore.89

On the one hand, audiences and actors both knew that the performer was not to be confused with the role he performed. And yet, perception is sufficiently persuasive for an audience and embodiment so powerful for a performer that the conflation of actor and role (as in the modern concept of “method acting”) was as logical in antiquity as it is today.90 And given the idea that “the body doesn’t lie” (to quote Martha Graham), skillful acting could indeed cast one’s authentic personality into doubt: if someone is too good at acting a certain way, it may suggest something fundamental about her actual character. Any discussion of ethopoeia and prosopopoeia highlights the power of direct speech in the context of live performance to convey multifaceted elements of character. Character performance exceeds the capacity of the written word to capture. The fully embodied acting required for ethopoeia—​ the use of intonation and pitch, cadence and volume, hands and arms, stance and movement—​can only be tentatively reconstructed. Such reconstructions, furthermore, must represent a range of possibilities: theatrical performances would have offered the most robust setting for the maximal use of body language, or so we can hypothesize. Other platforms, including the rostrum, the ambo, and the bimah may likely have lent themselves to more restrained “gestures toward gestures.” Musical elements, likewise, would have affected the use of voice, as well as the general auditory experience of these works. Just as ekphrasis reminds us of appeals to the sense of sight, ethopoeia reminds us of the importance of sound—​but also much more beyond that. And furthermore, we are reminded that these works were not art for art’s sake, but works that served multiple rhetorical functions simultaneously. Although ethopoeia describes “speech in character,” what transpired was more than just the articulation of words. Liturgical poetry offered an occasion for a kind of theater, potentially more fully staged in some instances or more roughly sketched in others, depending not only the text but also on the location, community norms, and time period in which a piece was performed. 89 Ruth Webb, Demons and Dancers: Performance in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 154. 90 See Tzachi Zamir, “Theatrical Repetition and Inspired Performance,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 67.4 (2009): 365–​373. The tendency of modern fans to conflate actors with their roles and thus project knowledge, skills, experiences, and personalities onto them is, of course, a commonplace.

288  Staging the Sacred Indeed, the texts examined here indicate the range of possibilities within the corpora of hymnody, from short and undeveloped speeches to full dramas in miniature. Character and voice could, furthermore, be employed by performers toward different, often complementary, ends: entertainment and edification, the reinforcement of identity and a sense of community and the conveyance of communal norms, and a novel interpretation of a traditional story or a traditional interpretation invested with new drama. Hymnody was a collaborative art form that brought author, performer, and congregation together into an immersive ritual-​exegetical-​theatrical experience, an elusive performance that was never the same twice. In the next chapter, we turn our attention directly to the issue of embodiment and the questions of how one can begin to reconstruct the elements that were never captured on a manuscript page, and how sacred space shaped distinctly late antique modes of religious performance.

5 Sounds, Sightlines, and Senses: Bodies and Nonverbal Literacy

As when of old some orator renowned, In Athens or free Rome, where eloquence Flourished, since mute! to some great cause addressed, Stood in himself collected; while each part, Motion, each act, won audience ere the tongue . . . —​Milton, Paradise Lost (Book IX, ll. 670–​674)

Certain ethnicities—​particularly those of Southern and Eastern European origin, but also from the Middle East—​are stereotyped as cultures that “talk with their hands.” In such societies, gestures add a dynamic, nonverbal component to communication. Directly, they help convey meaning; indirectly, they convey details about an individual speaker’s class, ethnicity, and communicative norms, particularly when they are in dialogue with others from less gesture-​intensive cultures. Cultural differences in communication, including perceptions of hand gestures (or the lack thereof), even find discussion in handbooks for those engaged in international business and elementary classroom pedagogy.1 For some, active hands in conversation may be perceived as aggressive, hysterical, overly dramatic, or simply vulgar, but for those whose conversation norms involve expressive gestures, their absence could be (mis) read as indicating disinterest, lack of enthusiasm, or ambiguity. Body language in daily speech can, in fact, be a significant component of communication, and one that is far from random. Rachel Donadio, an American journalist, wrote of her experience in Italy and her realization of 1 E.g., Richard R. Gesteland, Cross-​ Cultural Business Behavior: Marketing, Negotiating, and Managing across Cultures, 2nd ed. (Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School Press, 1999); Carl A. Grant and Christine E. Sleeter, Turning on Learning: Five Approaches for Multicultural Teaching Plans for Race, Class, Gender and Disability, 5th ed. (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2008).

Staging the Sacred. Laura S. Lieber, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780190065461.003.0006

290  Staging the Sacred the importance of gestures, which led her to discuss the nature of such nonverbal communication with a scholar of the phenomenon: Isabella Poggi, a professor of psychology at Roma Tre University and an expert on gestures, has identified around 250 gestures that Italians use in everyday conversation. “There are gestures expressing a threat or a wish or desperation or shame or pride,” she said. “The only thing differentiating from sign language is that they are used individually and lack a full syntax,” Ms. Poggi added. . . . Over the centuries, languages have evolved, but gestures remain. “Gestures change less than words,” Ms. Poggi said.2

Donadio’s essay featured a video displaying (and teaching) these gestures—​ the twenty-​first-​century equivalent of manuscript illustrations. When text and video are read together, her analysis of body language functioned not only as a general human interest story, but also as a useful primer for people who might encounter Italian communication conventions—​ anyone (tourists, movie viewers, new in-​laws) needing to understand not only basic Italian speech, but the nonverbal vocabulary, as well. The body is essential to communication, and a key component of miscommunication, as well. Attention to the ways in which bodies speak is hardly new—​we could even understand the prevalence of emojis in modern communication as an attempt to replicate what is lost in purely textual exchanges3—​and as we will see, the video accompanying Donadio’s essay in the New York Times can be seen as the latest iteration of a handbook going back to illuminated manuscripts of Terence from the Middle Ages. At times, even the written words of liturgical poets acknowledge, and assume, the importance of gesture and nonverbal communication. The eighth unit of Yannai’s magnificent

2 Rachel Donadio, “When Italians Chat, Hands and Fingers Do the Talking,” The New York Times (June 30, 2013, page A6), https://​www.nyti​mes.com/​2013/​07/​01/​world/​eur​ope/​when-​itali​ans-​chat-​ hands-​and-​fing​ers-​do-​the-​talk​ing.html?searc​hRes​ultP​osit​ion=​2, accessed June 22, 2022. 3 For a relatively recent synopsis of some of the social-​scientific scholarship on emojis and communication, see Valeria A. Pfeifer, Emma L. Armstrong, and Vicky Tzuyin Lai, “Do All Facial Emojis Communicate Emotion? The Impact of Facial Emojis on Perceived Sender Emotion and Text Processing,” Computers in Human Behavior 126 (2022): 107016, https://​doi.org/​10.1016/​ j.chb.2021.107​016, accessed September 2, 2022, and Rebecca Godard and Susan Holtzman, “The Multidimensional Lexicon of Emojis: A New Tool to Assess the Emotional Content of Emojis,” Frontiers in Psychology 13 (2022): 921388 (https://​doi.org/​10.3389/​fpsyg.2022.921​388; accessed 2 September 2022).

Sounds, SightLines, and Senses  291 symphonic hymn for Yom Kippur displays a keen awareness of the physicality of prayer; the poet writes: See how we stand, from feet to head /​from sinew to bone /​from soul to flesh Our soles are bare, our toes are wounded /​our feet wander and our heels are raw4 Our ankles wobble and our calves are frail /​our knees are weak and our thighs are thin Our loins quiver and our kidneys labor /​our innards churn and our hearts lurch Our arms give out and our hands cannot reach /​our shoulders flinch at the yoke upon our necks5 Our throats sting at the smiting of our palates /​our lips blanche and our teeth are blunted—​ (Despite this) Your splendor is within us and Your justice upon our tongues!—​/​our breath is short in our nostrils and our ears ring Our visages flush and our faces pale /​our eyes dim and our brows crease Our heads bow low and our hair stands on end /​our bones quake and our skin tightens Our souls recoil and our spirits shrivel /​we are smelted in fire /​and tested by water In joy and in sorrow, at home and in exile, (at) sunrise and sunset6

The poet invites God to scan the worshipers’ bodies, from bottom to top, from feet to head to innermost being. As the poet speaks to God, he draws his human listeners’ awareness to their own physical experience in the moment, and he encourages his fellow Jews to see themselves, as they pray and fast and promise, through the eyes of God, as they hope God sees them.7 He crafts a 4 See Judg. 5:22. The translation strives to capture both the conventional meaning of the root (“smite, hit”) and traditional Jewish understandings of the verse (which include meanings such as “stomp,” “trip,” “be battered”). 5 See esp. Isa. 10:27, but also Deut. 28:48 and Lam. 1:14. 6 Z. M. Rabinovitz, The Liturgical Poetry of Rabbi Yannai, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1985–​1987), 218–​219. A translation of the poem can be found in Laura S. Lieber, “‘On This Day, We are Perfect’: Embodiment in Yannai’s Yom Kippur Qedushta,” The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 30 (2022): 37–​69. 7 The self-​estrangement of seeing oneself through another’s eyes recalls the gendered analysis of visuality and feminine (here: mortal) cognizance of and appeals to the male (here: divine) gaze. An important and accessible articulation of this understanding of gaze can be found in John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: Penguin Books, 1972).

292  Staging the Sacred moment in which the congregation becomes aware of itself as a kind of spectacle, performing the transformational theater of atonement for the benefit of the divine audience. The conventions of performance in late antiquity, regardless of specific genre, should be understood inherently to have embodied skills and techniques. The performer’s physicality—​with “performer” at times widely construed—​constituted a sophisticated, dynamic, and essential instrument. By deploying his body, a performer could appeal to multiple senses: lips and lungs produced audible words, while limbs, torso, and face could speak eloquently in utter silence, offering a visible, physically tangible, presence. Through gesture and posture, as well as by means of pitch and intonation, an orator, actor, or liturgist could conjure not only images but also moods and elicit both intellectual reactions and visceral, emotional responses to the scenes he brought to life. The performer’s body was his primary mechanism of interpretation; voice and limbs enabled him to inflect words with not only audible but also visible nuances of sorrow or supplication, joy or vengefulness, triumph or defeat. Body language employed a specific vocabulary that could, with swift efficiency, convey power and powerlessness, hauteur and humility, innocence and abasement. Audiences in antiquity knew well how to read the language of the performer’s body and responded with acclamations and gestures of their own. And for the audience, participating in a spectacle introduced a kinesthetic, tactile experience, as bodies came into contact with one another, through choreography or simple jostling. Beyond the performance by the performer, we must account for the physical spaces in which performances took place. A spectacle by definition must be visible. Orators spoke, crafting their delivery to suit venues, so that people could hear; actors studied gestures, because audiences knew how to decipher them, and the eyes were more than amplified by the voice conveyed; and liturgical poets composed hymns because people wished to listen to them, see them, and participate in their performance. “Life setting” in the context of oratory, theater, and liturgy is concrete, not abstract; we must account, however speculatively, for the physical spaces in which performances took place. A performer’s physical expressiveness and bodily interpretation and delivery of her or his material were surely essential to the experience of oratory, theater, or liturgy, despite the nearly unrecoverable nature of such details. In this chapter, we will tease out clues, literary and material, that can help expand our understanding of the embodied performance of

Sounds, SightLines, and Senses  293 liturgical poems: “embodied” in the small sense of the performer’s physical presence, and in the large sense of the audience’s experience of it in an architectural context. In this chapter, we will consider how performers of hymns could have tapped into the vast physical repertoires of oratory and theater as a means for shaping how their poems were understood; we will then examine how the built spaces of churches and synagogues were themselves essential components of the embodied experience of these works, for both the performer and his community, through the way they created an instrument of sight and sound, played by both performer and congregation.

Physical Literacy In The Archive and the Repertoire, Diana Taylor distinguishes two categories of knowledge: “Archival’’ memory exists as documents, maps, literary texts, letters, archaeological remains, bones, videos, films, cds, all those items supposedly resistant to change. . . .The repertoire, on the other hand, enacts embodied memory: performances, gestures, orality, movement, dance, singing—​ in short, all those acts usually thought of as ephemeral, nonreproducible knowledge.8

The dynamic interactions between Taylor’s archive and repertoire—​to some extent, between tangible and intangible ways of embodying, enacting, and performing culture—​constitute the central topic of this volume and especially this chapter. For all their durability, the visible, material, and in some sense “static” traces of antiquity were not experienced as fixed or inert in their own day, any more than they can be experienced free of interpretation today. The words of hymns on the manuscript page—​Taylor’s “archive” or, in the language of theater, the script—​offer only the barest hint of the richness of the repertoire encoded within this liturgical tradition. And yet in antiquity, audiences primarily experienced works as performance—​Taylor’s “repertoire”—​hearing, seeing, and even feeling numerous intangible and 8 Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 19–​20.

294  Staging the Sacred unrecorded elements of these works. The question thus remains whether we can navigate our way into an understanding of the immaterial repertoire through a careful study of the tangible, material archive. The intelligibility of performance relied on common understandings shared by both performer and audience, including not only words (which, when spoken, would have ideally been audible and comprehensible) but also allusions, tones, stance, and gesture. Like other forms of art and modes of communication, public performances—​including oratory, theater, and hymnody—​rely on communal literacy and shared expectations of cultural competency.9 Such shared understandings pertained not only to content but also to delivery: mutually intelligible vocabularies of words, plots, and physical presentation. In antiquity, this “common knowledge” generally related to the classical canon of mythology and narratives rooted in history. It is not that the general populace of a city would know word for word the text of Euripides’ Medea or Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, but they would have known the characters, major plot points, and—​perhaps most importantly—​the signifiers of tragedy in body and voice. Similarly, one would not have needed to know Aristophanes well to appreciate the mythological burlesques that can be regarded as descendants of his works. The theater was one major venue through which popular traditions were transmitted, as were frescoes, mosaics, and statuary; the adaptations were dynamic and creative regardless of specific medium or venue. As Ruth Webb writes, [Dancers presented] well-​known stories rather than adapting existing poems or plays to a danced form . . . [these] paralleled literature rather than copying it. . . . Pantomime was one of a range of media that represented traditional stories, including poetry, rhetoric, and the visual arts.10 9 The idea of competence employed here is indebted to and something of a radical extension of Jonathan Culler, Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975), see esp. Chapter 6, “Literary Competence” (113–​130). Culler writes, “[In literature], as in most other human activities of any complexity, the line between the conscious and the unconscious is highly variable, impossible to identify, and supremely uninteresting. When do you know how to play chess? All the time? Or just while you are making a move? And the whole of chess during each move? When driving a car is it consciously or unconsciously that you keep to the correct side of the road, change gears, apply the brakes, dip the headlights? To ask of what an author is conscious and of what unconscious is as fruitless as to ask which rules of English are consciously employed by speakers and which are followed unconsciously. Mastery may be largely unconscious or it may have reached a stage of highly self-​conscious theoretical elaboration, but it is mastery in both cases” (118). 10 Webb, Demons and Dancers, 63.

Sounds, SightLines, and Senses  295 Highlighting the resonance between theater and visual arts, Janet Huskinson argues that visual depictions of mythological-​ theatrical scenes reflect “a process of artistic composition whereby essentials of the tragedy are set out in a single image” and thus have “much in common with contemporary presentations of classical tragedies by pantomimes or tragoidoi which interpreted selected ‘highlights’ of the well-​known drama which the audience would supplement from their own mythological knowledge.”11 The plots, characters, and schemata of representation were legible to the public whether in a theater, on the rostrum, or part of a mosaic. Performers could take for granted a popular familiarity with the content of the canon, as filtered through popular media. As Augustine lamented in a sermon, when referring to the descent of Aeneas to the underworld, “Nearly all of you know this story . . . but few of you know it from books, many from the theater.”12 Stories and traditions were widely known, not in their “canonical” form alone but in dynamic interplay with generations of popularization. Similarly, John Chrysostom could allude to a wealth of mythological plots in a homily: One man loved his stepmother, another woman her stepson, and in consequence hung herself. . . . What else? Do you want to see a son married to his mother? This too happened among them, and what is terrible, although it was done in ignorance, the god whom they worshipped did not prevent it, but allowed this violation of nature, even though the woman involved was a person of distinction. . . . The wife of a certain man fell passionately in love with another, and slew her husband upon his return with the help of her adulterer. Most of you probably know the story. The son of the murdered man killed the adulterer and then sacrificed his mother. Afterwards, he himself was driven mad and pursued by the furies. This madman himself then went off and slew another man, and took his wife.13

11 Janet Huskinson, “Theatre, Performance and Theatricality in Some Mosaic Pavements from Antioch,” Bulletin of the Institute for Classical Studies 46 (2003): 144. 12 Augustine, Serm. 241.5.5 =​PL 38.1135–​36; translation in Augustine, Sermons: Vol. III/​7, “On Liturgical Seasons,” trans. Edmund Hill (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1993), 72. In his commentary, Hill speculates that in response to “Nearly all of you know this” that “there had no doubt been appreciative murmurs, indicating that they had got the reference” (75n9). 13 John Chrysostom, Hom. in Tit. 5.4 =​PG 62.693. See discussion in Blake Leyerle, Theatrical Shows and Ascetic Lives, 20–​21.

296  Staging the Sacred In this passage, our homilist refers to a dizzying array of motifs from the mythological canon—​the stories of Phoenix, Phaedra, Oedipus, Clytemnestra, and Orestes—​in just a few lines. For his invective to be effective, the congregation had to have known the traditions to which Chrysostom alluded, but such “literacy” does not demand that his audience make a study of the classical tragedies. Popular forms of entertainment—​comedic mime, tragic pantomime, declamations, and diverse hybrids—​would have ensured that this element of culture not only endured but continued to function as a vehicle for cultural continuity throughout the Roman Empire. As Katherine Dunbabin observes, in her discussion of the vast imperial system that ensured a steady supply of skilled performers to the far reaches of the empire, that perhaps “[the emperors] recognized the contributions that such performances could serve in knitting together the multifarious and multilingual peoples who composed the Roman Empire.”14 This common culture brought with it a communal body of traditions, and a shared language of the body; polemics exploited this literacy as much as theater did. The performer’s body constituted an essential vehicle for the communication of this content. An actor’s posture, stance, tone, and timbre convey a range of information to his audience, including gender coding, power, and emotion. This common language of embodiment translated across venues, at a level more intuitive than conscious.15 Writing about pantomime, but with insights applicable to diverse modes of performance, Ruth Webb observes: A thoroughly competent viewer might not even be conscious of the amount of interpretation that was involved in her or her appreciation of the dance. . . . There must have been a vast range of gestures that seemed “natural” to the audience but which would be entirely opaque to us. . . . Conventions that were so transparent to the audience as to be invisible.16

The conventions of entertainment drew upon a kind of literacy that was not explicitly taught, on the model of teacher instructing student, so much as 14 Dunbabin, Theater and Spectacle in the Art of the Roman Empire, 109–​110. 15 The seemingly intuitive nature of nonverbal communication should not be understood as diminishing the complicated mechanisms by which physical vocabularies were developed and deployed; see Karin Schlapbach, The Anatomy of Dance Discourse: Literary and Philosophical Approaches to Dance in the Later Graeco-​Roman World (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). 16 Ruth Webb, Demons and Dancers, 75–​76.

Sounds, SightLines, and Senses  297 absorbed. And yet, it was a language that could be spoken with greater or lesser clarity, efficacy, and refinement—​a metric by which good, mediocre, and deficient performance could be distinguished.17 We may think of the skills of the orator as “elite” while the actor possessed “mass appeal,” and certainly these biases can be easily discerned in the writings of elite public speakers who were anxious not to be confused with lowbrow performers. And yet, Cicero is well known for having encouraged future orators to study the stage (e.g., in De Or. 1.34 and 1.5918), and he recounted memorable excerpts from comedic performances in his letters, at times in great detail.19 Libanius, in turn, with what seems to be some sense of self-​deprecation, wrote, “Before now I have had fun poked at me as being more of an actor than an orator.”20 Certainly audiences, whether attending a trial, a tragic pantomime, or a farcical mime, could decipher what was being communicated. It is simply such a familiar language that even today we do not realize we are “speaking” it. As Marina Harss, the dance critic for the New York Times, writes while observing contemporary dancers, We think of ballet as a nonverbal art, but for the last few months, the words “tell” and “say” have echoed in the studios of American Ballet Theater. The dancers aren’t using their voices; it is their bodies that are doing the

17 Note the telling scene satirized by Herodas (third c. bce)—​fictional, but humorous for its plausibility—​in which a boy’s mother complains that her son can neither recognize nor reproduce the alphabet (written literacy) nor recite a memorized passage from classical literature (oral literacy) with any skill: “He can’t recognize the letter α, not even if one shouts it five times to him. His father, the day before yesterday, was teaching him to spell the name ‘Maron’ and this fine scholar wrote ‘Simon’! . . . And whenever his father or I ask him to recite, just as you would ask a little child . . . he strains (out the words as droplets) as though through a pierced jug (to recite) ‘Hunter Apollo’ [a speech from Aeschylus’ lost tragedy, Prometheus Released]!” (Herodas, Mimes, Third Mime [Didaskalos], Ins. 22–​32; in J. Arbuthnot Nairn, ed., The Mimes of Herodas [Oxford: Clarendon, 1904], 33). 18 Found in LCL 348, pp. 104–​109 and 182–​187, respectively. In the first passage, Cicero writes, “We have to study actors as well as orators, that bad practice may not lead us into some inelegant or ugly habit” (p. 107), while in the second he notes, “Yet no one will urge young devotees of eloquence to toil like actors at the study of gesture” (p. 183). 19 See, for example, Cicero, Letters to Friends 7.1 (LCL 205, pp. 170–​179) and 9.22 (LCL 216, pp. 190–​197). Macrobius (fifth c. ce) offers an account of Cicero that indicates how later generations recalled and even amplified his affinity for theater: “Cicero, however, gives evidence that actors were not categorized as people of ill-​repute, for everyone knows that he was on such friendly terms with Roscius and Aesopus. . . . And there’s no doubt that he used to compete with the actor [Roscius] himself to see whether the latter could mime a given thought with a variety of gestures in more different ways than he himself could state it with a variety of expressions drawn from his abundant eloquence. This made Roscius so confident of his skill that he wrote a book in which he compared oratorical eloquence with the actor’s craft” (Saturnalia 3.11–​12; LCL 511, 101–​103). 20 Libanius, Letters 58.4–​5; note the discussion in Cribiore, Libanius the Sophist, 97n86.

298  Staging the Sacred talking . . . Between the dances, the characters “speak” to one another in broad, legible gestures and glances that fit into the musical phrases like words in a song. The dancing, too, is full of details that add to the character of each scene. The gestures dance; the dances tell stories.21

Under the control of a skilled dancer, bodies can be profoundly eloquent, and they speak a language their viewers may not even realize they have learned to decipher. Dancers and audience share a physical literacy. Even more telling, perhaps, is the scene in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, in which a man employs oratorical gestures as he tells a story of how he was hired to keep watch over a corpse: So Thelyphron piled the covers in a heap and propped himself up on his elbow, sitting half upright on the couch. He extended his right arm, shaping its joints in the way that orators do: having bent his two lowest fingers in, he stretched the others out at long range and poised his thumb to strike, gently rising as he began . . .”22

Apuleius intends this image to be amusing, but for the picaresque humor to work, the scene had to be plausible and legible. Apuleis’ readers had to believe that a sometime watchman would know how to use “the orator’s gesture” (oratorum articulum). In the end, while orators may have benefited from an education afforded by the resources of a social elite, their audiences were also steeped in theater and broader conventions of communication. In short, the population as a whole held in common a shared vocabulary of embodied speech. This language was not “learned” in the way that reading and writing were but more akin to the way speech itself is acquired, through watching, modeling, and mimicking from earliest childhood.23 Such physical expression manifests a certain way of being in the world; in a performance context, an actor or speaker amplifies and exaggerates body language to make it visible and unambiguous. Theater and oratory were ubiquitous, and the traditions and conventions of performance crossed the lines of social 21 Marina Harss, “In ‘Harlequinade,’ Gestures Dance, and Dances Tell Stories,” The New York Times (May 29, 2018), page C1, https://​www.nyti​mes.com/​2018/​05/​29/​arts/​dance/​harle​quin​ade-​ale​xei-​ ratman​sky-​ameri​can-​bal​let-​thea​ter.html?smid=​url-​share, accessed December 16, 2022. 22 Apuleius, Met. 2.21 (LCL 44, pp. 80–​83). 23 On education, see Raffaela Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind, and William A. Johnson, Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire: A Study of Elite Communities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

Sounds, SightLines, and Senses  299 class, venue, and genre throughout the Roman Empire, as attested by the evidence of art and infrastructure from Spain to the Levant. The present study makes use of the concept of “embodied cultural literacy”—​a shared sense of nonverbal communication and awareness of body language as a means of self-​expression and performative speech—​to recover and reconstruct otherwise invisible elements of late antique hymnody, both its performance and its reception by congregational audiences. Within each specific context, scripture (Jewish or Christian) enriches and expands the idea of “canon”: within the context of synagogue and church, we can add an element of communal competency in the contours of scriptural narratives, alongside familiarity with Greco-​Roman mythological traditions, and we can consider how the intangible body language and use of space would have enriched the experience of such performances. Just as hymnographers drew upon rhetorical techniques such as ekphrasis and ethopoeia in composing their texts, like orators and actors, poets sought to draw their listeners into a story, engaging their ears, eyes, and minds, their skill only had value insofar as it could be heard, seen, and comprehended. Liturgical poems, furthermore, elicited responses from the congregational audience that were themselves energetic and embodied, shaped by the dynamic engagement with a performer in the context of consecrated space. In a culture saturated by theatricality, performers and audiences—​civic or sacred—​shared these unspoken norms.

The Performer’s Body While the physicality of ancient performance, by definition ephemeral, eludes easy recovery, traces of embodied practices exist in both literature and figurative art. We know from these sources that gesture constituted a particularly important and systematized nonverbal vocabulary common to both the actors and public speakers and likely formed a significant if almost intuitive part of the aesthetics and communicative richness of hymnic performance, as well. A study of the role of body language in antiquity helps us to understand the norms of public speaking and singing in a range of contexts, which in turn help us understand the performative context in which hymns came into being. Quintilian, a first century ce Roman rhetorician, authored the most comprehensive treatment of oratorical gesture, but it is an edition of the comedies

300  Staging the Sacred of the Roman playwright Terence (first century bce) that offers the most vividly visual account of gestural language in antiquity. This manuscript dates to the fifth century ce, and we can thus approach it as a useful source of insight into the physical vocabulary of late antiquity.24 As Aldrete notes, The reliability of the gestures in the miniatures has sometimes been questioned on the grounds that Terence was probably not being performed as late as the fifth century. This statement is probably true, but it is not a valid reason for rejecting the gestures as representative of theatrical practice, since many forms of theater, including pantomime and mime shows, were still flourishing.25

The gestures depicted in this manuscript, indicated in the miniatures by means of significantly enlarged hands (and serving a similar function to the video accompanying Rachel Donadio’s essay, cited earlier), would have constituted a common physical vocabulary for orators and actors. This embodied language would have transcended language barriers in a polyglot society and would have aided in the comprehension of performances, whether sung or declaimed, in settings with uneven or poor acoustics. Anthony Corbeill observes, in his discussion of gesture as a cultural system, that “not only does Roman society depend upon moral codes being as stable as Latin morphology, but it also demands that those codes emerge in visible, easily detectable signs.”26 Visible body language encodes indicators enabling the performer to convey and the audience to interpret the inward experiences and identities of imagined personas. The outward made the interior manifest. Literary sources—​Cicero, Quintilian, Lucian, and Libanius, in particular—​ reveal that orators were keenly aware of the importance of voice, gesture, and posture as an element of performance. Indeed, Cicero singled out the role of voice and body as decisive, writing, “Delivery, I assert, is the dominant factor in oratory; without delivery, the best speaker cannot be of any account 24 Aldrete, Gestures and Acclamations in Ancient Rome, 54–​67. 25 Ibid., 57. 26 Anthony Corbeill, Nature Embodied: Gesture in Ancient Rome (Princeton, NJ, and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004), 2. Corbeill’s three analytical assumptions also merit repeating here; his subtle and comprehensive study of the role of gesture in Roman antiquity presuppose (1) that “even common gestures are perceived to have connections with a world beyond interpersonal communication,” (2) “a continuity of gesture across the time and space of the ancient Roman world unless there exists clear evidence to the contrary,” and (3) that “there exists a principle of economy” (6).

Sounds, SightLines, and Senses  301 at all, while a moderate speaker with a trained delivery can often outdo the best of them.”27 If a speaker failed to master his body, his words would fail to take hold, but if a speaker made skillful use of his physical instruments—​ voice, hands, eyes, and posture—​he could strengthen otherwise weak words. At the same time, physical expression could convey intensity and nuance far beyond what words alone are capable of expressing; they can speak even when the speaker himself is mute. We see this most evocatively in the epigrams of Christodorus of Coptus (late fifth/​early sixth c.) whose only surviving work muses on the “speech” of statues in the courtyard of a bathhouse in Constantinople.28 He sees lamentation, courage, anger, and ardor in the frozen hands, arms, legs, and faces of the sculptures he beholds; the poet knows their stories, but the bronze bodies “perform” this kind of visual ethopoeia, as they speak to the poet. Examining evidence from the visual culture of antiquity, Aldrete observes: Gestures are such a common feature of Roman art in a variety of media, and enough specific depictions of motioning speakers exist to substantiate the interpretation that the rhetorical handbooks’ emphasis on gesticulation accurately represented the everyday practice of Roman orators.29

Careful representation of body language, captured by paint, ink, or bronze, gave static visual depictions of a scene a kind of power of speech. It was a language “spoken” by broad swathes of the population.30 Body language was, it thus seems, both a natural form of speech and an acquired vocabulary; every individual body possesses the capacity to 27 Cicero, De Or. 3.56 (LCL 349, pp. 168–​169). 28 The text is preserved as Book 2 of the so-​called Greek Anthology attributed to Cephalas. See Alan Cameron, The Greek Anthology Meleager to Planudes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). On Christodorus specifically, see Francesco Tissoni, Cristodoro (Alessandria, Italy: Edizioni dell’Orsi, 2000). English translation available in LCL, vol. 67 (2014). 29 Aldrete, Gesture and Acclamation, 50. See also Glenys Davies, “Togate Statues and Petrified Orators,” in Form and Function in Roman Oratory, ed. D. H. Berry, Andrew Erskine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 51–​72. Davies surveys the extant statues that seem to model oratorical gestures, particularly through the lens of Quintilian’s descriptions. 30 In “Togate Statues and Petrified Orators,” Davies notes that while the statues depicting figures “speaking” are usually assumed to be elite orators, they could well be statues of actors. Writing of a statue that appears to be a typical example of the “oratory” genre of statuary, he notes that the inscription reveals it to be Apollinis parasitus, a member of the college of mimes dedicated to Apollo (71–​72). Dismissing the likelihood that the missing arms displayed gestures that were somehow recognizable as “theatrical” rather than “oratorical,” Davies observes, “It would be much more ironic if the actor, whose trade was sneered at as base by high-​status orators (who nonetheless studied his art to their own ends), was represented in a post which was understood to represent the elite of Roman society, performing their most prized activity: oratory” (72).

302  Staging the Sacred communicate, but physical eloquence, like oratorical polish, could be obtained only as a result of extensive study and was facilitated by natural gifts. The writings of orators, often produced with an explicit pedagogical intent, reflect a belief that students who were being trained in public speaking, whether for purposes of law, politics, or competitive declamation, needed to master the communicative powers of their bodies as well as their voices and their words. While we cannot assume that these writings reflect actual curricula, let alone broad traditions of education, these writings proved influential among later generations and allow modern readers to understand how comprehensively “speech” was understood as performance. Often, in the course of offering their counsel, these authors make explicit reference to the “speech” of actors’ bodies, as well: Seneca the Younger, a philosopher who also a dramatist, reflected, “We are apt to wonder at skilled dancers because their gestures are perfectly adapted to the meaning of the piece and its accompanying emotions, and their movements match the speed of the dialogue.”31 Before we turn directly to theater, to understand the significance of gesture for hymnody, however, let us first examine how several influential writers illustrate how body language constituted a core element of oratorical training. We will then consider how literary sources shed light on the communicative power of the bodies of actors whose presence permeated public life in antiquity. Having examined performers, we will then turn and consider evidence for the reciprocal embodied responses of the audiences—​their own eloquence, perhaps less schooled but no less practiced. In this fashion, we will set the stage for an understanding of the physicality of the performance of late antique hymns.

Cicero, Quintilian, and the Performance of Persuasion Plato and Aristotle were among the first classical authors to articulate systematic theories of oratory; Plato’s Gorgias and Aristotle’s Rhetoric were particularly influential in establishing the centrality of persuasive speech to the ancient curriculum and framing it in terms of performance. Aristotle argues that persuasiveness depends on the character of the speaker, the emotional state of the listeners, or the strength of the argument itself (Rhet. II. 19–​26).

31 Seneca, Ep. 121.6 (trans. adapted from LCL 77, pp. 398–​399).

Sounds, SightLines, and Senses  303 He also distinguishes three social locations for speech: deliberative (i.e., pertaining to decisions concerning the polis), forensic (pertaining to legal decisions), and epideictic (speeches of praise of blame). The body occupied an important place among the topics treated by both Plato and Aristotle in relation to persuasion. As Peter O’Connell observes, By the mid-​fourth century, and probably earlier, Athenian elites seem to have developed an ethical interpretation of gesture. . . . [W]‌ell-​placed gestures could have helped make the difference between a successful performance and a failure, and well-​prepared orators would know when to use the traditional gestures of formal speech and when to risk breaking out of appropriate and usual patterns to encourage their audience to accept their arguments or proposals. When we read Attic oratory today, we need to remember that arguments that seem facile or weak tell only part of the story. Gestures would have been a fundamental, and sometimes contentious, aspect of persuasion.32

The sustained interest specifically on body language in these foundational works on oratory had the effect of ensuring that attention to gesture and stance would constitute an essential element of the training of public speakers in the world of Roman and late antique oratory. Despite delivery’s importance in persuasive oratory, Aristotle did not include this topic among his three orator’s duties (Cicero’s officium oratoris: i.e., invention, style, and arrangement33). And yet, as the anonymous author of the first-​century bce Rhetorica ad Herennium (a work once attributed to Cicero) observed, “Many have said that the faculty of greatest use to the speaker and the most valuable for persuasion is delivery.”34 This writer, 32 Peter A. O’Connell, The Rhetoric of Seeing in Attic Forensic Oratory (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017), 61 and 79. Of particular significance for the present topic is Chapter 2, “The Meaning of Movement” (53–​79). For Aristotle on delivery, see Rhet. 3.1.1403b (LCL 193, pp. 348–​349). 33 Cicero, De Or. 1.31 (LCL 349, p. 96). 34 Rhet. ad Her. 3.11 (LCL 403, pp. 188–​189); see, too, Quintilian, “Stage actors demonstrate this [i.e., the importance of delivery]. They add so much charm to the greatest poets that their productions give us infinitely more pleasure when heard than when read, and at the same time they secure an audience even for some of the poorest, so that authors for whom the libraries have no room may often find a place on the stage. And if Delivery has this power to produce anger, tears, or anxiety over matters which we know to be fictitious and unreal, how much more powerful must it be when we really believe! I have no hesitation in saying that even a mediocre speech, made attractive by the power of Delivery, will carry more weight than the best speech deprived of this help. After all, when Demosthenes was asked what was the most important thing in the whole business of oratory, he gave the prize to Delivery, and he gave it the second and the third place too, until they stopped asking; we must therefore suppose that he thought of it not just as the first faculty needed, but as the only

304  Staging the Sacred whose work constitutes an entire rhetorical curriculum, hypothesizes that this silence existed because his predecessors “thought it scarcely possible for voice, mien, and gesture to be lucidly described, as appertaining to our sense-​experience.”35 Despite this narrational challenge, the author of that work is undaunted and offers a systematic treatment of delivery, which he describes as involving vocal quality and physical movement.36 Indeed, in a later passage, this same work simultaneously acknowledges the difficulty in describing the role of voice and gesture in delivery even as it suggests it is commonplace knowledge: “[Delivery] cannot be described with complete effectiveness, and yet it is clear enough—​hence there is no need of illustration.”37 Cicero was well aware of the importance of gesture in Attic oratory and its resulting centrality in Roman declamation. In a passage expressing admiration for the oratorical skill of Marcus Antonius, Cicero writes: Greeks call postures or figures the greatest ornaments of oratory. They are not so important in heightening the color of words, as in throwing ideas into a stronger light. In all these respects Antonius was great, and combined with them a delivery of peculiar excellence. If we divide delivery into gesture and voice, his gesture did not seek to reflect words, but agreed with the course of his thought—​hands, shoulders, chest, stamp of the foot, posture in repose and in movement, all harmonizing with his words and thoughts; voice sustained, but with a touch of huskiness.38

This passage, for all its brevity, offers a glimpse of the robust and highly intentional physicality of elite public declamation: not only voice but the entire body (hands, face, posture) played a role in delivery, serving especially to convey nuance, express tone, and add emphasis. Indeed, Cicero returns repeatedly to the role of the body as a complement to words, drawing explicit

one. This is why he himself studied with such diligence under the actor Andronicus, that, when the Rhodians admired the written version of his great speech, Aeschines is thought to have said (and very justifiably) ‘If only you had heard him in person!’ ” (Inst. Or. 11.3.5–​6 [LCL 494, pp. 86–​89]). 35 Rhet. ad Her. 3.11 (LCL 403, pp. 190–​191). 36 Vocal qualities are treated in Rhet. ad Her. 3.12–​14 (LCL 403, pp. 192–​201); gesture and facial expressions in 3.15 (LCL 403, pp. 201–​205). 37 Rhet. ad Her. 4.42 (LCL 403, 366–​367). 38 Cicero, Brutus §§37–​38 (LCL 342, pp. 124–​125).

Sounds, SightLines, and Senses  305 comparison to analogous situations in which robust body language functions as a mode of conveying ideas and signaling identity: All these emotions must be accompanied by gesture—​not this stagy gesture reproducing the words but one conveying the general situation and idea not by mimicry but by hints, with this vigorous manly throwing out of the chest, borrowed not from the stage and the theatrical profession but from the parade ground or even from wrestling; but the movements of the hand must be less rapid, following the words and not eliciting them with the fingers; the arm thrown out rather forward, like an elocutionary missile; a stamp of the foot in beginning or ending emphatic passages. But everything depends on the countenance, while the countenance itself is entirely dominated by the eyes. . . . For delivery is wholly the concern of the feelings, and these are mirrored by the face and expressed by the eyes; for this is the only part of the body capable of producing as many indications and variations as there are emotions, and there is nobody who can produce the same effect with the eyes shut.39

Cicero here compares public speaking to other modes of performance—​ acting and even athletics—​but defends declamation as more subtle and skilled.40 He attends to arms, fingers, feet, and (most especially) eyes. He acknowledges that voice, too, was essential effective delivery; “What,” Cicero asks, “is so essential to an orator as intonation?”41 Oratory was a fully embodied occupation: subtler than some, but also more evocative. Every limb and organ could strengthen one’s delivery or detract from it. Cicero’s mantle as expositor of oratorical counsel was taken up by Quintilian, perhaps Rome’s greatest teacher of rhetoric. Quintilian, born thirty-​five years after the death of Cicero in Spain, trained as an orator in Rome; Pliny the Younger and Tacitus attended his school, and his only

39 Cicero, De Or. 3.59 (LCL 349, pp. 176–​177). 40 Note that Cicero expresses some reservations about orators whose work relies excessively on such techniques; writing of Demosthenes and the great Greek orators, he notes, “the sap and blood of oratory remained fresh and uncorrupted down to this time [the fourth/​third c. bce], and retained a natural color that required no rouge. To the old age of these men succeeded the youthful Demetrius of Phaleron, and though perhaps the most accomplished of them all, yet his training was less for the field than for the parade-​ground. He entertained rather than stirred his countrymen; for he came forth into the heat and dust of action, not from a soldier’s tent, but from the shady retreat of the great philosopher Theophrastus. He was the first to modulate oratory and to give it softness and pliability” (Brutus §9 [LCL 342, pp. 42–​43]). 41 Cicero, De Or. 1.59 (LCL 348, pp. 182–​183).

306  Staging the Sacred surviving work—​the twelve-​volume Institutio Oratoria—​attests to his intense interest in the training of public speakers. Where Cicero spoke in general terms about the communicative power of gesture, body, and voice, Quintilian (who often cites Cicero) offers explicit examples that move, quite literally, from head (and face) to toe. He devotes a full third of Book 11 explicitly to delivery. First, he addresses voice, not merely noting the importance of intonation but addressing elements including volume, tone, and pitch; he stresses the need for endurance, proper breathing, and vocal exercise.42 Vocal quality is essential to oratorical mimesis, as he explains at length in the conclusion to this section: It is now time to explain what appropriate Delivery is. It is, of course, Delivery adapted to the subject on which we are speaking. This is mainly ensured by our actual feelings; the voice sounds as its strings are struck. But some emotions are real, others pretended or imitated. Real emotions burst out naturally—​sorrow, anger, outrage, for example—​but they lack art, and have therefore to be disciplined by training and method. Emotions contrived by imitation, on the other hand, involve art, but they have no basis in nature, so that the first thing for us to do is to be genuinely affected, form a picture of the situation, and let ourselves be moved by it as though it was real. The voice, acting as intermediary, will then convey to the judges’ minds the attitude it has acquired from ours. It is in fact the indicator of the mind and has all the mind’s variations. So, given a happy theme, the voice flows full, unaffected, and with a sort of cheerfulness of its own. In a contentious situation, on the other hand, it is roused in all its strength and strains every nerve. In anger, it is fierce, harsh, and concentrated, with frequent pauses for breath, because the breath cannot be held for long periods when it is expelled with undue violence. In creating animosity, the voice becomes somewhat more hesitant, because only inferiors commonly have recourse to such tactics. In flattery, confession, apology, or request, it is gentle and subdued. Persuasion, warning, promises, and consolations demand a deep voice; fear and shame a restrained one; exhortation needs a strong voice, debate a precise one, compassion one that is flexible, tearful, and deliberately half-​muffled. In Digressions, the voice spreads itself with confident resonance, in Narrative or conversation it is natural and pitched midway between high and low. It is raised when emotions run high, dropped when

42 Quintilian treats voice in Inst. Or. 11.3.14–​65 (LCL 494, pp. 92–​119).

Sounds, SightLines, and Senses  307 they are calmer, and pitched higher or lower according to the level of these two kinds of feeling.43

Voice quite literally mediates between the mind of the speaker and the imagination of the listeners. It conjures authenticity, creates believable ethopoeia, and lends vividness to the emotional world the speaker conjures quite literally out of thin air. If poorly delivered, even the most persuasive script could neither move nor inspire. Turning from what is audible to what is visible, Quintilian next addresses the performative role of the body. He opens the section that treats gesture by noting, “The importance of Gesture for the orator is evident from the simple fact that it can often convey meaning even without the help of words.”44 To underscore the power of body language, he discusses how physical eloquence enables diverse populations—​the mute, dancers, even animals—​to communicate. He proceeds to address the specific role in delivery played by the head, face, neck, shoulder, arms, and—​in greatest detail—​hands. Where Cicero singled out the eyes, Quintilian regards the hands as the repository of greatest expressive power: As for the hands, without which the Delivery would be crippled and enfeebled, it is almost impossible to say how many movements they possess, for these almost match the entire stock of words. Other parts of the body assist the speaker; the hands, I might almost say, speak for themselves. This, it seems to me, is the common language of the human race.45

He then goes on to detail the specific execution and appropriate context for the use of specific gestures, offering examples such as “the two middle fingers can also be turned under the thumb; this is an even more insistent Gesture than the last and is not suitable for Prooemium or Narrative” (Inst. Or. 11.3.93) and “the hand may also be drawn toward the body, with the fingers pointing down a little more freely, and then opened more widely to face the opposite way, so that it seems to be somehow delivering our actual words” (Inst. Or. 11.3.97). In these passages, the alignment of verbal description with the illuminations in the medieval edition of Terence takes on particular clarity. Quintilian compiles for his readers a glossary of body language.



43 Quintilian, Inst. Or. 11.3.61–​67 (LCL 494, pp. 116–​119).

44 Quintilian, Inst. Or. 11.3.65 (LCL 494, pp. 118–​119).

45 Quintilian, Inst. Or. 11.3.85 and 87 (LCL 494, pp. 128–​129).

308  Staging the Sacred Orators’ resistance to comparison with actors reflected the anxiety generated by similarities; the technical affinities shared by the two modes of performance existed in tension with the significant gulf in social standing between highly educated, “respectable” public speakers and lower-​class, socially and culturally diverse, and “disreputable” theatrical professionals. Cicero and Quintilian recognized that the theater could be mined for useful techniques even as “actors” and “the stage” functioned as a shorthand for performative excess. Cicero explicitly acknowledges that oratory is the synthesis of multiple skills, the apogee of all the different professions that contribute to declamation: “In an orator we must demand the subtlety of the logician, the thoughts of the philosopher, a diction almost poetic, a lawyer’s memory, a tragedian’s voice, and the bearing almost of the consummate actor.”46 Quintilian likewise cannot help but express grudging respect for the skills of elite actors, and he recognizes that both advocates and actors share the goal of creating believable characters: When an advocate speaks for a client, the bare facts produce the effect; but when we pretend that the victims themselves are speaking, the emotional effect is drawn also from the persons. The judge no longer thinks that he is listening to a lament for somebody else’s troubles, but that he is hearing the feelings and the voice of the afflicted, whose silent appearance alone moves him to tears; and, as their pleas would be more pitiful if only they could make them themselves, so to a certain extent the pleas become more effective by being as it were put into their mouths, just as the same voice and delivery of the stage actor produces a greater emotional impact because he speaks behind a mask.47

A master teacher of public speech here acknowledges that declamation and acting constitute a largely common enterprise, despite their professional and practical differences. Both orator and actor conjure up believable characters, relying almost entirely on the physical dynamism of performed speech. Indeed, when the body is sufficiently eloquent, a masked face is no obstacle to communication, but instead serves to amplify the rest of the performer’s physical instrument by stripping speech to its wordless, most forceful essentials.

46 Cicero, De Or. 1.28 (LCL 348, pp. 88–​91).

47 Quintilian, Inst. Or. 6.1.26 (LCL 126, pp. 30–​31).

Sounds, SightLines, and Senses  309

Lucian, Libanius, and Bodies in Motion If oratory represented one pole of respectability in the performance of mimesis in antiquity, theater—​particularly pantomime and mime—​constituted the other. Declamation was the practice, even sport, of the cultured elites, while the stage was the realm of freedmen, slaves, and even women. And yet, these two activities often shared an audience, and in terms of technique, oratory and acting had much in common. Indeed, we have accounts of actors attending declamations in order to study orators’ delivery (and perhaps to refine and sharpen their ability to satirize such elite pursuits), while much of our knowledge about theatrical performance in antiquity comes from those who primarily studied and practiced oratory.48 Cicero and Quintilian display easy familiarity with the theater, referring to actors and stage practices throughout their writings, and they present it, with varying shades of critique and enthusiasm, as instructive for their pupils; they did not, however, set out to write specifically about theater. Two later authors, however, took theatrical performance as a central topic: Lucian of Samosata (second c. ce) whose treatise On Dancing offers a lively defense of pantomime; and Libanius of Antioch (fourth c. ce), whose slyly humorous work, “A Reply to Aristides on Behalf of the Dancers” (Or. 64), remains one of the most important treatises on the performance of pantomime in late antiquity. In late antiquity, two primary categories of theatrical performance were recognized, pantomime and mime, although other forms, including hybrid styles, certainly existed alongside these two. Pantomime conventionally presented scenes from classical tragedy; a single dancer, usually masked and mute, performed all the roles, perhaps with musical accompaniment or assisted by a chorus. Mime, by contrast, was usually comedic and featured a multiperson cast, masked or unmasked, all male or mixed sex, often with props.49 48 Valerius Maximus (first c. ce) recounts an anecdote about two famous actors who particularly attended to the delivery style of a famously expressive orator: “Q. Hortensius believed that a great deal depended on graceful bodily movement and devoted almost more effort to its elaboration than to striving after eloquence itself. So it was a question whether people flocked more eagerly to hear him or to watch him, so well did his appearance set off the orator’s words and the words in turn his appearance. It is well established that Aesopus and Roscius, two most skillful actors, often stood in the audience when he was conducting a case in order to bring back to the stage the gestures they had sought in the Forum” (Valerius Maximus 8.10.2; LCL 493, p. 251). Hortensius’ style of delivery was considered strikingly effeminate; see Erik Gunderson, Staging Masculinity: The Rhetoric of Performance in the Roman World (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 111–​148. 49 Dunbabin provides superb summaries of the two kinds of performance with a focus on visual representations in Theater and Spectacle in the Art of the Roman Empire (Chapter 4, “Pantomime and Mythological Spectacle,” 85–​113, and Chapter 5, “Mime and Popular Entertainment,” 114–​137). The most nuanced treatment of mime and pantomime relevant to our present study remains Webb, Demons and Dancers.

310  Staging the Sacred Pantomime typically mined myth and history for its plots, while mimes sang and danced scenes derived from daily life. Both skilled mimes and pantomimes were celebrities in their day, praised by writers and memorialized with epitaphs. Pantomime consisted entirely of dance and as a result depended on the persuasiveness of body language; a single dancer performed all the roles (the meaning of the term “pantomime”), including gods and mortals, heroes and heroines, victors and villains, without recourse to speech. The best of the dancers expressed themselves so eloquently that they rendered spoken language unnecessary; Lucian recounts an anecdote in which a guest requests of Nero that he be allowed to take a pantomime performer home with him as a kind of useful souvenir, explaining, “I have barbarian neighbors who do not speak the same language, and it is not easy to keep supplied with interpreters for them. If I am in want of one, therefore, this man will interpret everything for me by signs.”50 Several centuries later, Cassiodorus (fifth c. ce) notes how an actor “with his mouth closed, makes himself understood with his hands; by certain gestures he expresses what could hardly have been perceived in spoken words or written texts.”51 Pantomimes conventionally wore masks that obscured their faces, with the result that supple deployment of stance, posture, and, especially, hands provided essential means of communication and interpretation. Libanius offers a description of the ideal dancer: [I]‌t is not within the capability of everyone’s body to take up the profession, but just as the case of puppies and foals and those who intend to become athletes . . . so it is necessary also for a boy to show that he will attain a moderate height and will not become plump. And also he needs a straight neck and a look which is not furtive, and fingers naturally well-​formed, and in a word beauty, which is an essential attribute in matters to do with the stage performances and especially in the case of the dancer.52

Libanius here singles out stature, neck, and fingers as significant components of the dancer’s instrument: height for visibility, neck for modulation of the head, and fingers for elegant expression. Indeed, while we can easily imagine how the head’s tilt and the body’s posture convey mood and emotion, literary 50 Lucian, On the Dance §64 (LCL 302, pp. 266–​269). 51 Cassiodorus, Variae 1.20 (CCL 96.29). Leyerle discusses this passage (Theatrical Shows, 22). 52 Libanius, Or. 64.103; for the text of Libanius’ Or. §64 (“On Behalf of the Dancers”), with a critical introduction and other helpful apparatuses, see Margaret E. Molloy, Libanius and the Dancers (Hildesheim, Germany; New York: Olms-​Weidmann, 1996), 142–​176. Or. 64.103 is on page 171.

Sounds, SightLines, and Senses  311 descriptions of pantomimes emphasize the expressiveness of fingers and hands. An epitaph for the second-​or third-​century ce pantomime Krispos of Alexandria underscores the elegance of dancers’ gestures; its final lines state: What mortal left his name here having already prematurely exhausted the body? Krispos, dead citizen of the land of the Pharaohs, that area of rich grain on the Nile, is hidden under this sign, he who won a first prize for rhythmic tragedy [i.e., pantomime]. The world, marveling at and extolling the graceful movements of his hands, saw the golden flower of its own theaters. His shining grace the year short of three decades was unexpectedly extinguished.53

Krispos, who died at the age of 29 (perhaps while traveling with a performing troupe), described as having exhausted his body, is here singled out for his particularly graceful hands. Gestures, important in oratory, were definitive on the stage. Artistic depictions of mimes and pantomimes almost always highlight their hands.54 As important as the dancer’s control of body was, he also had to master spatial orientation. A key part of stagecraft is choreography: the intentional movement of a body or bodies across a stage, and the pose or orientation of the actor before the audience. Visual depictions of theater performances often recreated or alluded to elements of such staging, even as performers struck poses that seemed to resemble paintings intentionally.55 Libanius 53 Lines 11–​19. Text and translation (adapted) from Lloyd Jones and Walter Ameling, The Inscriptions of Heraclea Pontica (Bonn: Rudolf Habelt, 1994), inscr. 9 (pp. 10–​11). See, too, the description of the “actor-​from-​life” Flavius Alexandros Oxeidas of Nicomedia during his lifetime, in I. E. Stephanēs, Dionysiakoi technitai (Hērakleio, Greece: Panepistēmiakes Ekdoseis Krētēs, 1988), inscr. 1956 [p. 346]. See the discussion of these epitaphs in Edith Hall, “The Tragedians of Heraclea and Comedians of Sinope,” in Ancient Theatre and Performance Culture around the Black Sea, ed. David Braund, Edith Hall, and Rosie Wyles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 57. The translation is based on that of Hall. See also Webb, Demons and Dancers, 146–​147, and, more recently, Webb, “The Nature and Representation of Competition in Pantomime and Mime,” in L’organisation des spectacles dans le monde romain. Entretiens sur l’Antiquité classique 58, ed. Kathleen Coleman and Jocelyne Nelis-​Clément (Vandœuvres and Genève, Switzerland: Fondation Hardt, 2012), 221–​256. 54 Of particular note are the female pantomime depicted on a comb: https://​i.pin​img.com/​origin​als/​78/​a0/​ae/​78a0a​e79c​3903​9125​0647​851e​cf60​146.jpg (Webb, Demons and Dancers, Fig. 1); the tombstones of Bassilla, a female mime (Webb, Demons and Dancers, Fig. 11), and Eucharistos of Patara, a male mime (Dunbabin, Theater and Spectacle, Fig. 8.1); sixth c. ivory diptych featuring mimes and pantomimes: https://​ima​ges.app.goo.gl/​2e5wJi​Sc3u​tV3W​uq7 (Webb, Demons and Dancers, Figs. 2–​3). Note the hands in mosaic depictions; in addition to those featured by Webb and Dunbabin, see Huskinson, “Theatre, Performance and Theatricality in Some Mosaic Pavements from Antioch,” 131–​165. 55 See ibid., and Dunbabin, Theater and Spectacle, 100–​107.

312  Staging the Sacred highlights the dynamic interplay between movement and stasis, and dance and artistic tableau, when he writes, “For [dancers] spin around as though they have wings, and they finish in a motionless position as if they are fixed with glue. And with the (final) position, the picture (eikon) presents itself.”56 Visual images of actors freeze the kinesis of performance, just as performers still their bodies in conscious mimicry of paintings and mosaics. Actors, furthermore, would have known how to adapt their choreography and staging to different spaces: intimate domestic settings, civic theaters, or public streets. Scripts of comedies indicate motion on and off the stage, as well.57 Orators, too, employed what we would surely recognize as choreography, even if they might have resisted the use of a term from theater. Lucian connects the two when he writes, “It is essential for [the dancer], as for the orators, to cultivate clearness, so that everything which he presents will be intelligible, requiring no interpreter . . . whosoever beholds dancing must be able ‘to understand the mute and hear the silent’ dancer.”58 A choreography that maximizes the ability of the performer to be seen clearly, in essence, magnifies his ability to be “heard.” Significantly for the present study, Lucian also connects the choreography of dance to religious ritual: At Delos, indeed, even the sacrifices were not without dancing, but were performed with that and with music. Choirs of boys came together, and while they moved and sang to the accompaniment of flute and lyre, those who had been selected from among them as the best performed an interpretative dance. Indeed, the songs that were written for these choirs were called hyporchemes [interpretative dances], and lyric poetry is full of them.59

Theater itself, of course, had its roots in religious ritual; churches and synagogues retain a strong attachment to choreography as essential to the celebration of liturgy. As we will see in the second half of this chapter, spaces intended for or hospitable to performance—​whether theaters or forums, churches or synagogues, market squares or temporary structures—​accounted 56 Libanius, Or. 64.118 (Molloy, 175). See discussion in Dunbabin, Theater and Spectacle, 113. Also note that performances even now typically begin with a cry, “Take your places!” while the finale often culminates in a strikingly visual tableau. 57 See Sander M. Goldberg, “Plautus on the Palatine,” Journal of Roman Studies 88 (1998): 1–​ 20, and Christopher Lowe, “Some Problems of Dramatic Space in Plautus,” Classical Quarterly 57 (2007): 109–​116. 58 Lucian, On the Dance, §62 (LCL 302, pp. 266–​269). 59 Ibid., pp. 228–​231.

Sounds, SightLines, and Senses  313 for the need to see and be seen, as well as to hear. Dancers and speakers had to accommodate their spatial environments, but spaces were also designed to accommodate performances. Pantomime, on account of its historical connection to tragedy, demanded that performers be well educated in the plots and figures of myth and history; Lada-​Richards, commenting on a dancer’s need to master such knowledge, notes that the breadth of the learning “makes the dancer a match for the historian.”60 Dancers and actors may not have been literate, in the sense of being lettered, but they possessed a deep and subtle knowledge of the traditions—​ the plots, characters, and themes—​that they brought to life.61 A pantomime’s facility with the cultural canon, however, relied on his or her audience sharing enough of that same knowledge to follow the dance and appreciate the individual dancer’s distinctive interpretation. As Lucian observed, “when [the people] go away from the theater they have learned what they should choose and what to avoid, and have been taught what they did not know before.”62 Even more explicitly, Libanius praises theater for its pedagogical influence: while the majority of the people were deprived of education, some god took pity on the lack of education of the many and, to redress the balance, introduced pantomime as a kind of instruction for the masses in the deeds of old. Consequently, a goldsmith now will not do badly in a conversation with a product of the schools about the house of Priam or of Laius.63

Theater, according to Libanius, functioned as a kind of school for the masses. Lada-​Richards notes, “[P]‌antomime could pride itself on making the cultural inheritance of the elites more widely accessible, thus bringing down the multiple barriers erected during a sophist’s lecture.”64 The education was conveyed not by elegant speech, however, but by the body. The viewers in the audience were not passive students, either; they responded to performances—​with affirmation, acclamation, claps, and focused gazes—​by means of their bodies, as well. Performers—​including hymnists and homilists—​“spoke” to their audiences, and audiences responded; performance is a dialogue. 60 Ismene Lada-​Richards, Silent Eloquence: Lucian and Pantomime Dancing (London: Bloomsbury, 2007), 82. 61 Libanius addresses this briefly in Or. 64.112 (Molloy, 173–​174). Lucian lays out a vast curriculum in “global” history and myth in On the Dance §§37–​61 (LCL 302, pp. 248–​265). 62 Lucian, On the Dance §81 (LCL 302, pp. 282–​283). 63 Libanius, Or. 64.112 (Molloy, 173–​174). 64 Lada-​Richards, 110.

314  Staging the Sacred

The Pleasure of the People If body language is “speech,” then performance can be understood as a dialogue between the performer and the audience. Oratory, theater, and hymnody constitute conversations that rely first and foremost on the audience’s ability to understand the speaker’s communication. Effective performance requires all parties, performer and public, to share a specific kind of visual literacy—​the ability to decode the performer’s body language—​as well as a grasp of the common cultural content (including elements of gender and class) conveyed by words and intonation. In the context of late antiquity, the dialogue between speaker and audience was truly a conversation; speakers could assume that their audiences would speak back. Indeed, all evidence points to an active, engaged, and frankly loud responsiveness from ancient audiences. Orators sought to persuade, and they attended to their listeners for affirmation or critique; actors and dancers sought to entertain and were influenced by audience responses. And hymnographers sought to mediate the relationship between God and God’s people. The forceful presence of the assembled community balances the power of the physically elevated and performatively magnified speaker. The verbal components of audience response can be gathered under the heading of acclamation.65 As J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz notes, acclamations “formed a continuous accompaniment of public life.”66 These group chants occurred, often spontaneously, in settings where crowds gathered and where a powerful figure was in attendance (such as the emperor attending the games). But just as effectively, the rhetorical force of acclamation, fueled by the presence of an authority, could help gather a crowd. Chanting offered both a demonstration of and a means for creating public unity, expressing favor or disfavor, rallying support or opposition. It was a way of meeting and greeting the powerful with a display of parallel power. Acclamations

65 This discussion draws on Laura S. Lieber, “With One Voice: Elements of Acclamation in Early Jewish Liturgical Poetry,” Harvard Theological Review 111.3 (2018): 401–​424. See also Eva von Contzen, “Embodiment and Joint Attention: An Enactive Reading of the Middle English Cycle Plays,” in Enacting the Bible in Medieval and Early Modern Drama, ed. Eva von Contzen and Chanita Goodblatt (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2020), 43–​62. 66 J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Antioch: City and Imperial Administration in the Late Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 209. Also note Jaclyn Maxwell, Christianization and Communication in Late Antiquity: John Chrysostom and His Congregation in Antioch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), esp. 42–​64, and Peter N. Bell, Social Conflict in the Age of Justinian: Its Nature, Management, and Mediation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), who uses the term “acclamation culture” to describe late antiquity.

Sounds, SightLines, and Senses  315 were a nimble medium, easily adapted to diverse occasions; as Aldrete states, “Verbal formulas allowed large numbers of people to communicate directly with a minimum of planning . . . acclamations could serve as powerful vehicles of spontaneous expressions because, within the basic structures of acclamations, words could easily be altered to convey a variety of messages.”67 The rhythmic nature of the chants, which often verged upon verse, further assisted the participation of crowds, enabling people quickly and forcefully to join spontaneous acclamations.68 Crowds, alert to the potential for acclamations—​much like audiences at modern rallies, revivals, protests, and sporting events—​were evidently quick to join chants (and associated practices such as rhythmic clapping), which sometimes arose spontaneously and in other cases may have been orchestrated by partisan claques, whose leaders functioned as literal cheerleaders.69 In a dynamic still evident in ecclesial contexts—​particularly the preaching practices of some Protestant denominations—​the unrehearsed and spontaneous give and take between speaker and congregation (“call and response”) offers perhaps the closest analogy to ancient acclamations, including the religious context and overtones that would have colored ancient spectacles, including plays, gladiatorial games, and civic installations.70 Experienced audiences come anticipating and prepared to participate in the sermon, while novice audiences, unfamiliar with the customs of the dialogical performance, may

67 Aldrete, Gestures and Acclamations in Ancient Rome, 129 and 130. 68 On “speech at volume,” see Susan Ashbrook Harvey, “Patristic Worlds,” in Patristic Studies in the Twenty-​First Century: Proceedings of an International Conference to Mark the 50th Anniversary of the International Association for Patristic Studies, ed. Brouria Bitton-​Ashkelony, Theodore de Bruyn, and Carol Harrison (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2015), 25–​53. 69 See Averil Cameron, The Later Roman Empire, AD 284–​430 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 176; Alan Cameron, Circus Factions, 157–​229; and Garrett G. Fagan, The Lure of the Arena: Social Psychology and the Crowd at the Roman Games (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 121–​154. On the visual depictions of acclamation in the context of games (but also beyond), note Katherine M. D. Dunbabin, “Athletes, Acclamations, and Imagery from the End of Antiquity,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 30 (2017): 151–​174. As Dunbabin notes, visual depictions of athletes have the effect of turning viewers of the images into “spectators” at the imagined game, and images of games often contain the text of acclamations such as “invicta Roma!” See also Charlotte Roueché, “Acclamations in the Later Roman Empire: New Evidence from Aphrodisias,” Journal of Roman Studies 74 (1984): 181–​189, and Roueché, her full study of the topic based on inscriptions from Aphrodisias, Performers and Partisans at Aphrodisias in the Roman and Late Roman Period (London: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, 1993). 70 On call-​and-​response singing and chanting, with a focus on modern practices, see Ted Gioia, Work Songs (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006); Robin Sylvan, Traces of the Spirit: The Religious Dimensions of Popular Song (New York: NYU Press, 2002); Noriko Manabe, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Protest Music after Fukushima (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); and Evans E. Crawford and Thomas H. Troeger, The Hum: Call and Response in African American Preaching (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995).

316  Staging the Sacred find themselves adrift.71 It is worth noting, in light of the discussions concerning hymnody, that complexity did not inhibit participation. As Williams writes, To participate even in a complex acclamation required no great expertise or any substantial preparation. . . . Such rhythms and formulas were already familiar to virtually everyone in the empire, whether from theater songs or the popular songs that derived from them, or from participation in previous acclamations.72

In a variety of contexts, from entertainment venues to religious worship to civic and political occasions, people expected to make their voices heard, and as the visual and archaeological record indicates, they could also expect their voices to be recorded and preserved.73 Oratory, theater, and religious rites coexisted in the public square alongside a range of other civic activities. Acclamation was a significant component of the soundscape of antiquity, and all evidence points to a widespread popular familiarity with the practice—​a commonplace performative competency. In one passage, Libanius suggests that skillful delivery was a primary attraction for audiences of declamation; he notes, “Some came to listen to (my) declamations, but the majority came merely to observe my gestures in delivery, for the Senate [of Constantinople] there was for the most part drawn from the army rather than from the schools.”74 The orator’s audience here is not the highly cultured, superbly educated elite but more “common”—​politically powerful but drawn from the army; as a result, he claims, they attend more to his gestures than his rhetoric, to his body rather than his words. We may hear in this an echo of Libanius’ claim that his delivery was, perhaps, overly dramatic: “Before now,” he confesses in his treatise defending dancers, “I have had fun poked at me as being more of an

71 Tacitus describes a group of rural Italians compelled at sword point to attend, and appreciate, a theatrical performance by Nero; these rustics, unlike the Roman plebs, were unfamiliar with the norms of urban acclamation (“not competent to their degrading task [labori inhonesto]”) and failed to participate in the complex acclamations of the customary audience. As Tacitus describes them, “They flagged with inexperienced hands; they deranged the experts” (Ann. 16:5; LCL 322, pp. 342–​ 343). The inexperience of these rustics stands in contrast to the skill of the urban plebs who, as Aldrete notes, “became particularly adept at learning and using complex rhythmic formulas, both those that were verbal and those that involved clapping” (Gestures and Acclamations, 146). 72 Michael Stuart Williams, “Hymns as Acclamations: The Case of Ambrose of Milan,” Journal of Late Antiquity 6.1 (2013): 118. 73 See Roueché, “Acclamations in the Later Roman Empire,” 186–​187. 74 Libanius Or. 1.76 (LCL 478, pp. 138–​139).

Sounds, SightLines, and Senses  317 actor than an orator.”75 The distinction between the two performance styles seems to reflect not only the performer’s body language but also the appeal of a lively style of delivery held for an audience. Body language spoke clearly across class lines, and the desire for positive, enthusiastic responses may well have encouraged speakers to model their delivery on that of actors. An engaging, appealing mode of performing declamation could be received by viewers (including peers and rivals) as suspiciously theatrical.76 Audiences in antiquity were not only competent as readers of gesture—​ that is, literate in body language—​but also articulate in their own verbal and physical responsiveness. Audiences reacted to theatrical performances and declamations with both verbal and physical expressions, with clapping and shouts indicating audience approval. Cicero notes, [A]‌lthough we hope to win a “Bravo, capital!” as often as possible, I don’t want too much of “Very pretty, charming!”—​albeit the actual ejaculation “Couldn’t be better!” is one I should like to hear frequently; but all the same, this applause in the middle of a speech and this unlimited praise had better have some shadow and background, to make the spot of high light appear to stand out more prominently.77

An excess of applause, Cicero suggests, diminishes its effect and suggests, we might assume, a disappointingly uncritical audience. Too much approval cheapens the response. Quintilian certainly noticed, with disapproval, the physical responsiveness of his pupils, and the dynamic between speaker and audience that encouraged unsubtle body language in declamation. He critiques overly effusive audience response, writing: We should definitely not allow boys (as happens in many teachers’ classrooms) to stand up or jump out of their seats to applaud. Even young 75 Libanius, Letters 58.4–​5 (LCL 479, pp. 32–​33). Important to note here the contextualization offered by Cribiore: “Ammianus 30.4.19 did not approve of advocates who behaved like actors by waving their arms and indulging in other gestures” (Cribiore, Libanius the Sophist, 97n86). Libanius here seems to describe himself as relatively physically expressive. 76 The disapproval in our present times of clapping in response to a well-​delivered sermon or, in some contexts, after an academic lecture, suggests the persistence of this tension. Such norms indicate that even today, effective delivery, whether by a preacher or scholar, should not be mistaken for entertainment; alternatives, such as murmurs or shouts of “amen” in a house of worship or rapping approvingly on the table in a seminar room, provide outlets for the acclamatory impulse. Politicians, by contrast, seek—​or arrange—​for applause and even standing ovations when they delivery speeches. 77 Cicero, De Or. 3.26 (LCL 349, pp. 80–​81).

318  Staging the Sacred adults, when they are listening to a speech, should be restrained in their approval. In this way, the pupil will come to depend on the teacher’s judgement, and think that he has spoken well when he approves. The extremely undesirable “humanity,” as it is now called, which consists of mutual praise without any regard to quality, is unseemly, reeks of the theater, and is quite alien to properly disciplined schools; it is also a very dangerous enemy of study, because, if there is praise on hand for every effusion, care and effort appear superfluous. . . . Nowadays however, leaning forward, all ready to go, they not only stand up at the end of every sentence, but rush forward with shouts of unseemly enthusiasm.78

What Quintilian here describes is the feedback loop between performer and audience, and particularly the way listeners’ physical responses undermine the teacher’s more restrained, dignified authority. It is clear, however, that Quintilian has made some study of audience behavior, particularly how positive responses manifested, even when he cites such customs in order to express disapproval. His prim disdain underscores how crowds encouraged vigorously physical performance through their own energetic response.79 Even Quintilian, however, acknowledged the reciprocity between performer and listener, and the essential responses that a skillful speaker sought to elicit. In a comment on the importance of rhythm and cadence in delivery, and the way in which sound cues listeners to the pace of a speech, he writes: [T]‌he ear, after following the unbroken sound of the voice and being carried along, as it were, down the stream of oratory, prefers to form its own judgement at the point when the movement has stopped and provided a moment for reflection. So there should be no harshness or abruptness where the mind, as it were, takes breath and recovers. This is where the speech

78 Quintillian, Inst. Or. 2.2.9–​12 (LCL 124, pp. 272–​273). 79 Quintilian demonstrates his knowledge of popular styles, even as he discourages it: “These people, however, also claim a reputation for ‘strong’ speaking by their delivery. They shout at every point, and bellow everything out, with ‘uplifted hand’ (as they say) [see 11.3.119; LCL 494, pp. 146–​ 147], with much running up and down, panting, gesticulating violently, and tossing their heads like madmen. Clapping your hands, stamping on the floor, striking your thigh and chest and forehead, are all wonderfully effective with the dingier part of the audience. But the educated speaker, just as he knows how to lower the tension often in his speech and constantly vary his style and arrange his material, also knows, in his delivery, how to suit his action to the tone of each part of his speech; if there is any rule which deserves to be always observed, it is to keep, and be seen to keep, within the bounds of decency.” (Inst. Or. 2.12.9–​12 [LCL 124, pp. 338–​339]).

Sounds, SightLines, and Senses  319 rests, this is what the audience is waiting for, this is where all the applause becomes vociferous.80

The listener’s ear, attuned to the speaker’s voice, instructs the hands on when to clap. Quintilian connects “the stream of oratory” to the ear, and thus mind and then the body, of the listener.81 The way the orator conveys his words—​ the cadence, breath, and rhythm of momentum and pause—​determines whether his speech receives accolades or opprobrium. Performance begets performance. This dynamic was hardly unique to oratory; every performance could be expected to generate this back and forth between speaker and spoken-​to. Lucian describes the complex physical synergy between dancer and viewer: In general, the dancer should be perfect in every point, so as to be wholly rhythmical, graceful, symmetrical, consistent, unexceptionable, impeccable, not wanting in any way, blended of the highest qualities, keen in his ideas, profound in his culture, and above all, human in his sentiments. In fact, the praise that he gets from the spectators will be consummate when each of those who behold him recognizes his own traits, or rather sees in the dancer as in a mirror his very self, with his customary feelings and actions. Then people cannot contain themselves for pleasure, and with one accord they burst into applause, each seeing the reflection of his own soul and recognizing himself.82

In this passage, Lucian stresses the emotional response that the dancer’s body elicits in his audience, who see themselves in the movements and, moved by this recognition, their own bodies answer in kind, almost involuntarily. Audiences were far from passive; they were deeply invested in the acts of hearing and seeing that were essential to enjoying performances, and they were actively involved in the performance. Written texts, of course, convey almost nothing of their delivery. We must rely, instead, on these descriptions of performances, or expressions of performers’ anticipation, pleasure, and anxiety. It is worth noting how the dynamic between performer and audience plays out even in visual arts. 80 Quintilian, Inst. Or. 9.4.61 (LCL 127, pp. 194–​195). 81 We can assume that the eye, beholding the body’s language, likewise informed physical responses. 82 Lucian, On the Dance, §81 (LCL 302, pp. 282–​283).

320  Staging the Sacred Embedded amid historical and mythical scenes, Trajan’s Column (Rome, 113 ce) presents a visual representation of the acclamation of the emperor, who is depicted giving a speech to his troops after the Roman victory over the Dacians in 102 ce.83 The positions and postures of the emperor and the people convey power (Trajan is larger than the soldiers and elevated over them), but the image also captures the bidirectional energy of the moment: the emperor and his soldiers are shown with arms and hands emphasized, the imperial speaker and his audience gaze directly at each other, and the soldiers reach out toward their leader. Two royal attachés flank the emperor but appear to speak with each other rather than participate in the spectacle; their lack of engagement in the royal speech—​perhaps embodying other activities swirling around Trajan, or simply reflecting the conventional staging of such events—​ serves to emphasize the intensity of connection between the leader and his army. While the scene is carved in stone, it conveys a welter of activity. More depictions of theater have survived than images purporting to capture oratory; many “mythological” scenes preserved on vases and ceramics may, in fact, reflect the staging of theatrical scenes (or a complicated feedback loop between stage and painting), while frescos and mosaics depicting scenes from mime and pantomime (as well as other forms of spectacle, such as chariot races) often appear in domestic settings. These images often include bands at the base that seem to represent the stage and indicate the architectural setting, and figures are posed in ways that provide schematic representation of scenes and offer epitomes of entire plays.84 As Libanius observed, in the passage quoted above, dancers often posed in ways that specifically evoked still paintings when they paused their kinetic display. Visual and performed arts resonated with each other. Most striking for the present study, however, is the way that these theatrical mosaics position the viewer as the audience: figures gaze out of the images, as if to make eye contact with the viewer—​evoking a sense of what Huskinson describes as “complicity between event and viewer that is also found in dramatic performance.”85 The body language of the figures—​whether depicting 83 Column scene 77: http://​www.traj​ans-​col​umn.org/​?page​_​id=​107#Phot​oSwi​pe15​9130​1583​297; accessed December 16, 2022. See discussion in Steven Hejmans, “Monumentalising the Ephemeral in Ancient Rome,” in Urban Dreams and Realities in Antiquity: Remains and Representations of the Ancient City (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 144–​161. 84 Huskinson, “Theatre and Performance,” and Dunbabin, Theater and Spectacle in the Art of the Roman Empire, 102–​107. 85 Huskinson, “Theatre and Performance,” 151. Earlier in her essay, Huskinson argues that visual depictions of mythological-​theatrical scenes reflect “a process of artistic composition whereby

Sounds, SightLines, and Senses  321 tragedies such as Iphigenia or Hippolytus, or comedies such as the adultery mime and satyr plays—​reflects the strong, schematic gestures associated with stage and oratory, thus engaging the viewers in a way akin to how living actors deploy their bodies to convey a range of information, including emotion, action, and power. The images physically locate the viewer as an audience, and as they often were placed in banquet rooms (themselves the site of various performances), viewers would potentially have had substantial time to contemplate the scenes, much as if they were beholding a play upon a stage. They appeal to communal familiarity with not only the content of the plays but also the body language that creates a sense of “performativity” in the images. One final illustration brings the worlds of visual depictions of theater directly into the world of religious performance: the frescoes preserved in the third-​century synagogue at Dura Europos, in modern Syria. Of particular interest here are not the passages chosen for presentation, themselves striking for their unusual diversity—​and thus reminiscent of Huqoq—​but the distinctly “frontal” presentation of the figures.86 Whether the scene depicts Pharaoh’s nude daughter rising from the Nile, the anointing of King David, the resurrection of the dry bones in Ezekiel, or the story of Esther, the figures are all depicted facing the viewer and with body language that suggests performance: Moses at the burning bush stands like an orator, the Israelites lift their arms in prayer toward the golden calf, and the Persians visibly acclaim Mordecai as Haman leads him through Susa on the king’s own steed. Each panel is not only narrative, but theatrical. What we seem to have in this instance are wall panels that draw on the presentations of stories on the stage, in a fashion not unlike what we see in houses, but here with explicitly (even triumphantly) Jewish scenes.87

essentials of the tragedy are set out in a single image” and thus have “much in common with contemporary presentations of classical tragedies by pantomimes or tragoidoi which interpreted selected ‘highlights’ of the well-​known drama which the audience would supplement from their own mythological knowledge” (144). 86 For a description of the Dura frescos, see Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeology in the Diaspora, Handbuch der Orientalistik, Part I: Der Nahe und Mittlere Osten 35 (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 119–​121. Also note Levine, The Early Synagogue, 252–​256 and, Levine, Visual Judaism, 97–​118. More comprehensively, see Sean Leatherbury, Inscribing Faith in Late Antiquity: Between Reading and Seeing (London: Routledge, 2019). 87 The bibliography on the synagogue art at Dura cannot be summarized here, but some important works relevant to the present analysis include Annabel Jane Wharton, “Good and Bad Images from the Synagogue of Dura Europos: Contexts, Subtexts, Intertexts,” Art History 17 (1994), 1–​25; Jaś Elsner, “Cultural Resistance and the Visual Image: The Case of Dura Europos,” Classical Philology 96 (2001), 269–​304; Warren G. Moon, “Nudity and Narrative: Observations on the Frescoes from the

322  Staging the Sacred This survey, cursory as it is, illustrates both popular familiarity with oratory and theatricality and orators’ familiarity with—​and responsiveness to—​ audience reactions to performance. Verbal acclamation, clapping of hands, and full-​body movement (particularly moving closer to the speaker or stage) all indicated enthusiasm or intensity of response, and such embodied language expressed the energy generated by effective rhetoric. Orators and actors, in turn, were influenced by a desire for such demonstrative approval. Performance was, for all involved, a robustly kinesthetic experience.

Hymnody Takes the Stage This survey cannot capture all the complexities of oratorical and theatrical performance in late antiquity, but it offers a sense of the larger performative context inhabited by Jews, Christians, Samaritans, and various others. This is, after all, the world in which the Emperor Julian could complain that Antioch had “more mimes than ordinary citizens,”88 and an actress could become the Empress Theodora.89 The preceding analysis articulates the norms and expectations members of diverse religious communities would have brought with them to their religious rituals, including hymnody.90 The wide diffusion of popular competency in this vast range of traditions and skills makes the assumption that hymnographers and their congregations would have not

Dura Synagogue,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 60.4 (1992): 587–​658; and Zsuzsanna Gulácsi, “Visual Catechism in Third-​Century Mesopotamia: Reassessing the Pictorial Program of the Dura-​Europos Synagogue in Light of Mani’s Book of Pictures,” Journal of Ancient Judaism 9.2 (2018): 201–​229. Also important are Dalia Tawil, “The Purim Panel in Dura in the Light of Parthian and Sasanian Art,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 38 (1979): 93–​109, and Bernard Goldman, “A Dura-​Europos Dipinto and Syrian Frontality,” Oriens Antiquus, 24 (1985), 279–​300. It is possible to see in the Dura frescoes a synthesis of Parthian styles of art and late antique Roman depictions of the stage, or a mutual affinity: formality that tells a tale. 88 Julian, Misopogon §342A and B (LCL 29, pp. 432–​433). 89 On Theodora, the wife of Justinian, see David Potter, Theodora: Actress, Empress, Saint (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). 90 The critique of theater, in particular, often stressed its associations with pagan ritual and practice but also reflected a mistrust of its persuasive—​deceptive—​mimesis (as seen in the transformation of the term “hypocrite” from its original meaning of “actor” into “poseur” or “phony”). The bibliography on antitheatric sentiments, and their complexities and nuances, is extensive. See Jonas A. Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981); Donnalee Dox, The Idea of the Theater in Latin Christian Thought: Augustine to the Fourteenth Century (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2004), 11–​42; Leyerle, Theatrical Shows and Ascetic Lives; Webb, Demons and Dancers; and Loren R. Spielman, Jews and Entertainment in the Ancient World, TSAJ 181, (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020).

Sounds, SightLines, and Senses  323 only been able to recognize and deploy these techniques but also taken these norms of delivery and participation for granted. Few of even society’s elites received a full oratorical education, what Cribiore dubs “the long path”; most parents would have felt satisfied enabling their sons to complete “the short path” of a functional, less extensive education.91 One reason for the popularity of declamation as entertainment in late antiquity was likely the fact that “education was deeply ingrained in the texture of social and cultural life”—​meaning that many viewers would have enough experience with the art form’s demands to appreciate skilled performance and critique a flawed one.92 Furthermore, while many (even most) people in late antiquity may have been unlettered, or marginally literate, we have already seen that orators, actors, and theologians took for granted that their listeners possessed broad familiarity with conventional plots and ways of conveying them. Declamation and theater constituted a curriculum of their own. Hymnody offered religious institutions the potential to use the tools and techniques of entertainment to counter-​program other forms of entertainment: the poems studied here synthesize the existential importance of liturgy with the sophistication and refined technique of oratory, augmented with the broad appeal and emotionality of theater. Liturgical performance possessed an affinity for oratory and acting that was not only conceptual but also physical. The most basic staging of hymnic performance would have relied on a single performer (the poet or the interpreter of the poet’s “script”) to bring all the diverse voices, perspectives, and characters in a hymn to life, like a skilled public speaker or pantomime; a choir, or an attuned congregation, might have functioned like a chorus, adding an additional layer of complexity to the performance. The hymnist would have performed his poems before audiences familiar with a range of narrative traditions—​not only the cultural canon of Hellenism and but also the traditions (and, in some instances or at least at some level, the texts) of their scriptures—​and the “speech” of body language and gesture. We can conjecture, at least for the sake of imagining the otherwise unrecoverable elements of liturgical performance, that poet, performer, and congregation would have valued memory and recall in ways that enhanced both the 91 Raffaela Cribiore, The School of Libanius in Late Antique Antioch (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 162–​181. On the important question of the formal education of women, see Raffaela Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind, 74–​101. 92 Ibid., 239.

324  Staging the Sacred delivery of lengthy poems and the active participation of the audience by means of refrains.93 Finally, while musical instruments were not a conventional part of church or synagogue services in antiquity, we can hypothesize that members of the choir or congregation might have supplied informal percussive rhythm—​ out of habit, unconsciously, or intentionally—​ by means of hand clapping or foot tapping, during certain kinds of hymns or poetic performances. Such rhythmic supplementation would have echoed the kroupezion (in Latin, scabillum, a kind of foot clapper) employed by accompanists during theatrical performances, albeit informally and reliant purely on the percussive possibility of the human body and the acoustic possibilities of the space.94 Far less speculatively, refrains express a synergy between the “buy-​in” expected by the liturgy and the conventions of “secular” forms of public speech. Both performer and audience, in any case, would share a common competency in both the content of performance and the mechanics of its delivery. Before we examine specific means by which performers of hymnody in late antiquity may have deployed performative techniques also employed by orators and actors, and how audiences were engaged and responded, we must attend to the significance of performance space. A performer’s delivery, and an audience’s reception, is profoundly shaped by ambience, acoustics, and lines of sight. Late antiquity witnessed innovations in architecture and technology that were specifically designed to enhance performance, and these improvements are evident in houses of worship. After an exploration of the spatial component of performance, we will turn to an examination of liturgical poems in order to see if we can discern traces, however faint, of these essential dynamics between active bodies in physical spaces, key elements

93 Consider, for example, Cribiore’s observation: “Whereas mnemotechnics were taught in rhetorical schools as an aid to the future orator, who would need to deliver long speeches with unfailing accuracy, concern for improving memory and retrieval showed at every stage of education. A more capacious and elastic memory had to be nourished with tender care from the early years of childhood” (ibid., 166–​167). 94 The foot clapper, usually worn by the aulete (flute/​pipe player), was commonly depicted in art, including sculpture, mosaics, and paintings. A comprehensive overview of the instruments employed during mime and pantomime performance can be found in John G. Landels, Music in Ancient Greece and Rome (London: Routledge, 1999). Also see Eleonora Racconi, “Music and Dance in Greece and Rome,” in A Companion to Ancient Aesthetics, ed. Pierre Destrée and Penelope Murray (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 81–​93. Also note Dunbabin, Theater and Spectacle in the Art of the Roman Empire, 86. We can imagine that a poetic unit such as the rahit (“runner”) in some Hebrew poems might have lent themselves to some form of rhythmic accompaniment, even unconsciously.

Sounds, SightLines, and Senses  325 of context that in some fashion reflected and shaped the popularity of such works among the people.

Conceiving of Space We know, intuitively, that performances take place in a performance space. Even when we read a text that is devoid of spatial cues, we still supply at some level the stage, podium, or pulpit from which the words emerge with our imaginations. Our minds supply, however, incompletely and imaginatively, the implied or specified speaker, audience, and scene.95 And yet, when we hold the written traces of a performance in our hands—​whether transcript, script, or liturgical text—​we may too easily substitute our imaginings and neglect the significant spatial components of lived performance: who could hear the speaker or not hear him; who could see the speaker or not see him. Space grants access to the words and experience. The most skillful delivery can be undermined by inferior acoustics, and the most elegant gestures blocked by poor sightlines. While modern digital technologies confront us with new awareness of the role of the mind in spatial experience, until quite recently, physical context mediated the conversation between speaker and audience and fundamentally shaped the dynamic between them. Architects, builders, performers, and audiences in antiquity were well aware of the significance of the built environment. The material artifacts and monumental structures from Greece, the Hellenistic world, the Roman Republic, and the Roman Empire all attest to thoughtful attention to acoustics and sight lines in building, and an appreciation for how space affected delivery and reception. Form fit function, which means we see—​and hear—​a variety of possibilities. Space reifies power structures (the powerful occupy positions that afford better hearing and seeing of the performers but also arrange various social classes in relationship to each other) and conveys unspoken messages. But space is functional as well as 95 Digital performances and the construction of virtual spatiality provide new frontiers for exploring this topic; studies are numerous, but see Image—​Action—​Space: Situating the Screen in Visual Practice, ed. Luisa Feiersinger, Kathrin Friedrich, and Moritz Queisner (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2018); Jeremy Aroles, “Performance and Becoming: Rethinking Nativeness in Virtual Communities,” Games and Culture 13 (2018): 423–​439; and Michael Saker and Jordan Firth, “Coextensive Space: Virtual Reality and the Developing Relationship between the Body, the Digital and Physical Space,” Media, Culture, & Society 42 (2020): 1427–​1442.

326  Staging the Sacred symbolic; it conveys sound and imagery as well as encoded signifiers. Space is also dynamic: buildings are instruments to be tuned and played, and the configurations of people within them. A packed space, bodies pressed up against bodies, has a power and intensity of its own; the distinction between a crowd and mob can be subtle, and moods can shift in response to a single speaker.96 Theatrical performances in antiquity occurred in a range of spaces and venues: indoors and outdoors, in streets, outside buildings, in public forums and agorae but also homes, and in purpose-​built spaces.97 Built structures themselves could be durable, permanent sites of the kind that have lasted down to the present, temporary stages taken down as quickly as they went up, and combinations of both. Many performances took place near or within sacred precincts: the steps of places of worship (such as the Temple of Castor on the Forum); theaters, where religious rituals also took place and sacred items were displayed; and in front of or within Christian and Jewish houses of worship.98 The diversity of locations and structures reflects the ubiquity of speech and performance in antiquity, but as we will also see, these sacred sites reflected a shared awareness of and appreciation for good acoustics, functional sight lines, and audience capacity. The incomplete state of extant monumental remains, let alone the ephemeral nature of impromptu or temporary performance spaces, makes evaluating the visual and acoustic experience of oratory, theater, and liturgy challenging, but—​particularly with the rise of digital modeling technologies—​it is now far more possible than had once been the case. Next, we will summarize some of the key findings of scholars (usually teams of material scientists, archaeologists, performers, and historians) so that we may gain some sense of the spatial-​ performative context in which hymnody was experienced. 96 For an example of the kind of study that can be done, taking spatial configurations into account, see Wendy Mayer, “John Chrysostom: Extraordinary Preacher, Ordinary Audience,” in Preacher and Audience: Studies in Early Christian and Byzantine Homiletics, ed. Mary Cunningham and Pauline Allen (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 105–​137. 97 Of particular relevance, see Luke Lavan’s recent work, Public Space in the Late Antique City, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill 2021), esp. vol.1, pp. 150–​234 on street processions. This study attends to the commonly overlooked locations such as public squares, markets, and streets. Also note his essay, “The Agorai of Antioch and Constantinople as Seen by John Chrysostom,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 50 (2007): 157–​166. 98 In addition to works already cited, on the ritual use of steps in antiquity, see Angela Bellia, “Monumental Steps and Theatral Steps as Sacred Spaces for Music and Dance Performances,” in Musical and Choral Performance Spaces in the Ancient World, ed. Angela Bellia (Pisa and Rome: Instituti Editoriali e Poligrafici Internazionali, 2020), 75–​75.

Sounds, SightLines, and Senses  327

Public Forums Oratory can be powerful—​the words of Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, Jr., and John F. Kennedy resonate even now—​but when the speech took place in the time before microphones and electric amplifiers existed, one may wonder: How many people actually heard these moving words when they were spoken? We may question eyewitness accounts of Lincoln at Gettysburg that assert two thousand people listened raptly to the president’s address; surely that figure represents a pious embellishment after the fact, with crowd size inflated by a sense of existential consequence. And yet some studies have suggested that such a figure is, if not demonstrable, at least plausible.99 Similarly, the open-​air, amphitheater-​style Globe Theatre in London likely held three thousand or so spectators in Shakespeare’s day.100 Even more striking, models of the Roman forum suggest that staggeringly large audiences could have heard a trained speaker declaiming at the Rostra or from the steps of the Temple of Castor.101 Concerning oratory at the Rostra (in its early configuration, facing the Curia) in the Forum, Holter et al. estimate: Allowing for four persons per square metre . . . a speaker in the Republic would have been able to reach approximately 10,600 people easily and, under ideal conditions, an audience of approximately 19,000 people. . . . [T]‌he speaker, standing on a platform that was about two metres in height, was visible to many members of the audience, even those standing further away, as the audience was gathered in an area inclining upwards from the platform.102

99 E.g., in popular media: https://​lang​uage​log.ldc.upenn.edu/​nll/​?p=​4038. 100 See Ronnie Mulryne and Margaret Shewring, “The Once and Future Globe,” in Shakespeare’s Globe Rebuilt, ed. J. R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 15–​26; the seating figure is found on p. 21. 101 Among the most important recent studies are Kamil Kopij and Adam Pilch, “The Acoustics of Contiones, or How Many Romans Could Have Heard Speakers?,” Open Archaeology 5 (2019): 340–​349; Susanne Muth, “Historische Dimensionen des gebauten Raumes—​Das Forum Romanum als Fallbeispiel,” in Medien der Geschichte–​Antikes Griechenland und Rom, ed. O. Dally, T. Hölscher, S. Muth, and R. Schneider (Berlin-​Boston: De Gruyter, 2014), pp. 285–​329; and Erika Holter, Susanne Muth, and Sebastian Schwesinger, “Sounding Out Public Space in Republican Rome,” in Sound and the Ancient Senses, ed. Shane Butler and Sarah Nooster (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2019), 44–​60. The general acoustic properties of the Roman Forum are being investigated under the rubric “Auralisation of Ancient Spaces” by the Image Knowledge Gestaltung at Humboldt-​University Berlin; see C. Kassung and S. Schwesinger, “How to Hear the Forum Romanum. On Historical Realities and Aural Augmentation,” in Kultur und Informatik. Augmented Reality, ed. C. Busch, and J. Sieck (Glückstadt, Germany: Hülsbusch, 2016), 41–​54. 102 Hotler, Muth, and Schwesinger, “Sounding Out Public Space,” 53–​54. The authors note that when the Rostra was reconfigured in the later republic, even larger crowds could be accommodated,

328  Staging the Sacred For comparison, this capacity equals that of many major European soccer arenas, and midsize American baseball fields. The Temple of Castor offered speakers an even more capacious venue, in that it could accommodate 11,800–​23,600 people in the authors’ best-​case scenario. Importantly, the Temple of Castor elevated the speaker even more than the platform of the Rostra; in the analysis of Holter and her coauthors, “[optimizing] the visibility of the speaker in this manner must in turn have had a positive impact on the comprehensibility of his speech.”103 Kopij and Pilch, in a similar study, reach more conservative (although, given their mathematical modeling, more precise) conclusions. They find: The results for the most obvious case, with typical audience noise and mean density are: for the temple 1284 people, and for the rostra 1323. With moderated density: for the temple 1383, and for the rostra 1423. . . . For an extreme situation, when all listeners are quiet, with no wind or rain, we calculated a low-​level ambient noise case, where 5929 people could have understood the speaker at Temple of Castores, and even 6651 at the rostra. . . . The podium of the Temple of Castores seemed to be better for maximising the crowd size when the background noise was high than the rostra—​a place built specifically to function as a speaking platform. However, the situation is reversed when the background noise is low or typical.104

Even this far more conservative estimate of practical capacity, which draws on a different technical model than that used by Holter and Muth, suggests that a trained speaker in an outdoor venue could expect to be heard and understood by a significant crowd. Both models, it bears noting, are quite sophisticated, in that they account for not only the built structures in a given area (Holter et al. note that as much as 90% of heard sound is reflected rather than direct) but also the consequences of crowd size, levels of ambient noise, weather effects, and the interplay of vision on audition. Audiences, through

but fewer could hear or see well: “approximately 9200 people of the assembly can understand a speech without great effort” (55). 103 Hotler, Muth, and Schwesinger, “Sounding Out Public Space,” 58. The perception that seeing a speaker improves audio comprehension is known as the McGurk effect (also known as the McGurk illusion). See Harry McGurk and John MacDonald, “Hearing Lips and Seeing Voices,” Nature 264 (1976): 746–​748, and Agnès Alsius, Martin Paré, and Kevin G. Munhall, “Forty Years after Hearing Lips and Seeing Voices: The McGurk Effect Revisited,” Multisensory Research 31 (2018): 111–​144. 104 Kopij and Pilch, “The Acoustics of Contiones,” 346–​347.

Sounds, SightLines, and Senses  329 their noise or attentiveness, could readily affect whether a speaker was heard or, in effect, shouted off the stage.105 Such studies are preliminary and illustrate both the challenges and potential for new digital modeling methods in the study of antiquity, but they nonetheless suggest that orators could communicate with audiences of remarkably large sizes. These examples of declamatory speaking spaces feature an elevated, trained speaker addressing a crowd in a largely open, unroofed, outdoor setting. We have some evidence indicating that oratorical training anticipated spatial elements of formal performance settings or reflect a knowledge that pedagogy benefited from such practical spaces. Cribiore summarizes the evidence: Archaeologists have identified a group of fourth-​century houses built on the slopes of the Areopagus in Athens as possibly belonging to teachers and used for teaching. These four houses were distinguished by their exceptional size in relation to an average Athenian home and were rich in sculptures. In all of them, the focal point is a large room preceded by a peristyle court and ending usually in an apse with niches for statuary. Although the apse is not present in the largest of these houses, its wide hall with niches suitable for sculptures seems to have had the same function as the apsidal rooms. It is likely that these halls were theatra used for teaching and lecturing.106

In Antioch, Libanius used the city’s main hall, which featured “a covered lecture room (theatron)” as a space in which his students could practice.107 Teachers of oratory both needed to hear and be heard—​and to model appropriate techniques for speaking at volume in venues such as an open forum—​ and to offer students opportunities to practice speaking in such settings. Learning to speak in a way that hundreds, even thousands, could hear you—​ and ideally find their attention captured and held in rapt silence—​would benefit immensely from access to spaces that in some fashion mimicked the

105 We note the example recounted by Cicero: “Milo appeared on February 7th. Pompey spoke—​or rather tried to speak, for no sooner was he on his feet than Clodius’ gang raised a clamor, and all through the speech he was interrupted not merely by shouting but by booing and abuse. When he wound up (and I will say he showed courage; he was not put off, delivered all he had to say, sometimes even managing to get silence by his personal authority)—​well, when he wound up, Clodius rose” (Letter to Quintus 2.3.2 [LCL 462, pp. 88–​89]). 106 Cribiore, School of Libanius, 45. 107 Libanius Or. 22.31 (LCL 452, pp. 398–​399); see Cribiore, School of Libanius, 44.

330  Staging the Sacred physical experience of “professional” venues. The public forum offered the speaker a capacious venue; the rostrum, or temple steps, or temporary elevated platform can be understood as a component of a speaker’s vocal “instrument.” Voice, body, and stage together constitute a tool that could be played well or poorly, but one succeeded only with mastery of all the potential of each element. One got to the Rostra the same way one gets to Carnegie Hall: practice, practice, practice.

Theaters In their analysis of the auditory potential of the Roman forum, Holter et al. (developing the work of coauthor Susanne Muth from 2014) attended to the factor of the speaker’s visibility. Sight lines matter not only on account of the McGurk effect—​the illusion that we hear speech better when we can see the speaker108—​but also because visibility of the performer’s body is vital to the effectiveness of body language and gesture in oratorical performance. The configuration of space could aid or impede communication in practical terms but also reinforce more subtle elements of performer–​audience dynamics. In particular, it is worth noting the observation of twentieth-​century theater designer Iain Mackintosh: When an audience looks down on the actor, it is more likely that its attention will have been precisely predetermined by a director who has organized the pattern of production. The audience looking down will then be contemplating the performer critically, as did the director at the rehearsal. . . . If, on the other hand, the audience looks up to the actor, the actor is in control, can elicit responses and can manage the audience because he or she is, quite simply, in the dominant physical position. Actors as well as stand-​up comedians generally prefer this.109

Spatial configuration of performances could be symbolic and could subtly or not so subtly reify broader social hierarchies. At the same time, the physical layout of performance space directly influenced the dynamic between performer and audience. Orators, speaking from a raised position, embody

108 109

See n. 103 in this chapter. Iain Mackintosh, Architecture, Actor, & Audience (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 135.

Sounds, SightLines, and Senses  331 a position of power; actors, occupying an elevated platform but addressing a diversely positioned audience (at least in those venues featuring what we might call amphitheater-​style seating), would have had an easier time gaining and keeping their audiences’ attention—​the seating focused the gaze upon the stage—​but their physical positioning would have underscored their explicit dependence on keeping their audiences happy.110 Studies of theater acoustics have, understandably, focused on structures sufficiently intact and distinctive to enable researchers to study their physical properties. The ubiquity of theaters throughout the empire, however, and the variety of structures used for theatrical performance (whether purpose-​ built, adapted, or improvised) complicate generalizations.111 That said, the general body of evidence indicates concern for and attention to the auditory and visual properties of performance spaces, and the use of technologies that would not have been limited to such structures. Theater performances were hugely popular throughout the Empire, so performance spaces were commonplace. Indeed, laws regulated not only theater performances but even seating.112 Most cities of any note had a purpose-​built 110 On the physical similarities between amphitheaters and synagogues, we should note that some Jewish communities referred to their synagogues as “amphitheaters,” perhaps in part due to the shape of the building and thus the seating arrangements employed; inscriptions in Greek at Berenice (Cyrene) offer particularly intriguing evidence (CIG III, 5361–​5362; see Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, 96–​104, and Spielman, Jews and Entertainment in the Ancient World, 234–​235). See, too, Reinhard Pummer, “Samaritan Synagogues and Jewish Synagogues: Similarities and Differences,” in Jews, Christians, and Polytheists in the Ancient Synagogue: Cultural Interaction in the Greco-​Roman Period, ed. Steven Fine (New York: Routledge, 1999), 118–​160, esp. pp. 110 and 134, where he discusses Epiphanius’ statement: “There is also a place of prayer at Shechem, the town now called Neapolis, about two miles out of town on the plain. It has been set up theater-​fashion, outdoors in the open air, by the Samaritans who mimic all the customs of the Jews” (Panarion 80.1.5). Levine describes this passage as “engaging though enigmatic” (The Ancient Synagogue, 325n50). 111 On the diffusion of theaters in the Roman Empire, with particular attention to their use, disuse, and adaptation, see Douglas R. Underwood, (Re)using Ruins: Public Building in the Cities of the Late Antique West, A. D. 300–​600 (Leiden: Brill, 2019), particularly Chapter 3, “Spectacle Buildings” (pp. 90–​150). Chapter 1, “Theatre and Audience,” contains a very useful overview of all the component pieces of a theater and their functions (pp. 1–​10). For the Near Eastern context, which Underwood does not stress, see Alexandra Retzleff, “Near Eastern Theatres in Late Antiquity,” Phoenix 57 (2003): 115–​138 and 189–​194. 112 E.g., the Lex Roscia Theatralis of 67 bce reserved the first fourteen rows of seats for members of the equestrian class, provided the individuals had not themselves appeared in the arena or on the stage—​itself a telling indicator of fluidity between the “theatrical” class and the “oratorical” class, underscored by Augustus’ prohibition against the sons and grandsons of senators and equites from the stage. See Elizabeth Rawson, “Discrimina ordinum: The Lex Julia Theatralis,” Papers of the British School at Rome 55 (1987): 83–​114, and D. H. Berry, “Equester ordo tuus est: Did Cicero Win His Cases because of His Support for the Equites?,” Classical Quarterly 53 (2003): 222–​234. Also note the scene depicted in Quintilian: “A man who had performed before the praetor in his private garden, but had never appeared on the public stage, took a seat in the first fourteen front rows. The accusation is: ‘You exercised the profession of actor!’ The rebuttal is: ‘No, I did not.’ The question is: ‘What is meant by “exercising the profession of actor”?’ If he is accused under the theatre law, the rebuttal will come

332  Staging the Sacred theater structure, which often preserved traces of adaptation and reuse. To some extent, the material evidence indicates the economic prosperity of late antiquity, but monumental artifacts also permit scholars to evaluate changes in their functionality over time. The sheer quantity of theaters from the ancient world—​from ancient Greece to the early Byzantine period—​permit researchers to evaluate changes in technology and fashion over time.113 In their research on the sound properties of these structures, Chourmouziadou and Kang conclude, “For occupied conditions, the acoustic indices in the Roman theatre were rather good, close to those in modern theatres.”114 Farnetani et al., in a complementary study, similarly note that “even if the theaters have no ceiling, which can be replaced by an ideal surface of unit absorption, the reverberation time in Roman theaters is similar to closed theaters, but in this case the clarity is higher and the sound strength is very low.”115 Buildings were designed to facilitate specific acoustic purposes. The structural emphasis on facilitating auditory clarity suggests concern with comprehension of speech. Furthermore, these authors observe how other innovations (beyond the addition of roofs of various kinds, which is attested), such as the increased dimension of the stage building and steeply sloped seating, “helped the listeners with the sound strength” and “is consistent with the cited strategy used by ancient designers to optimize the listening conditions at farthest seats.”116 Underwood notes that acoustic features were often built of wood (and thus less likely to survive and more easily changed in subsequent alterations to buildings); he writes, “The sloping wooden roof over the stage was probably a common feature. . . . The roof was presumably built for acoustic purposes, for the same reason the stage floor and the doors of the scaenae frons were usually of wood.”117 Structures were built with sound in mind.

from the defendant; if he has been thrown out of the theatre and brings an action for injuries, the rebuttal will come from the accuser” (Inst. Or. 3.6.20 [LCL 125, pp. 56–​57]). 113 See K. Chourmouziadou and J. Kang, “Acoustic Evolution of Ancient Greek and Roman Theatres,” Applied Acoustics 69 (2008): 514–​529; Chourmouziadou and Kang, “Acoustic Evolution of Ancient Theaters and Effects of Scenery,” in New Research on Acoustics, ed. Benjamin N. Weiss (New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2008), 221–​242, and Andrea Farnetani, Nicola Prodi, and Roberto Pompoli, “On the Acoustics of Ancient Greek and Roman Theaters,” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 124 (2008): 1557–​1567. More generally, see Archaeoacoustics, ed. Chris Scarre and Graeme Lawson (Cambridge: Mcdonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2006). 114 Chourmouziadou and Kang, “Acoustic Evolution of Ancient Greek and Roman Theatres,” 527. 115 Farnetani, Prodi, and Pompoli, “On the Acoustics of Ancient Greek and Roman Theaters,” 1565. 116 Ibid., 1566. 117 Underwood, (Re)using Ruins, 8. Underwood summarizes: “Acoustics were taken quite seriously by the ancients to judge by Plutarch’s story that when Alexander the Great wished the architect

Sounds, SightLines, and Senses  333 Nor are modern scholars the only writers attuned to the acoustic properties of ancient theaters. In addition to built-​in features such as walls, seats, and roofs, the Roman architect and engineer Vitruvius (first c. bce) notes that mobile, adaptable, and adjustable devices—​vessels (echea) placed in niches (cellae)—​were used for amplification. Indicating an awareness of performers’ sensitivity to acoustics, and ways in which audiences may take them for granted, Vitruvius goes on to note: Someone will say, perhaps, that many theatres are built every year at Rome without taking any account of these matters. He will be mistaken in this. All public wooden theatres have several wooden floors which must naturally resound. We can observe this also from those who sing to the zither, who when they wish to sing with a louder tone, turn to the wooden scenery, and, with this help, gain resonance for their voice. But when theatres are built of solids, that is of rubble walling, stone or marble which cannot resound, the use of bronze vases is to be followed.118

In short, Roman architects and engineers, like their predecessors and their patrons, were attentive to the function for which theaters were built, and they designed and built performance spaces in ways that facilitated their primary purpose: enabling actors to be seen and heard by large audiences. The fact that social concerns such as class and power could, in turn, be made visible and regulated in such spaces was an additional benefit. The flexibility and adaptability of purpose-​built spaces indicate a dynamic approach to performance: wooden structures could be installed, removed, and altered fairly easily, while hollow vessels could be added or removed—​all in order to fine-​tune resonance. Such adaptability would itself have permitted responsiveness to factors such as larger or smaller audiences, as human bodies act as “absorptive” surfaces. The popularity of temporary stages and improvised performance spaces no doubt made use

of the theatre at Pella in Macedon to make the proskenion of bronze he refused on the grounds that it would spoil the sound of the actors’ voices” (9). 118 Vitruvius, De Arch. 5.7 (LCL 251, pp. 280–​281). Vitruvius also notes in the next section that when the theater at Corinth was destroyed in 146 bc by Mummius, he brought its bronze sounding vessels to Rome (De Arch. 5.8 [LCL 251, pp. 280–​283]). In addition to the discussion in Underwood, (Re)using Ruins (pp. 8–​9), see Frank B. Sear, “Vitruvius and Roman Theater Design,” American Journal of Archaeology 94.2 (1990): 249–​258.

334  Staging the Sacred of similar techniques but, as Sander Goldberg notes, “Temporary stages left no footprint for archaeology to discover.” Goldberg goes on to note, however, that “people at street level expected unhindered views.119 Given the presence of acoustically and visually appropriate public speaking venues in city squares, it is conceivable that theatrical performances could easily have taken place with minimal structural changes to the venue—​perhaps the addition of a stage or expansion of a platform, or the erection of some kind of backdrop—​particularly when compared with more structurally involved entertainments such as games. Indeed, spaces analogous to the Roman Forum through the Mediterranean world, namely, markets and city squares, would have been natural locations for performances given their foot traffic of potential customers and their flexible, adaptable infrastructure.120 Performance requires not so much a theater as a stage.121 The possibility of common use of impromptu or temporary venues amplifies the ephemeral nature of our evidence for performance in antiquity; not only are elements such as intonation and gesture impossible to capture on the page, but the spaces in which performances took place also may have often themselves been transient. The intrinsically fleeting nature of the live performance of speech, dance, drama, and music, however, does not diminish the need for performers to connect with their audiences: the imperative for actors, orators, and others to be seen and heard. Performance spaces, it seems, were as dynamic as the bodies that inhabited them.

119 Sander M. Goldberg, “Theater without Theaters: Seeing Plays the Roman Way,” TAPA 148.1 (2018): 149, 155. Goldberg is highly attentive to the sensory imperatives of the audience, noting, “A genuine audience would want to hear as well as see a production. Plautine wordplay loses its effect if not heard. So do the psychological subtleties of Terence’s monologues, while the very inclusion of the tibicen in the surviving didascaliae testifies to the importance of music in shaping the overall dramatic experience” (157). Addressing the challenges of reproducing and analyzing the full experience of antiquity, but also the promise of using technology in the study of antiquity, Goldberg continues, “Our VR models are silent and remain in this respect incomplete, in part because the acoustic properties of the reconstructed space remain largely conjectural, and in part because the ambient noise of the forum and the specific sounds to be projected from the stage, spoken or sung, vocal or instrumental, are difficult to hypothesize . . . yet even with this limitation, the current models literally open new perspectives on familiar arguments and stimulate the formation of new ones” (157–​158). 120 See Fergus Millar, who writes, “It was a crucially important characteristic of Roman public life that a wide variety of events took place, on no clearly regulated timetable, in the same physical space, the Forum” (The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998], 147). 121 In this, the Romans anticipated the idea of performance articulated by Peter Brook, the modern theater and film director, in his controversial work of performance theory, The Empty Space (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968).

Sounds, SightLines, and Senses  335

Churches The acoustic and visual functionality of performance spaces may seem incidental to the spiritual, aesthetic, and cultural concerns that motivated architects and builders of sacred spaces in antiquity, but evidence indicates that Jews, Samaritans, and Christians understood the importance of structural design and leveraged its potential to great effect. Before we examine the data on Christian, Samaritan, and Jewish structures, it bears remembering that then (as now), such buildings are often complicated compounds of diverse spaces and structures serving a variety of purposes: an enclosed building may dominate a location, but it will also often feature a square or public courtyard, which could have significant capacity, as well as public spaces (built or incidental) beyond the actual structure, such as the liminal space between the built spaces and the street, and the street itself.122 Rituals, which likely included the singing of hymns as part of their liturgy, made use of various kinds of spaces; e.g., they may have begun in the enclosed sanctuary, processed out to the courtyard, and continued into the street (and perhaps returning back in a complete circuit); indeed, for churches and synagogues, much as for the Forum, market squares, and theaters, the boundary between “sacred” and “secular” space was at most blurry and largely nonexistent (or at least not meaningful). A discussion of the acoustics of religious spaces (specifically, synagogues and churches) adds a third kind of space to the forums and theaters detailed in this chapter: all of these environments made use of the acoustic and visual properties of an enclosed structure, built of stone and wood, often highly ornate, and fully roofed. That is, forums, theaters, and sanctuaries constituted altogether highly resonant spaces. Acoustics have proven an intriguing topic for scholars of early Christianity and the Byzantine period in recent years.123 Two teams of researchers have 122 On “urban planning” that takes performative infrastructure into account, see the discussions in Richard Krautheimer, “Success and Failure in Late Antique Church Planning,” in Age of Spirituality: A Symposium, ed. Kurt Weitzmann and Hans-​Georg Beck (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1980), 121–​139; Douglas Boin, Ostia in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); and Fikret Yegül and Diane Favro, Roman Architecture and Urbanism: From the Origins to Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). Also note the discussion of city spaces in Owen Ewald, “Imperial Roman Cities as Places of Memory in Augustine’s Confessions,” in Urban Dreams and Realities in Antiquity: Remains and Representations of the Ancient City, ed. Adam Kemezis (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 273–​293. 123 For a broad treatment of the subject, with a focus on Western Christian edifices, see Ettore Cirillo and Francesco Martellotta, Worship, Acoustics, and Architecture (Brentwood, UK: Multi-​Science Pub. Co., 2006). See also Amy Papalexandrou, “Perceptions of Sound and Sonic Environment,” in Knowing Bodies, Passionate Souls: Sense Perceptions in Byzantium, ed. Susan Ashbrook Harvey and Margaret Mullett (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), 67–​85. Papalexandrou notes,

336  Staging the Sacred produced particularly important studies: the “Icons of Sound” project (directed by Bissera Pentcheva of Stanford University) and the “Soundscapes of Byzantium” project (directed by Sharon E. Gerstel of the University of California—​Los Angeles; and Chris Kyriakakis of the University of Southern California).124 Both scholarly groups are international, multidisciplinary enterprises that bring together art historians, religious studies specialists, archaeologists, engineers, musicologists, and others. The sheer number of churches (“Soundscapes of Byzantium” has, so far, focused on eight churches in Thessaloniki alone), and their individual histories of construction, renovation, and reuse, makes it impossible to offer an overview of how the built space of churches shaped the visual and aural experience of hymnic performance, but a few general points can be drawn out that illustrate the continued sense of intentionality and purpose behind design elements of these structures. The elevation of speakers and choirs was among the most significant features. As Antonopoulos et al., speaking of the acoustic properties of galleries, ask, “Is it possible that such elevated spaces were desirous not only because of the excellent optical view of the nave, but also because

“The lack of a dedicated scholarly tradition renders a reconstruction of the Byzantine soundscape difficult, but not impossible. We should not underestimate the ability of primary sources to reveal these more obscure elements of the culture. Indeed, once we start looking, we begin to discover a roaring river of sources that are poised to open up and expand the possibilities of research. Many individuals recorded their impressions, even if only in fragments, and these informants are worth listening to. In my research I draw from a variety of sources including saints’ vitae, philosophical and pseudoscientific writings, letters, ekphraseis, inscriptions, historical accounts, divinatory manuals, and so forth. Many sources demonstrate that in all contexts the Byzantines actively attended to hearing as an element of the human condition requiring special consideration. This seems to be true whether we are talking about the creation of performative environments, manifestations of power, the establishment of networks of control, the attention given to scientific phenomena, and so on. And of course it is true at the microlevel of the individual, where sound bears an emotional force that can be overwhelming. The Byzantine appreciation for and reaction to sound is inherently relatable, a common bond, perhaps, across the great divide of time” (69–​70). 124 Bissera Pentcheva, who oversees the ongoing project “Icons of Sound” at Stanford University (https://​ccrma.stanf​ord.edu/​gro​ups/​icons​ofso​und/​), is a pioneer in the field of “reading” the scientific, visual, and performative data together. See her two monographs: The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual, and the Senses in Byzantium (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2011), and Hagia Sophia: Sound, Space, and Spirit in Byzantium (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017). From the “Soundscapes of Byzantium” team, note these two recent study published pieces: Spyridon Antonopoulos, Sharon E. J. Gerstel, Chris Kyriakakis, Konstantinos T. Raptis, and James Donahue, “Soundscapes of Byzantium,” Speculum 92 (2017): 321–​335, and Sharon E. J. Gerstel, Chris Kyriakakis, Konstantinos T. Raptis, Spyridon Antonopoulos, and James Donahue, “Soundscapes of Byzantium: The Acheiropoietos Basilica and the Cathedral of Hagia Sophia in Thessaloniki,” Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 87.1 (2018): 177–​213. Illustrating the kind of public reception this work has received, note the write-​up in The Atlantic Monthly: https://​www.thea​tlan​tic.com/​tec​hnol​ogy/​arch​ive/​2016/​02/​byzant​ine-​angel-​ wings/​470​076/​.

Sounds, SightLines, and Senses  337 of the purity of the sound” that was revealed in their tests?125 Similarly, they note, The ambo also elevated homilists and chanters above the top of the closure slabs, substantially increasing voice intelligibility. . . . The height and placement of the original ambo, the enclosure of the nave by means of high marble slabs, and the primary sources all lead us to believe that the Acheiropoietos basilica was an ideal acoustical environment for the delivery of homilies . . . the ambo of both sites [Acheiropoietos basilica and Hagia Sophia in Thessaloniki] would have played a key role in enhancing not only visibility but also audibility of both the spoken and chanted word.126

Much as we saw with the oratory in the forum and in the theater, the relationship between elevation, visibility, and intelligibility was well understood by builders in antiquity. The elevated platform (Syriac, bema) was a distinctive feature of some churches in Syria in late antiquity, as well.127 Indeed, in their comparison of two churches, Gerstel et al. conclude, “Analysis of the Acheiropoietos basilica and the Cathedral of Hagia Sophia suggests that Early Byzantine builders were aware of the acoustical properties of the churches they constructed.”128 This intentionality extends to the creation of some spaces—​for example, the Acheiropoietos basilica—​with acoustics particularly suitable to sermons (including sung homilies, such as kontakia) and others, such as the Cathedral Hagia Sophia, which enabled singers to move not only horizontally about the sacred space but vertically, up into galleries beneath the dome. The harmony between form and function of these built spaces even extends to the adornment of the structures; as Antonopoulos et al. note, “The Byzantines were careful to cover the walls and floors of their churches with highly reflective materials—​marble, ceramic tiles, mosaic, and polished plaster”129—​a decorative practice that served multiple functions, appealing to the eyes and the mind but also shaping the aural experience of the space. Other elements, such as furnishings and decorations, 125 Antonopoulos et al., “Soundscapes of Byzantium,” 326. 126 Gerstel et al., “Soundscapes of Byzantium: The Acheiropoietos Basilica,” 187, 207. 127 See Emma Loosely, The Architecture and Liturgy of the Bema in Fourth-​to-​Sixth-​Century Syrian Churches (Leiden: Brill, 2003). Loosely traces the origin of the Syriac church bema to the early synagogue. 128 Gerstel at al., “Soundscapes of Byzantium: The Acheiropoietos Basilica,” 208. 129 Antonopoulos et al., “Soundscapes of Byzantium,” 333–​334.

338  Staging the Sacred also affected the sound quality in a space, as would the presence of numerous human bodies, themselves both hearing and being heard. As was the case with theaters, in churches, too, commonplace hollow items such as jugs and amphorae were employed to manipulate sound and improve acoustics. The dynamism of Christian rituals from this period—​especially antiphonal chanting and singing while in motion, which would play with sight lines as well as acoustics—​underscores the challenges of attempting to study the acoustic experiences of spaces such as these churches. In addition, because so many of these churches remained in use (as churches or when put to other uses), the extant structures were continually updated and adapted, making it a challenge to recover the acoustics of original or earlier spaces. Furthermore, reconstructions of the musical sounds of antiquity are themselves speculative, and the conventions of performance and aesthetics of liturgy changed over time.130 If nothing else, the new insights gained by the study of the acoustics of these late antique and early Byzantine spaces raises profound new questions precisely because they make the nuances of experience that much more tangible—​that much more possible to imagine understanding. In her analyses of the acoustic experience created within the space of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, Pentcheva attends to the highly evocative nature of the aesthetic experience of participating in prayer in such a resonant space. She writes of how the echoes and resonance of music in that space, particularly through the participatory refrains of hymns, create “the impression of soaring, upwardly moving sound . . . amazing acoustics which must have overwhelmed the faithful.”131 Pentcheva analogizes the humans who fill the building with song to the pneuma—​the breath—​of the holy building, although paradoxically the “breath” of the building is simultaneously divine, reverberating back from above, the sound of heaven. She also understands the built space as a musical instrument, but one with which singers would have interacted dynamically; describing the experience of modern choristers performing in the space, she notes, “[They] dramatically slowed their tempo. They also adjusted their pitch to activate the high frequency resonances 130 We know, for example, that Ephrem and Romanos wrote hymns for specific melodies, noted in the manuscripts and familiar to their listeners; see Egon Wellesz, A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961). More recently, see Rosemary Dubowchik, “Singing with the Angels: Foundation Documents as Evidence for Musical Life in the Monasteries of the Byzantine Empire,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 56 (2002): 277–​296. We know far less about the Jewish and Samaritan materials, but all indications are that music was important; see Eric Werner, The Sacred Bridge: Liturgical Parallels in Synagogue and Early Church (New York: Schocken, 1970). 131 Pentcheva, Sensual Icon, 53.

Sounds, SightLines, and Senses  339 sustained by the building.”132 Hagia Sophia models the ability of a structure to exert itself on its occupants, even as it created a distinctly otherworldly atmosphere. Pentcheva also reminds us of the complexity of hymnic performance in late antiquity; after noting that Hagia Sophia and the hymnic form of the kontakion emerged from the same moment (the reign of Justinian), she imagines, “The elite choirs perhaps chanted this hymn [a kontakion by Romanos] with refrains, intoned by the congregation, meant to unfold in the acoustically resonant and visually aniconic interior of the Great Church. So what does it mean to imagine this poetry sung from the ambo?”133 In this question, we note the interplay of sound and space in performance. The poet-​performer is located at the ambo, the place of greatest visibility, flanked by choristers who joined their voices to his, a choreographic decision that reflects a desire for intelligibility. The congregation, arrayed at the lower level, would have their gaze drawn upward, not only in the direction of the human performers but also toward the images of the heavens encoded in the artistic imagery and reflected in the lamplight that would sparkle and underline the sense of otherworldliness, and proximity to heaven.134 Sound linked the two, as voice called out to voice, and sounds and light reflected and refracted through the space. These multisensory, active experiences were crucial to the aesthetic power of the liturgy, and the Byzantine style of hymnody emerged as a literary complement to—​or even manifestation of—​such spaces.

Synagogues The structures that would come to be identifiable as synagogues first appear during the Second Temple period, although the “city gate” of even the pre-​ exilic period can be seen as a forerunner of the institution, insofar as city gate structures were places of gathering for legal and ritual purposes.135 Synagogues served diverse social and communal functions in antiquity, providing locations for community gatherings, religious courts, liturgical and 132 Pentcheva, Hagia Sophia, 106. 133 Ibid., 167. 134 See Pentcheva’s evocative discussion of the performance of Romanos’ kontakion on the Prodigal Son in ibid., 166–​169. 135 The single most comprehensive treatment of the history of the synagogue, from the earliest evidence through the late antique period, remains Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005). Of particular relevance for the present discussion is Chapter 9, “The Building” (313–​380). This work does not, however, address the specific areas of acoustics or lines of sight in any detail.

340  Staging the Sacred ritual spaces, and study halls; spatial configurations of synagogues were likewise varied. As we have seen with other kinds of monumental spaces, furthermore, communities routinely updated, redesigned, and repurposed these spaces. The study of late antique synagogues from the perspective of their spatiality (as with many of the periods before and after) is further complicated by the nature of what has survived. For many synagogues, floors are the portion most likely to survive and be recoverable by archaeologists; to be sure, floors were often elaborately decorated, and floor plans suggest much of the rest of the structure, but reconstructions are necessarily more speculative. We have little direct evidence for many of the details that would exert the most immediate influence on the accessibility of performance, and literary sources rarely speak clearly to the details that are most consequential for sight lines and acoustics.136 The challenges of examining physical synagogue structures, even in comparison with other structures from antiquity, are significant. We often cannot distinguish Jewish and Samaritan synagogues based on the material evidence, and in some cases we cannot even determine whether a certain space was “Jewish” or “Christian”—​an aesthetic affinity across traditions that itself suggests the existence of a broadly common Late Antique culture.137 Nevertheless, we can delineate some of the basic components of synagogue construction that would have affected delivery and reception, and building upon that foundation, we can then look at several examples of synagogue 136 We do have in the Tosefta a reference to the cantor (hazzan) of a synagogue in Alexandria using white kerchiefs to signal the community to say “amen” during the Torah service—​a detail that suggests good sight lines but poor acoustics in that Egyptian synagogue. See t. Sukkah 4:6, and Saul Lieberman, Tosefta ki-​Fshuṭah: A Comprehensive Commentary on the Tosefta [Hebrew], 10 vols.; New York: JTS, 1955–​1988), vol. 4, 891–​892. Also note the discussion of this passage in Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 149. 137 As Pummer notes, “We are now in a position to compare Jewish and Samaritan synagogues of the Roman-​Byzantine periods in considerable detail. However, the similarity, or even identity, of Jewish and Samaritan material culture in antiquity makes it at times difficult to assign building remains to the respective communities. In the last analysis, it is above all the location in which they are found, the district of Samaria, that allows us to identify a building as Samaritan” (The Samaritans, 91). See also Pummer’s essay, “Samaritan Synagogues and Jewish Synagogues: Similarities and Differences,” in Jews, Christians, and Polytheists in the Ancient Synagogue: Cultural interaction during the Greco-​Roman Period, ed. Steven Fine (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 118–​160, and, with regard to Samaritan synagogues, his important recent update, “Synagogues—​Samaritan and Jewish: A New Look at Their Differentiating Characteristics,” in The Samaritans in Historical, Cultural and Linguistic Perspectives, ed. Jan Dušek (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), 51–​74. With regard to the archaeology of Samaritan settlements in antiquity, the work of Yitzhak Magen is preeminent; see Yitzhak Magen, The Samaritans and the Good Samaritan, ed. Noga Carmin and trans. Edward Levin (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2008), esp. 117–​180, and Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations: A Temple City, ed. Michal Haber and Noga Carmin (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2008).

Sounds, SightLines, and Senses  341 redesigns from late antiquity that suggest a particular performance-​oriented built-​space agenda. Levine discusses an array of common components of synagogues, although not all items are present at all sites, nor were configurations necessarily stable over time; it is also not clear what functions various components served, and those functions could themselves have changed over the centuries as Jewish practices and customs evolved. For example, the common use of wood for many structural and interior elements, including roofs and reading platforms, would have contributed both to ease of remodeling and a disappearance from the material remains; wood is also, however, acoustically significant. Even more significantly, but intangibly, while synagogues often feature built-​in benches (common in public spaces in antiquity), we do not know how the interiors of synagogues were furnished, or whether people stood or sat; if they sat, whether on benches or on mats; or whether the carpet mosaics that are among the most striking remains of these structures were obscured by people occupying the spaces, or whether they were kept clear of foot traffic in order that their imagery could be appreciated. In addition to shaping our analysis of the imagery (how could congregants appreciate designs if they were obscured by mats, benches, or feet?), the presence or absences of human bodies would have significant acoustic and visual consequences, and important consequences for building capacity and use.138 Such cautions in place, several features significant for performance stand out: many synagogues had an atrium, which functioned as a transitional space from the street and provided an open, public space for events; some synagogues had upper galleries, of unknown function; there was a bimah (‫)בימה‬, an elevated platform akin to the ambo in a church (known as a bema in Syriac), usually made of wood (meaning that none have actually been recovered by archaeologists), but not associated with a particular, fixed location, and its size seems to have varied greatly; the space in front of the Torah ark, where the prayer leader would stand, reflected in the idiom “passing before the ark (‫ ”)עובר לפני התיבה‬or “descending before the ark (‫יורד לפני‬ ‫ ”)התיבה‬in rabbinic sources as a description of leading prayers, and in the use of the term “to draw near (‫ ”)קרב‬as the preface to prayer leading, which seems likely to explain the genre of Hebrew poetry known as qerovot (‫)קרובות‬.139 It 138 For a study of synagogue seating capacities, see Chad S. Spigel, Ancient Synagogue Seating Capacities: Methodology, Analysis and Limits (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2012). Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, also addresses this issue (pp. 337–​340). 139 See the discussion in Ze’ev Weiss, “The Location of the Sheliach Tsibbur,” Cathedra 55 (1990): 8–​ 2, and also Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, 377.

342  Staging the Sacred is worth noting that the bimah would have offered a performer an elevated space, akin to that used by orators in a public forum, while the space before the ark placed the speaker at a lower elevation relative to the congregation, in a subtle echo perhaps of theater arrangements. Each configuration results in distinctive sight lines and acoustic consequences. We should also note that rabbinic sources indicate that the performer was accompanied by no fewer than two people at the bimah. The post-​Talmudic tractate Soferim (ca. eighth c.) associates this choreography specifically with the cantor, who would come to be associated with the performance of liturgical poems: “It is not desirable that a cantor (hazzan) should stand by himself before the Torah ark; rather, there should also be someone to his right and someone to his left, as is the case with the [three] patriarchs.”140 This arrangement recalls the choreography of the modern Torah service, with the reader flanked by two gabbaim (wardens), functionaries who assist and correct as needed. In the case of the cantor/​prayer leader, it is plausible that these two companions could have modeled for the congregation precisely how the dynamics between performer and audience should be carried out. Studies of two late antique synagogues from Northern Israel (the Galilee) may help concretize the intentional use of architecture and furniture to moderate and modulate sounds within synagogues. One is the synagogue at Ma’oz Hayyim, in the Bet She’an Valley; the other is the synagogue at Nabratein, north of Safed. Paul Flesher has been examining the synagogue at Nabratein specifically from an acoustic perspective, attending to changes made to the structure during late antiquity; Vassilios Tzaferis undertook a similar diachronic analysis of the synagogue at Ma’oz Hayyim, which allows us to extend Flesher’s analysis to a second site.141 Studies of these two sites underscore the urgent need for significant further work along these lines, in order to close the gap with the studies done by classicists and scholars of early Christianity discussed earlier. Yet, even these two data points affirm the intentionality with which synagogues were constructed as performance spaces. 140 The passage reads: “‫אינו מן המובחר שיעמוד החזן יחידי לפני התיבה אלא שיעמדו עמו אחד לימינו‬ ‫( ”ואחד לשמאלו כנגד אבות‬Soferim 14:9). Early sources associate this choreography particularly with fast days; see Mekh. Beshalah 1 (H-​R 180–​181) and Tan. Beshalah 27. 141 Paul V. M. Flesher, “The Ancient Synagogue at Nabratein: The Acoustic Dynamics of Architectural Change,” in The Routledge Handbook of the Senses in the Ancient Near East, ed. Kiersten Neumann and Allison Thomason (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2022), 364–​389; I am grateful to the author for sharing the essay with me in advance of its publication. Also see Vassilios Tzaferis, “The Ancient Synagogue at Ma’oz Hayyim,” Israel Exploration Journal 32 (1982): 215–​244.

Sounds, SightLines, and Senses  343 Flesher notes that the nature of the evidence from Nabratein permits comparative analysis of two different arrangements of the same space. Three stages are evident: an open-​plan, “broadhouse” synagogue (Synagogue 1a), dated to the second or mid-​third century; a “pre-​basilica” synagogue (Synagogue 1b), dated to the mid-​third to fourth century; and, after an interruption in use, a larger structure (Synagogue 2), with a dedicatory plaque dating to 564 ce. Synagogue 1b represents a remodeling of the space of Synagogue 1a, with what seems to be explicit intent to improve the acoustics. As Flesher notes, “The interior redesign that resulted in Synagogue 1b changed the arrangement significantly, placing both the congregation and the ritual performers in new locations even though the building itself did not change size or shape.”142 Among the changes he identifies, the ritual performers were raised above the congregation by about one meter on two platforms (bimahs), and the two platforms were located in corners. Assuming the speaker was standing, his mouth would have been less than 1.5 m from the ceiling, meaning that the walls and ceiling would together have significantly amplified speech. Comparing the configurations of Synagogue 1a and 1b, Flesher notes, “There is a 25 per cent larger space in Synagogue 1b that is as good or better than the area in Synagogue 1a with the same sound experience of first reflections.”143 When Synagogue 1b was renovated into a “basilica” configuration, as typical of Galilean synagogues in that period, Flesher notes that the speaking platforms were raised somewhat higher but kept in the same location, with the result that the acoustic character of Synagogue 1b was extended along with the expansion of the structure; Synagogue 2 could contain approximately three times the number of people with good ability to hear. Flesher’s study of acoustics and spatiality represents the first analysis of its kind, and for those interested in liturgical performance and piyyut, Flesher’s insights raise numerous additional questions. Given his emphasis on sound, Flesher does not address the role of sight, but the elevation of the speakers suggests that the visual was improved along with the aural. Furthermore, while Flesher is primarily concerned with ability of the congregation to hear the targum, it is striking that these performative improvements date to the early efflorescence of piyyut, as well. We can also imagine that the updates to this synagogue, and even the concern with improving performance, reflected the prosperity of the community. Flesher’s study highlights just how much

142 143

Flesher, “The Ancient Synagogue at Nabratein,” 380. Ibid., 384.

344  Staging the Sacred knowledge will be gained from this kind of material, structural analysis of synagogue spaces. Tzaferis’ analysis of the Ma’oz Hayyim’s synagogues suggests that other sites can be studied with similar results. He notes: Synagogue A [3rd c. ce] at Ma’oz Hayyim is basically a simple, small structure meeting the requirements of a small congregation. There is no ceramic or numismatic evidence that date it precisely. It was never destroyed, and no layer of debris accumulated on its remains to separate it from Synagogue B [4th–​5th c. ce]. . . . Synagogue A seems to have been torn down intentionally to provide a new building better suited to new concepts of synagogue architecture and to the growing and apparently prospering community. The structure was not only enlarged, but also gained an apse and an impressive mosaic floor, both characteristic elements of the fourth-​sixth centuries.144

The final phase of the synagogue (dated to the early sixth c.) added a raised bimah that projected into the nave in front of the apse145—​all features that would have improved the acoustics of performances from that platform, although Tzaferis does not specifically note this effect. This change was made despite other evidence indicating a community falling on hard times: poorly repaired mosaics and stone columns replaced with wood—​the use of wooden columns may have had implications for acoustics and lines of sight, as well.146

Conclusions This analysis has attended to the significance of the built environment and the manipulation of constructed space as it affects the experience of performance, both for performer and audience. The stage constitutes a third party in the performance; it both mediated delivery, facilitating the give and take between parties, and transformed it, shaping the sound and sustaining the vision, allowing language (verbal and physical) to summon forth imagination. And while each kind of speaker pursued a different purpose they shared 144 Tzaferis, “Ancient Synagogue at Ma’oz Hayyim,” 242. 145 Ibid., 243. 146 Mordecai Aviam has hypothesized that from very early on, Torah reading tables were also made of wood, or wood atop stone. See Mordechai Aviam, “The Ancient Synagogues in Galilee,” Early Christianity 10 (2019): 292–​314.

Sounds, SightLines, and Senses  345 common tools, including not only word, tone, and gesture, but also physical space. Having laid out and coaxed into clearer view the ephemeral, non-​textual evidence for this essential feature of performance, we can now turn to poetic texts directly. Awareness of body language, both of performers and listeners, and the role of space in shaping sight and sound, shaped the experience of hymnody, but hymnody itself has hovered at the margins of this analysis. Having colored in our picture from the margins—​from the external sources of information, literary and material—​we can now hear and see, using our imaginations, elements of performance impossible to capture in a script.

6 The Stage is a World, the Body an Instrument: Hymns in Sacred Space And some call actors “flatterers of Dionysus,” whereas they call themselves “craftsmen.” Both these names are metaphors, but one is a term of abuse, the other the contrary . . . Aristotle, Ars Rhetorica 3.10

In antiquity, as today, performance on a stage only exists because of performers’ bodies. The wordless eloquence of an actor’s eyes, a subtle shift in posture, a tilt of the head—​any of these physical expressions can emphasize or subvert the words of a script. Similarly, inelegant body language can distract or undermine an otherwise effective delivery. Computer-​generated animation struggles, and at present still fails, to capture the nuanced expressiveness of the human face. One striking articulation of the importance of physicality in performance can be found in a newspaper review of two one-​act Eugene O’Neill plays, Hughie and Before Breakfast, from 1988: specifically, the focus a reviewer pays to the actors’ physical delivery. The performance, delivered on an entirely empty stage, without props or any supporting characters, depended entirely on the eloquence, verbal and nonverbal, of two actors. Chicago theater critic Tom Boeker recounts his conversion from resistant to won over: Initially, Caponera’s performance struck me as unnecessarily stilted. She races breathlessly through the long sentences, then unpredictably she emphasizes a word like “Shave!” and laughs maliciously. Or she hits two or three words in a row, individually, like a ball bouncing down the stairs. Her eyes dart to stage right now and then, as if in fear, but more like she’s looking away, or inward, rather than at something. And her hands, poised on top of the man’s coat lying on her lap, pick away at nothing, until she notices it and Staging the Sacred. Laura S. Lieber, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780190065461.003.0007

The Stage Is a World, the Body an Instrument  347 stops. Stilted or not, the tension rhythmically accumulates and becomes very, very real.1

Actors, in order to speak clearly with their bodies, must, in some sense, enunciate—​hence an initial perception by the critic that the performance is “stilted.” And yet, the cumulative force of nonverbal speech eventually strikes the reviewer as transformative. He goes on to note (describing the other actor): Meyer’s performance is enveloping. Since the audience plays the role of the night clerk, we’re the ones who remind Erie of Hughie, and it’s to us that Erie directs his lies, justifications, and veiled cries for support. Of course, we don’t know our lines, but there’s nothing we could say to help him anyway.

Actor and audience, in conversation even without words: despite the centuries separating late antiquity from the twentieth century, elements of effective performance remain timeless. Boeker concludes his review by describing the experience as transcending artifice: “It’s a work of art, of rapture. It’s the difference between listening to some secondhand malarkey—​ which would be more illuminating if you read the script in the privacy of your own home—​and the triumphant feeling of ‘I was there.’ ” Key to the effectiveness of the play was how the actors employed their bodies; anyone could stay at home and read O’Neill’s words; Caponera and Meyer took those words and, upon a stage stripped bare, made them rapturous. Performance, and thus theatricality, intrinsically relies on a complicated set of dynamics among the performer, the material performed, the audience, and the space the performance inhabits. Change any element and the experience itself changes: a clumsy orator or actor will offer less elegant delivery; weaker material will hinder the best delivery; an unsuitable audience, or one that is hungry, angry, or cold, will be less than enthusiastic; and a space that inhibits hearing or seeing will impair the most skillful delivery and most enamored audience. The same, of course, is true in reverse. A skilled actor can make much of poor material, and a beautiful space might distract an audience from mediocre material or delivery. An enthusiastic audience can 1 Tom Boeker, review of “Hugie; Before Breakfast,” in The Chicago Reader (September 15, 1988), https://​chicag​orea​der.com/​arts-​cult​ure/​hug​hie-​bef​ore-​breakf​ast/​, accessed December 17, 2022.

348  Staging the Sacred inspire a performer to new heights, while hecklers can confound the best. Critics, from Cicero to Tom Boeker, draw our attention to those subtleties of delivery that distinguish a bad performance from one that is merely mediocre and from one that is superlative, and they help viewers and other students of performance (including actors and orators) refine their craft through attention to every aspect of delivery. The previous chapter delineated what we know in general of acoustics, gesture, and intonation in late antiquity precisely because many of these elements were essential to the performance and reception of liturgical poetry. Physical spaces and physical bodies significantly shaped the experience of hymnody but cannot be recovered from the texts themselves. An understanding of these crucial but ephemeral components of performance also underscores the simple intelligibility of the hymns; for all their complexity, congregations treasured these poems, both for their words and the experience of their performance.2 Authors composed these works not simply for their content but as fully engaging experiences, inseparable from their performance. Recognizing that liturgical poems were performed in contexts often purposely built to facilitate performance, and having surveyed the pervasive “literacy” in body language among diverse populations in late antiquity, we will consider how important the body was to the experience of hymnody in the early church and synagogue.

Delivery as a Physical Experience In the analysis that follows, the diverse corpus of liturgical poetry from late antiquity—​Jewish, Samaritan, and Christian—​will be mined for evidence of specific techniques that suggest techniques of delivery and congregational reception, as well as engagement with space in both practical and conceptual 2 Researchers in the field of religious studies have long recognized the importance of embodiment to the performance of liturgical ritual; the pioneering work of Catherine Bell, Ronald Grimes, and J. L. Austin established the field of ritual theory, and scholars such as Elliot Wolfson, Ellen Haskell, Eitan Fishbane, and Joel Hecker have highlighted the importance of the human body in Jewish thought and practice, particularly within the sphere of medieval mysticism. Uri Ehrlich and Deborah Green, in turn, brought attention to the role of the body in rabbinic liturgy and texts, as Susan Harvey, Georgia Frank, Derek Krueger, Andrew Jacobs, and Bissera Pentcheva have in the world of early Christianity. And, finally, these surveys indicate how interdisciplinary teams of scholars are now integrating archaeology, art history, theater studies, and even acoustical engineering in the study of spaces and places in antiquity.

The Stage Is a World, the Body an Instrument  349 terms. We will begin with the body’s own expressivity—​focusing on oratorical gestures—​and gradually widen the lens, to consider deixis (gestures that indicate specific items or sites), the physicality of an individual’s delivery, audience participation as an embodied phenomenon, hymns as ritual scripts, and finally, the significance of imagined spaces and spatial imagination. A serious consideration of the physicality of hymnic performance—​both individual embodiment and spatial dynamics—​unifies these different facets of exploration. This analysis must, of necessity, be more of a loose sketch of possibilities and probabilities than a detailed, concrete picture, but it serves to suggest just how much information the hymns can offer concerning their delivery and dynamic experience. Unsurprisingly, different poetic collections reveal preferences for different techniques, proclivities that may reflect factors such as local aesthetic and poetic preferences, acoustics and sight lines of performance spaces, time of performance (morning or evening) along with liturgical moment, communal capacity and norms, and individual authorial style, among other factors. For each topic of analysis, a few representative samples will suggest the range of poetic expressions and communal experiences possible by means of hymnody. We can imagine how genres of poetry that engage more with narrative storytelling and the use of dialogue may more easily directly borrow techniques from the stage, while other kinds of hymnody will suggest subtler (but no less forceful or significant) use of body language and communal engagement, or preferences for patterns of sound and rhythm over narration, as they create a distinctive ambience and mood—​energetic or numinous, individualistic or communal. The analysis here, having established the reasonableness and potential fruitfulness of the questions, suggests avenues for further investigation. Jewish Aramaic Poetry and Gestures toward Tone: In 1931, Jones and Morey published a two-​volume study of images in illustrated Terence manuscripts, including manuscripts that date to the fifth century ce.3 Aldrete connects these depictions of exaggerated hand gestures and postures in the late antique manuscripts with those described in detail, but without images, by Quintilian. The alignment between image and text can be striking, although it is hardly uniform or consistent. Furthermore, Aldrete cautions that 3 Leslie Webber Jones and C. R. Morey, The Miniatures of the Manuscripts of Terence Prior to the 13th Century, 2 vols. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1931).

350  Staging the Sacred the miniatures are not meant to be taken literally as scenes from an actual staging of Terence. The artist my well have used his personal experiences of observing theatrical performers in order to draw his actors in easily recognizable poses, making gestures that match the emotional content of their speeches in a specific scene.4

Nevertheless, the stress on body language in both works, among other sources, underscores the importance of the body in delivery, and while the late antique date of some of the images may complicate their utility for scholars of Terence (first century bce), it is a boon to students of hymnody. Arms, heads, hands, and bodies conveyed essential elements of emotion, but also gender, status, and standing.5 The features Aldrete isolates from the late antique Terence manuscripts and Quintilian align with the motifs in the Jewish Palestinian Aramaic (JPA) eulogy poems. JPA Poem #52, a eulogy poem for a Jewish man, provides a useful (and conventional-​for-​the-​genre) exemplar.6 Each three-​line stanza depicts a different biblical figure (Adam, Noah, Abraham, etc.); the poet describes the individual’s mighty deeds and memorable accomplishments and concludes with a refrain in the fourth line: “X has died; who does not die?” (in which “X” is the specific biblical figure). In most stanzas (perhaps, depending upon reconstruction, in all of them), the Angel of Death appears in the stanza’s third and final line. The stanzas often suggest attributes and activities that lend themselves to specific body language: Joseph is “modest” and resists temptation (l. 23);7 Judah roars and trembles with anger (ll. 4 Aldrete, Gestures and Acclamation in Ancient Rome, 57. 5 Nonverbal communication is essential to almost any in-​person or visually oriented communicative endeavor. We see attention to this among medical professionals, for example, and a particular heightened awareness in our present moment when facial masks have become commonplace in communities where faces have not been commonly obscured. For example, Mathias Schlögl (MD, MPH) and Christopher A. Jones (MD, MBA) write, “Greater training efforts are necessary to improve perception and interpretation of patients’ nonverbal communication and to enhance clinicians’ awareness of their own displays of nonverbal behavior. Let us use the pandemic to remember why we have chosen the beautiful field of medicine and, as E. M. Forster said many years ago in Howards End, ‘Only connect . . . !’ ” (“Maintaining Our Humanity Through the Mask: Mindful Communication During COVID-​19,” Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 68.5 [2020]; https://​agsj​ourn​als.online​libr​ary.wiley.com/​doi/​10.1111/​jgs.16488, accessed December 17, 2022). 6 Text in Laura S. Lieber, Jewish Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity. Translations and Commentaries. Cambridge Genizah Studies Series, vol. 8 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 184–​186. 7 Hands could express humility: “A gesture particularly well adapted to an expression of modesty consists in bringing the thumb and the first three fingers gently together to a point, and moving the hand towards the body in the region of the mouth or chest, then letting it fall, palm downwards and slightly brought forward” (Quintilian, Inst. Or. 11.3.96–​97 [LCL 494, pp. 134–​135]).

The Stage Is a World, the Body an Instrument  351 26);8 the Angel of Death “hunted [Aaron] /​like a fish, with a hook” (l. 36).9 When the poet describes Aaron as spreading his hands in blessing (l. 34), the image is one indigenous to Judaism (and thus absent from Quintilian and Terence in this usage), but no less physical or vivid, and certainly not ambiguous. The poem’s refrain, too, which speaks to the universality of death, lends itself to interpretation through the hands, and in this instance the performer would have a great deal of leeway in terms of how to understand the tone of the piece, in that the words give less guidance. Gestures offered a speaker an entire additional, supplemental mode of inflection, enabling the individual delivering the text to shade, inflect, emphasize, and shape. Taking this poem as an example, perhaps the performer would employ the gesture indicating “statement of fact” concerning mortality, in which the index finger of the right hand touches the right edge of the thumbnail with its tip, and the other three fingers of the hand relaxed.10 Such a gesture would lend the poem a mood of dispassionate stoicism. A different gesture—​the two middle fingers tucked under the thumb—​would emphasize the point, and suggest a more insistent, relentless awareness of mortality. A turn of the wrist, so that the palm is down, further strengthens the point, while a turn of the hand toward the audience would soften the tone and add more of a questioning air. A clench of the fist, pulled toward the chest, would tilt the mood toward remorse and regret.11 These motions would all presumably complement the verbal tone of the performance, and the performer would choose the tone of his delivery, and by speaking thus with his body, he could signal to the community with his hands how he wishes to inflect the refrain and thus interpret the poem for them. Other eulogy poems suggest similar ways of using the body to convey and enrich the performer’s understanding of a work. We can imagine that “Farewell to a woman” (JPA Poem #56) would draw upon the gestures and physicality associated with respectable matrons (pudicitia), while the lament over a child (JPA Poem #58) demands the full embodiment of a tragic actor.12 8 Quintilian critiques the use of trembling hands in oratory—​“The trembling hand, an import from foreign schools, but now almost accepted, really belongs on the stage” (Inst. Or. 11.3.103 [LCL 494, pp. 138–​139]) but does not connect the tremor to an emotion such as rage. 9 Rather than suggesting a refined gesture, this line’s imagery evokes vigorous physical expression, more akin to gladiatorial combat. 10 Quintilian, Inst. Or. 11.3.101 (LCL 494, pp. 138–​139). 11 Ibid., 11:3.104 (LCL 494, pp. 138–​139). 12 Texts in Lieber, Jewish Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity, 191–​192 and 196–​197. We might note that a comic poem, such as that in which the wife of Potiphar is the main speaker (JPA Poem #16; Lieber, Jewish Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity, 54–​56), could employ these same physical

352  Staging the Sacred Finally, in JPA Poem #57, the performer is called upon to act out an argument between Soul and Body, settled in the end by God.13 This miniature drama, in which each party argues for its innocence and the culpability of the other in the individual’s sins and transgressions, participates in a long history of such dispute poems.14 Of interest here is the need for the performer to embody all the roles as they engage each other: a form of pantomime. Furthermore, the soul (‫ )נפשה‬is feminine while the body (‫ )גופה‬is masculine (as is God), and the rhetoric of the poem (such as when the soul refers to itself as the body’s “wife” in line 33) lends the gendering more than simply grammatical significance. This poem presents the performer with the opportunity to dramatize the heated argument, in its full range of emotion, conveying elements of accusation as the soul says, “You defiled me!” (ll. 30, 35); of anger and horror, as she exclaims, “you have transgressed the covenant . . . while I was your wife!” (ll. 32–​33); and, in turn, the body’s lamentation, “Woe is me!” (l. 38). It is a domestic dispute that has no single necessary interpretation. Its incongruous dialogue, reminiscent of the domestic dispute motifs of mime, could be amplified in performance, or they could be transmuted into pathos with more of a tragedian’s pantomime-​infused delivery. Furthermore, the poem’s argument is one that ultimately neither party can win, and it ends with the words of the final Judge (ll. 48–​49), presumably rendered with stately, decisive body language indicating the status and role of the speaker. If we wish, we can even imagine the performer prefacing the presentation of the dispute by using the gestures that indicated eavesdropping; he shares with his listeners a conversation that is beyond their ken. Delivery is perhaps the most fluid and dynamic element of performance, even as it is also the most resistant to documenting; our attempts to imagine delivery remind us that the performer had to imagine such possibilities, too. Marqe and Romanos Demonstrate Deixis: One of the JPA eulogies, JPA Poem #60, makes a reference to “this lad” (‫)הדא עולימא‬, a phrase that suggests that the performer would have gestured in a concrete way, toward some representation of the deceased, perhaps his grave. “This” (‫ )הדא‬is a deictic particle, a particle of specifying and singling out, and typically refers

expressions but for humorous purposes. She presents herself as a respectable matron but is, in fact, attempting to seduce, coerce, and frame her slave. 13 Lieber, Jewish Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity, 193–​195. 14 This poem was discussed in Chapter 4 as an example of prosopopoeia (pp. 270–271). The gestures considered here would inflect the performer’s execution of personification.

The Stage Is a World, the Body an Instrument  353 to the gesture of pointing in rabbinic literature.15 Thus, in the early rabbinic midrash on Exodus, the phrase “this is my God” (Exod. 15:2) is taken to mean that the Israelites gestured at the deity.16 For similar reasons, at the Passover Seder, the matzah and bitter herbs are elevated and indicated with “this is the matzah” and “this is the bitter herb,” but the shank bone (or its substitute) is neither lifted nor distinguished by the deictic “this,” lest the officiant appear to have made an offering in the absence of the Temple.17 Finally, the custom of elevating the Torah scroll in the synagogue, before or after it is read, is attested in the medieval period if not earlier, and the recitation of “This is the Torah which Moses set before the children of Israel” (‫וזאת התורה אשר שם‬ ‫ ;משה לפני בני ישראל‬a quotation from Deut. 4:44) is accompanied by some form of pointing.18 Similarly, we can make an analogy to the language of the Eucharist, in which the scriptural words “This is my body” become the liturgy for the specification of bread, and, similarly, “this is my blood” specifies a visible and distinct goblet of wine; both bread and wine are elevated for all to see. Deixis—​specification—​is essential to rituals in which scripture becomes script. Deixis connects us to the material context of rituals, suggesting specific gestures by which the performer could make use of his physical setting as a way of amplifying, concretizing, or deepening the reality behind his words. At some level, this affinity of text and space is easiest to identify when images in a poem align with artistic depictions in mosaics, frescoes, and other adornments, such as piyyutim structured on the zodiac or embellishing the menorah, both common elements in synagogue iconography.19 In other 15 For a discussion of this common exegetical assumption in rabbinic literature, see Azzan Yadin-​ Israel, “Some Uses of Deixis in Rabbinic Hebrew,” Journal of Semitic Studies 60.2 (2015): 331–​340. 16 Mekhilta de-​Rabbi Ishmael Shirta 3 (H-​R, pp. 126–​127), on which see D. Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1990), 117–​121. See also the passage from the later midrash, LevR 11:9 (discussed in Chapter 1), in which God leads the righteous in a circle dance, and they point at Him while exclaiming, “This is God, our God, forever and ever; He will lead us ‘alamut’ ” (“forever,” or “maiden-​like”; Ps. 48:15). 17 b. Pes. 116b, “Raba said: He must lift up the unleavened bread, and he must lift up the bitter herb, but he need not lift up the meat; indeed, were he to do so, it would appear as though he ate sacrifices without [the Temple]!” 18 For a concise discussion, see Zvi Ron, “Pointing to the Torah and Other Hagba Customs,” HaKirah 15 (2013): 289–​303. Also see Ruth Langer, “From Study of Scripture to a Reenactment of Sinai,” Worship 72.1 (1998): 43–​67. 19 On the zodiac, see Chapter 3 (pp. 200–202). On the menorah, Yannai’s qedushta for Num. 8:1 provides an example: it dwells at length on the image of the lampstand, and Fine reads this piyyut in light of synagogue mosaics in Art and Judaism, 158–​163. Pentcheva connects the glittering qualities of mosaics by candlelight with Romanos’ kontakion on the Prodigal Son (in Hagia Sophia, 166–​169). Pentcheva’s approach, which is more evocative and broadly sensual, provides a helpful mechanism for reading a variety of performed texts and performance spaces together.

354  Staging the Sacred cases, ritual items and practices would constitute the tangible, familiar touchstones toward which the text gestures. Deixis could be central to the creation of meaning, or fleeting and coincidental. It may well have been improvised as part of delivery, never touching the record of the page. It is a key component of the interpersonal connection at the heart of successful performance. Examples from Marqe and Romanos will illustrate this variety of possibilities. The poetry of Marqe provides some of the most striking examples of hymnic deixis from late antiquity, which serves as an important reminder that a lack of overt narrativity or conventional theatricality does not diminish the essential performativity of these works. Marqe’s poetry relies less on rehearsal of sacred traditions than on the creation of a ritually charged moment, often featuring dialogue between the primary speaker of the hymn and the congregation (through refrains or voiced by the performer). The vivid impression of physicality and materiality in these works may, in fact, help explain the lack of interest in narration of the past. These works are expressly and thoroughly attuned to the moment. In several poems, the ritual centrality of the Torah scroll results in hymnic celebration of revelation that integrates the idea of divine speech with its physical manifestation.20 Marqe’s Poem #21, for example, constitutes a paean to scripture. The composition celebrates not just the idea of God’s word but the link that the scroll recording that word constitutes between God and the people. The poem opens, “O, the radiant and holy Writing,” and all that follows marvels at the miracle of revelation, all it symbolizes, and all it grants to the community, including knowledge of and access to the divine. In the fifteenth stanza, the poet writes: A book, like no other, A book that casts a ladder to its beloveds Exalted, they ascend upon it to their God Its witnesses are Heaven and Earth. (ll. 49–​54)21

This poem, which celebrates the Torah in every stanza, acquires more immediate and tangible significance when we recall that it was written to be recited 20 For a fuller treatment of this collection of piyyutim, see Laura S. Lieber, “Scripture Personified: Torah as Character in the Hymns of Marqah,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 24 (2017): 195–​217. 21 Lieber, Classical Samaritan Poetry, 208.

The Stage Is a World, the Body an Instrument  355 (as is still the case) in the presence of the Torah scroll—​an item not quite employed like a “prop” in a play but perhaps as close as any ritual item comes in a sacred service.22 Marqe does not celebrate the abstract idea of revelation, but its tangible evidence, which he can point to before the peoples’ eyes. Multiple hymns by Marqe reflect a similar intensity of focus on the Torah. In the second stanza of Poem #24, he writes: This is the Torah That You gave to the children of Israel So they might read in it and say: Praise the great King. (ll. 7–​10)23

Here we find explicit deixis: “This is the Torah (‫ ”!)הדה הי אורהותה‬The entire composition presumes the presence of the scroll, even as it addresses the deity. The poet goes on to connect reverence for the scroll with the physical postures of worship: Let all the Hebrews bow down Before the holy Writing And let them praise the One who gave it and say: Praise the great King When the great Writing is opened We hasten to bow down before its Giver! (ll. 11–​16)24

Although we know little about the early Samaritan synagogue or its ritual practices, Marqe’s compositions make the centrality of the scroll to Samaritan identity and practice unmistakable. These works, in turn, offer a hint at elements of its physicality. The final Marqan work to consider in this context is Poem #20, a lyrical work that directly addresses the Torah scroll, which it personifies.25 The presence of the scroll is assumed, and the scroll itself is the “audience” for the hymn. The first three stanzas give a clear sense of the composition as a whole (which is an alphabetical acrostic): 22 The Torah scroll would be akin to icons or other copies of sacred books employed ritually by other communities. 23 Lieber, Classical Samaritan Poetry, 213. 24 Lieber, Classical Samaritan Poetry, 213. 25 See also the discussion of this text in Chapter 1, where it served as an example of nonlinear storytelling.

356  Staging the Sacred You are the great Writing Before whom we have come to bow And there is no Writing as great as you! In devotion and with reverence We stand before you And there is no Writing as great as you! Our hymns are your praise For you were written by the finger of God And there is no Writing as great as you! (ll. 1–​9)26

The refrain of this song (“And there is no Writing as great as you”) positions the congregation as a chorus, addressing the scroll, while specific phrases choreograph their body language: bowing, standing, and—​self-​referentially—​ uttering hymns. These three hymns by Marqe, like other poems of his that share in this intense focus on the Torah scroll, are intelligible on their own terms but acquire additional nuances of visual vividness and perception—​and thus forcefulness of delivery—​if we realize that the Torah being addressed is not an abstract idea but as a physically present, actively revered ritual object. The scroll does not only represent the covenant between God and the community; it manifests it. “You,” the poet speaks to the Torah in the passage presented, “were written by the finger of God.” The scroll of the Torah connects the congregation in the present moment to the experience and significance of the revelation at Sinai, which is, so long as the Torah remains in the community’s midst, in some sense, ongoing. Where Marqe models the potential depth hymns could accrue when we recognize how words and performance engage material objects from the surroundings, Romanos’ kontakion “On the Ascension”27 offers a more suggestive example, one in which the spatial and ritual context of performance seems to hover over the text without relying on a specific configuration of space. The flexibility of the Romanos kontakion examined here—​and almost any of his works could be read through this lens—​helps account for its ability to resonate in a range of settings over many centuries. These works, while composed for performance in a distinctive space—​Romanos’ own church in 26 Lieber, Classical Samaritan Poetry, 201. 27 O #32 (250–​259); translated by Ephrem Lash, On the Life of Christ: Kontakia (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1994), 195–​205.

The Stage Is a World, the Body an Instrument  357 the suburbs of Constantinople28—​nonetheless did not rely on a specific space but could resonate dynamically in a variety of contexts, from the majestic Hagia Sophia to far more humble spaces, and thus illustrate how attention to spatiality can enrich our understanding of the composition as a whole. Romanos’ konatkion “On the Ascension” embellishes the accounts of Jesus’ heavenly ascent in Acts 1:9–​13 and Luke 24:50–​53 in a tightly organized fashion: Stanzas 1–​9 depict the Apostles’ distress that their Lord is leaving them and Jesus’ reassurances, Stanzas 10–​12 describe the ascension itself, and Stanzas 13–​18 depict the angels’ report to the Apostles and the Apostles’ return to Jerusalem. The poem thus moves from earth to heaven (following Jesus’ ascent), and heaven back to earth (the angels’ descent). Even a few lines reveal the scope of this poem; key words are presented in boldface: The One who came down to earth, as he alone knows how As he ascended from it, again as he knows how, Took those he loved and led those he had gathered to a high mountain So that, having mind and senses aimed on high They might then abandon all that seeks the ground. (Strophe 2, lines 1–​5)

The poet makes the high–​low binary explicit; it is part of Jesus’ object lesson for his followers. They ascend a terrestrial hill in order to behold their God’s ascent to the heavens. Throughout the composition, Romanos draws his listeners’ eyes upward. Romanos appeals to the congregation to imagine the scene in explicitly imaginative terms; in the first stanza, he writes: Abandoning on earth the things of earth Leaving to the dust the things of ash Now, let us come to our senses and raise on high our eyes and minds. Mortals, let us make our sight together with our senses fly to heaven’s gates Let us imagine we are standing on the Mount of Olives And that we bend our gaze on the redeemer As he rides upon a cloud. (Strophe 1, lines 1–​7) 28 While Romanos’ works were performed in Hagia Sophia, where his fame was secured, he served a smaller, suburban church (the Church of the Theotokos) in the Kyros district. See Alexander Lingas, “The Liturgical Place of the Kontakion in Constantinople,” in Liturgy, Architecture and Art of the Byzantine World: Papers of the XVIII International Byzantine Congress (Moscow, 8–​15 August 1991) and Other Essays Dedicated to the Memory of Fr. John Meyendorff, ed. Constantin C. Akentiev, Byzantinorossica 1 (St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg Society for Byzantine and Slavic Studies, 1995), 50–​57.

358  Staging the Sacred In line 5, the poet asks his listeners to picture themselves in the story, explicitly, to will themselves into the biblical account and witness the moment. But as important as imagination is, we should note also how Romanos appeals to the senses: he does not only ask his listeners to envision details imaginatively but also encourages them to participate in the embodied experience of moving one’s actual eyes and head in the act of looking up and down. This sensory evocation may reflect not only poetic license, and the fluidity of the language of imagination, but perhaps also the spaces for which Romanos wrote his hymns (about which we know little) and certainly the magnificent basilicas in which they were performed, themselves designed to draw eyes upward. The images in the poem and those preserved in early Byzantine churches resonate: just as the poem depicts Jesus asking his followers to stand on the ground and contemplate the heavens above, the poet knows that his community, earthbound as it is, has before its eyes a vision of the heavens offered by the ceiling of the church itself. The vault of the ceiling recalls the vault of the heavens, which the poet describes in detail, referring repeatedly to its clouds and angelic hosts, elements present in the iconography of the images; when Jesus tells the disciples, “I am really the one you look upon” (Strophe 9), the assurance resonates with the iconography of the church, with its visible images of the ascended Jesus high over the altar. The descriptions of the heavens parting—​“Lift up the gates and fling wide the heavenly /​and glorious door” (Strophe 10)—​align with the presentation of the revealed heavens and their hosts that constitute the visual program in the hall. The building informs the imagination, as it shows the eyes precisely the journey described in the poem: from earth, to heaven, and back again. And the physical space affirms the truth of the refrain, which the congregation presumably joined in chanting, “I am with you and there is no one against you.” The visuals in the sanctuary bear witness to the fulfillment of the divine assurance. The congregation, in some sense, (re)lives the experiences of the Apostles: the anxiety, the wonder, the reassurance, and the return to the world. And while few churches could rival Hagia Sophia (the imperial church in which Romanos’ hymns acquired their fame) for its splendor, the plan of many Christian worship sites would have enabled similar, if aesthetically somewhat less magnificent, experiences. Elements of the rich visual programs of early Byzantine churches—​ architectural as well as imagistic—​often remain visible to the present day. These material traces of archways, domes, and mosaics enable us to reconstruct aspects of the optical experience of a congregation hearing and

The Stage Is a World, the Body an Instrument  359 participating in this hymn. Harder to duplicate, but no less significant, is the auditory experience of this hymn: the way in which the acoustics of these spaces would have deepened the richness of this poem. Extrapolating from the studies discussed earlier, however, it seems plausible that the aural resonance of these spaces would have served to intensify the sense of wonder embedded in this poem: thanks to the acoustics of domes, reflecting sound from the ceiling back down to the community assembled below, it would be as if the voice of the ascended Jesus was speaking his assurances from above. The space transforms the sound, redirecting and amplifying it, creating a kind of auditory illusion that suggests a deeper truth. Even though the performer, choir, or congregation speaks the words—​we cannot know precisely how it was performed—​the ears would hear something more, a consequence of architecture. As we consider the community’s experience of this kontakion, we can consider how space—​visual and acoustic—​would have created an immersive experience for the congregation and performer. Large-​scale spatial features of a performance venue would have amplified and enabled smaller-​scale elements of the delivery, such as the body language of the performer. This composition’s physicality is immediate and vivid, pertaining to arms and eyes. The poet describes Jesus as “raising his hands like wings /​sheltered them” (Strophe 2) and has him say, “I stretch out my palms . . . as though baptizing, I lay my hands upon you now /​and having blessed you, send you out” (Strophe 3). In response, the Apostles say, “Take us in your arms . . . enfold us” (Strophe 6). Similarly, Jesus commands, “Now rise upright, stand firm” (Strophe 9), and then he “made a sign to the archangels” (Strophe 10)—​ language and gestures familiar from the liturgy. The faithful in the poem, like the faithful in the congregation, “chanted together and looked on high” (Strophe 13), “bowing down, they worship the God on high” (Strophe 17), and “raising their eyes and hands on high, they besought the King” (Strophe 18). The Apostles model the liturgy, even as the sanctuary provides a stage for imagining the biblical account. The images and acoustics of this poem constitute a particular kind of ekphrasis: the pictures and voices conjured by the words, explicitly intended to appear before the eyes of the listeners, are guided, influenced, and augmented by the visuals and acoustics of the space in which the text came to life. Deixis is a form of specified ekphrasis: not a general picture along the lines of “see how . . .” but one that suggests concretely, “See this.” The pronominal referent changes with every localized deployment: the

360  Staging the Sacred Torah scroll might not be the same, the iconography in the church would be different, the child remembered unfortunately possessed a different name and identity. We can imagine the performer, using his own body, further underscoring the distinctive specificity—​the unique contextuality—​ of the composition, using space as a kind of instrument for his delivery to eyes and ears. Ephrem and Yannai—​One Voice, Many Roles: Of all the poets examined here, Romanos makes perhaps the most sustained and developed use of ethopoeia (“speech in character”); by a metric that weighs characterization highly, he is the most “dramatic” of our hymnographers. Performance is more than ethopoeia, however, and it is important that we examine how an individual performer of more ambiguous, less “conversational” poems would have used vocalization. The cantor-​poet has faced some of the same challenges as a pantomime: not that the performer of these hymns would have danced wordlessly but, rather, that he would have been a single performer acting “all the roles,” in ways that would make the identity of the diverse figures and voices in a poem clear and intelligible to the congregation. Here we will examine two hymns: Ephrem’s hymn, “On the Nativity (#17),” which is entirely in the voice of Mary, and Yannai’s qedushta embellishing Genesis 44:18, the passage in which Judah confronts the vizier of Egypt, who is actually his long-​lost brother, Joseph. Each work suggests the physical and vocal dynamism potential in liturgical performance. Ephrem’s hymn, “On the Nativity (#17)” is entirely in the voice of Mary.29 In the opening lines, Mary narrates her own ascension to the heavens, as she is carried by Jesus, who has taken the form of a bird. Held aloft by her divine son—​“He bent down His pinions /​and took me between His wings /​and soared into the air” (Strophe 1, ll. 2–​4)—​Mary is granted a panoramic view not of the world, but of history. In this hymn, there are several episodes where the performer is called upon to do what we might call “perform a catalog.” That is, the strophe lists multiple figures within a category, and we can imagine that the performer would in some sense embody the distinctive characters both for simple intelligibility—​using the body to reinforce words, as in the McGurk effect—​as well as for emphasis. The technique imagined here suggests a performance more of “sketches” than of fully developed scenes; between body and words the performer gives the congregation just enough data to imagine the episode, but not in minute detail. These

29 Text in Kathleen McVey, Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1989), 153–​157.

The Stage Is a World, the Body an Instrument  361 characterizations enrich and enliven the main thrust of the poem but do not constitute its main theme. An individual performer would have had a great deal of leeway in terms of how, and how robustly, to include these flourishes. A few examples will illustrate this phenomenon. The catalogs of figures in this poem are both concrete and abstract. In Strophe 2, the poet has Mary briefly allude to Gabriel, the High Priest Simeon, the magi, and Herod; Strophe 3 focuses on Satan, and Strophe 4 on Eve. In each case, it is tempting, but not necessary, to imagine the performer briefly inhabiting the roles as he describes them: Gabriel proclaims, the high priest is “aged,” the magi “bow,” Herod is “dismayed,” and Satan is “weary and confused.” Each descriptor embeds a certain amount of kinetic energy, a suggestion of embodiment. Strophes 4–​7 depict Mary comparing the life of Eve to that of a holy virgin (Mary herself but also consecrated virgins), in alternating stanzas; we can easily imagine how elements of conventional body language (indicating gender and virtue, or lack thereof) would color these depictions. Eve dresses herself in “leaves of shame,” Mary in “a garment of glory”; these could be simple images, but they also evoke gestures that could underscore the contrast. The body language of virtue, modesty, and chastity, familiar to all from both daily life and (perhaps exaggerated) on the stage, would have resonated particularly for the choirs of consecrated virgins who sang in the Syriac church.30 These pious women, of whom Mary sings (through the poet’s voice), are the women of the choir themselves. Later strophes juxtapose freeborn men with male slaves, and freeborn women with female slaves; each category occupies a single strophe, and, given the rich coding of social class and gender that played out on the body, specific stances would have reinforced the significance of these figures within the poem. Physical performance would likewise enliven a passage such as Strophe 7, which consists of short, dynamic juxtapositions: If she who is chaste is afraid: Behold the guard [of her chastity]; if she commits a wrong Behold its pardoner. If she has a demon, Behold its pursuer. And for those who have pains, Behold the binder of their wounds. 30 See the careful and approachable analysis in Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Song and Memory: Biblical Women in Syriac Tradition (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2010).

362  Staging the Sacred The poet does not develop the situations he mentions but gestures toward them, with body or voice. Physical language would have supplied ways of underlining the concepts of fear, sin, and pain (and, we can imagine, demons), as well as chastity, pardon, pursuit, and healing. Similarly, in Strophe 13, the poet writes: Come, you (who are) blind, and without money, Receive sight. Come, you lame, Receive your feet. You mute and deaf, Receive your voices. And let those with maimed hands Receive whole hands.

The imperatives—​ “come!” and “receive!”—​ themselves evoke gestures of summoning and granting, while the categories of blind, lame, deaf, and maimed all suggest the manifestation of harm upon the body, and its subsequent remedy. The poet is keenly aware of the physicality of his subjects, and through the voice as well as the viewpoint of Mary—​sustained throughout the hymn—​he brings an array of humanity to his stage. A single voice, in the voice of a singular woman, expresses a world. Finally, we can observe that the hymn’s refrain—​“Praise to You, Son of the Creator, who loves all!”—​does not articulate a robustly individuated persona, but neither is it devoid of character. It shapes the perspective of the people, who perform their own character, speaking as a kind of chorus. By collectively reciting this injunction, eighteen times in all, the community inculcates within itself the persona of the faithful person, beloved by God, able to speak to God directly. Ideally, character played aligns with character lived, and the role, rather than being acted, is fully embodied. The voice of this refrain needs no characterization other than the voice of the community of believers. This refrain, for all its simplicity and directness, illustrates a distinctively constructive element of liturgical poetry. While theater was a threat because of its illusory potential and its seductive ability to mislead its audiences, the same techniques in liturgical poetry function as counter-​programming: they transform reality for the better. Repeated utterances change “persona” into “person.” Yannai’s qedushta for Genesis 44:18 is, like all qedushta’ot, challenging to analyze from a performative perspective because it contains multiple poetic units, each composed within the constraints of its own formal, aesthetic,

The Stage Is a World, the Body an Instrument  363 exegetical, and narrative demands.31 Nevertheless, a survey of this composition, which has been preserved largely complete, suggests its potential for physically informed delivery. The poem’s topic—​the confrontation between Judah and the Egyptian vizier, who is in fact Joseph, unrecognized by his brothers—​is highly dramatic. The figure of Judah had already acquired by late antiquity a reputation for physical vigor, rooted in the biblical association of Judah with a lion, the triumphs of the eponymous southern kingdom of the Land of Israel, and interpretive embellishments in Hellenistic and early rabbinic writings.32 In Yannai’s poem, Judah is almost Herculean in his might; Joseph—​compared to an ox—​proves, however, a stubborn and sturdy foe. The associations of lion and ox with the zodiac lends the confrontation cosmic significance, which in turn resonates with the zodiac imagery common in synagogue carpet mosaics. To understand the role of delivery and highlight the role the performer’s body plays in theatricality, we will read the poem as it would have been experienced—​ straight through, in a linear fashion—​ with analysis highlighting issues of voice and performance as we go. The first unit of the qedushta (Unit One), begins with the phrase “trembling seized the pure one’s tribes,” referring to the sons of Jacob in the presence of the vizier. The first stanza stresses the brothers’ anxiety; the second, Joseph’s suspicion; and the third, Judah’s rage. Perhaps tellingly, the unit’s conclusion stresses the power of God’s hands: “All is the work of Your hands /​and all is held in Your hands /​shield us in the shelter of Your hands” (Unit One, transition to benediction). The poet here zeroes in on the most expressive tool of the performing body. In Unit Two, the poet juxtaposes multiple perspectives: Judah, who schemes (presumably to save Benjamin’s life); Joseph, who is perceptive; and the brothers, who “pour forth heart and soul.” The performer would, presumably, need to embody Judah and Joseph to distinguish the two figures in the terse (even cryptic) opening lines: Deep coursed the devisings of that one’s heart [Judah] But when the wise one [Joseph] saw him, he saw his [Judah’s] brokenness of heart. 31 Text of this poem from Laura S. Lieber, Yannai on Genesis: An Invitation to Piyyut (Cincinnati: HUC Press, 2010), 722–​745. 32 For an analysis of how this piyyut makes use of prose rabbinic sources, see the discussion in Lieber, “Rhetoric of Participation,” 128–​134.

364  Staging the Sacred Joseph beholds a man trembling with rage but sees within him a heart broken over the presumed death of one brother and fear over the loss of another. Joseph sees not only grief but also repentance. The performer needs to convey that same information, that same revelation, to his congregation. In Unit Three, we would expect the poet to pivot to the present tense, as he transitions to the haftarah (Josh. 14:6, the prophetic complement to the Torah reading) and thus to themes of prophecy and restoration. As a result of these expectations, the figures of Joseph and Judah begin to seem more symbolic, and yet the composition continues to stress physicality. Yannai initially depicts a clash between Joseph and Judah with language that amplifies the sense of conflict; the phrases are short, rhymed, and rhythmic: “Together, they approach (yiggā́šu) /​as one, they come together (yifgā́šu)” and “they rush (yaḥūš́ u) . . . they hurry (ya‘ūš́ u) . . .” The resonant /​š/​sounds physically conjure friction, while action verbs suggest some form of physical activity, even if just spillover from the vigor of the imagery. The unit ends with God, also lion-​like, triumphing over Israel’s foes, a pivot reflecting the forward-​ looking nature of the haftarah and the evocative intertext that follows the haftarah, Amos 9:13. In Unit Four, Yannai makes clear that the conflict between brothers resembles a public spectacle. Angels on high gaze down, like the audience at the games (perhaps also suggestive of images on now-​lost synagogue ceilings). Drawing on one of the most startling images from midrash, the hairs of Judah’s chest “burst out through his clothing”—​a display of masculinity worthy of both a gladiator and a trapped wild beast.33 The poet speaks to God, crediting him with Judah’s impressive might: “a lion’s whelp is Judah, lord over every beast /​master over every animal //​You made him strong /​ You made him mighty!” Judah stars in divinely orchestrated combat. If we imagine this in the context of the zodiac carpet mosaics, we can almost envision the conflict as cosmic: Aries at war with Taurus, and divine Helios overall. Unit Five develops the motif: Joseph and Judah circle each other like boxers for the first two bicola. In the third, rather than striking, Judah speaks, but he speaks aggressively, threatening tremendous violence, while also voicing utter desperation: “If I but speak the word, sir, a plague against Nof [Egypt] I will bring, sir!” (l. 4) juxtaposed with “If a slave you need to serve you, here I am! I am your slave!” (l. 6). At the conclusion of Unit Five, Joseph was overcome by Judah’s pleas, and “his guts were in knots—​and he revealed

33 GenR 93:6 (T-​A 1156–​1157), Tan. Vayiggash 3, and TargN and TargPsJ to Gen. 44:19.

The Stage Is a World, the Body an Instrument  365 himself to his brothers!” (l. 10). Yannai here amplifies and dramatizes what is already one of the most poignant, dramatic moments in the book of Genesis. It is a gladiatorial combat that ends with an embrace. With Unit Six, Yannai—​as is typical of the qedushta form—​revisits and develops many of the themes and images of the previous five units, but here we can attend to the acoustic richness of the depiction. He again stresses Judah’s might, violence, grief, and desperation, all vividly physical qualities, made more so when Joseph (“the ox”) recoils in fear and all Egypt trembles. Aware that Judah’s rage serves to protect Benjamin, Joseph again is moved and identifies himself, and the brothers are thunderstruck: “His voice! When they heard it, they fainted /​their spirits flew out” (l. 19). All Egypt hears the conflict and reunion. Surely, we can imagine, the poet’s voice filled the synagogue, as well. In all likelihood, the congregation’s voices were heard here, as well, as the sixth unit usually includes a short refrain drawn from the language of the opening verses of the Torah portion; unfortunately, that cue is not preserved in the manuscript.34 With the two rahitim (Units Seven-​A and Seven-​B), what stands out are the fixed words (milat qeva‘) of each: the first rahit opens with the first word of the Torah portion, “then he approached” (vayiggaš)—​suggesting not only the physicality of the protagonist’s action but even a subtle kinetic element to the audience, as they participated in chanting this phrase, perhaps with increasing volume and urgency or fervor. The second rahit is built on the twin phrases “please, my lord (bi ’adonī) . . . do not (’al) . . .,” which we can imagine the poet embodying with supplicating, petitionary body language and tone, as he encodes both Judah’s pleading with Joseph and, at the same time, the community’s pleas to their God. The tone could range from abasement to demand. In Unit Eight, the poet transitions to the liturgical climax of his work, the Qedushah. The unit is structured by strong binaries and parallelism, and here we also see deictic particles: “this one speaks /​this one responds //​this one says /​and this one replies” (ll. 2–​3). A voice from the heavens proclaims, using the deictic particle “lo” (hinnēh), “Lo, this is the time and the moment! Lo, this is the battle and lo, this is the war!” Yannai condenses an array of figures here: the brothers writhe and tremble, Joseph frets and announces himself, and angels manifest and lead the brothers—​and the human community 34 The opening units of Poem Six are preserved in manuscript JTSA ENA, 2973, 23–​24 (accessible on the Maagarim website: https://​maaga​rim.heb​rew-​acad​emy.org.il/​Pages/​PMain.aspx?mishib​bur=​ 903​001&mm15=​04106​0156​010%2072&mismi​lla=​5, accessed September 4, 2022).

366  Staging the Sacred descended from them—​in praise. The poem then concludes with the liturgical recitation of the Qedushah, in which the congregation would have actively participated. As the poem self-​referentially notes, the angels—​and the people—​“are praising and sanctifying . . . they stand, reply, and recite . . .” (ll. 2–​3). The conclusion not only imagines humans and angels praising God but also choreographs the actions and, given the acoustics of what we can imagine a synagogue ceiling may have been, would have lent the layered recitations of “holy, holy, holy,” from which Unit Nine is woven an otherworldly resonance between voices from below and, it would seem, from on high. This final unit, Unit Nine, reminds us how every qedushta by Yannai ended with this dynamic, antiphonal exchange between congregational voices and the performer’s voice, with the otherworldly resonances that would saturate the air like an angelic overtone. From one voice, many characters; from many voices, many more. This rapturous, heavenly oriented conclusion—​surely a high point of the service and part of the qedushta’s popularity as a genre—​ transforms the congregation and the heavenly hosts from spectators to actors, from bystanders to standers on the stage. In the early units of the composition, the poet created an imagined spectacle for his congregation: lion versus ox, brute power versus political power, Israel versus Egypt. Perhaps using the techniques of a skilled public speaker or orator, he could have conjured an arena of the imagination for his listeners and vividly dramatized the confrontation between patriarchs from their sacred history. As the qedushta proceeds, however, the community becomes more and more an explicit part of the performance, and sound became as important as sight: through the refrain in Unit Six, the fixed-​word repetitions in the rahitim (Units Seven-​A and Seven-​B), and finally in the Qedushah itself (Unit Nine), the communal voice moved in from the margins to the center. The sound would have gone from being something the congregation largely received to something that surrounded them, an acoustic cloud of praise. Audience Participation as Physical Phenomena: As the analysis of Yannai’s qedushta illustrates, and as evident in our studies of other compositions, hymns were significantly participatory. Poets and performers engaged congregations through subtle internal processes such as emotional engagement, identification, and absorption, and by means of externally manifest practices including gestures and, most obviously, refrains.35 Refrains are 35 Of particular relevance here, see David G. Hunter, “Sacred Space, Virginal Consecration, and Symbolic Power: A Liturgical Innovation and Its Implications in Late Ancient Christianity,” in Spaces in Late Antiquity Cultural, Theological and Archaeological Perspectives, ed. Juliette Day, Maijastina

The Stage Is a World, the Body an Instrument  367 a commonplace in hymnody, evident in biblical psalms and in the antiphonal chants of ancient liturgies that built upon psalmic models, and they reflect conventions of ancient pedagogy, as well.36 Liturgists in late antiquity, working in poetry and prose, used and adapted inherited works, while also composing new works that made use of this technique for engaging listeners.37 Refrains organize, amplify, and leverage the practice of acclamation. Hymns offered community members a variety of opportunities to participate: through the repetition of key words and phrases, by means of the completion of familiar biblical passages, through the recitation of short refrains or more intricate choruses, or by the utterance of standardized liturgical passages. Regardless of the specific mechanism, such structures provided the congregation with opportunities to participate actively and audibly in the prayer, and in ways more complex than the term “emotional” may initially suggest. The physical experience generated by participating in refrains, in particular, should be considered seriously. The communal voice emerges from the body of multiple individuals, and yet through the alchemy of space, the individual voice resounds and returns to its source as if, and along with, the voices of others. The collective congregational voice plays the role, as it were, of the heavenly choirs, with the resonance layering responses over refrains. One’s own voice returns, amplified, distorted, echoing, and strange. The refrains attest, as well, to the cultural competencies of the communities, both those specific to religion and those reflective of broad societal conventions: participation in performance displays both knowledge of language and scriptural traditions, but also an ease with and instinct for aesthetics and performance norms. More illuminating than any single exemplar here is the sheer ubiquity of refrains and participatory elements. A few examples illustrate the importance

Kahlos, Raimo Hakola, and Ulla Tervahauta (London: Taylor and Francis, 2016), 89–​105. On refrains in JPA poetry, see Laura S. Lieber, “Call and Response: Antiphonal Elements in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic Poetry,” Aramaic Studies 17 (2019): 127–​144; for a treatment of the topic in early piyyut, see Laura S. Lieber, “With One Voice: Elements of Acclamation in Early Jewish Liturgical Poetry,” Harvard Theological Review 111.3 (2018): 401–​424. 36 For an example of “call and response” in rabbinic pedagogy, see the example in the Talmud Yerushalmi, y. Meg. 4:5 (75b), and note the discussion in Wollenberg, The People of the Book without the Book, 240–​241. Wollenberg discusses with regard to another passage (GenR 65:22 [T-​A 733]) that “the foundational moments of Torah education are so inextricably bound up with the collective chanting of elementary school students in the minds of the formulators of this passage that the two phenomena may be treated as identical and interchangeable with one another” (239–​240). 37 See discussion of refrains and performance of Psalms and other biblical texts in Chapter 2.

368  Staging the Sacred of congregational activity. We have already considered how Yannai wove his community’s voices into his composition, through liturgical cues, fixed-​ word repetitions, and more fully developed refrains. The JPA poems, while usually more simple when viewed individually, likewise display a great deal of variety when collected together.38 If we turn our attention to Ephrem and Marqe, their hymns are generally straightforward compositions; most have a uniform structure and a single refrain, as we see in Ephrem’s hymn, “On the Nativity (#17),” discussed earlier, in which the congregation uttered, “Praise to You, Son of the Creator, who loves all!” after each of its eighteen strophes. Ephrem, broadly speaking, favors refrains that are short and either directed to or explicitly about the deity and articulate positive attributes and promises.39 As a refrain, such a sentiment is both heard and said, received and affirmed. Similarly, Marqe’s Hymn #20 employs the refrain “And there is no Writing as great as you!”—​addressed not to the deity but to the Torah. Repetition, as in Yannai’s qedushta’ot (especially the units known as rahitim), lends singular assertions the extra force of multiplicity, and words and phrases are imbued with a kind of cumulative persuasiveness. Hearing something a single time can make an impression; saying it once can help the concept take root; repeating it eighteen to twenty-​two times, in a resonant space where the words resonate back, could be transformative. Like the other hymnographers, Romanos makes use of brief refrains, but whereas most refrains are freestanding, following after a stanza or, in some instances, opening them up, Romanos stands out for integrating fixed phrases into the final line of each strophe, with the consequence (as discussed earlier) that the congregation itself steps into the performance of the poem, even speaking—​with the poet/​performer—​in the voices of various figures who, in that strophe, speak the words. In “On the Ascension,” the refrain “I am with you and there is no one against you” is spoken directly by Jesus to the Apostles (and the congregation), but also by the Apostles, who petition Jesus for such words (Strophe 6 concludes, “say to us, ‘I am with you . . . ’ ”), and by the enemies of the church, who mock the Apostles: “Where is he who said . . . ‘I am with you . . . ’ ” (Strophe 5). In the final strophe, the poet and community affirm God’s nearness when they say, “You who said to us, ‘I am not parting from you, I am with you, and there is no one against you’ ” 38 The variety of refrain structures in the JPA works are examined in Lieber, “Call and Response.” 39 See Susan Ashbrook Harvey, “Liturgy and Ethics in Ancient Syriac Christianity: Two Paradigms,” Studies in Christian Ethics 26 (2013): 300–​316. Also see Fred P. Edie, “Liturgical Language and the Formation of Reflectively Embodied Imagination as Exemplified in the Doxological Poetry of Ephrem the Syrian,” International Journal of Christian Education 20 (2016): 234–​250.

The Stage Is a World, the Body an Instrument  369 (Strophe 18). As these words resound due to the ambient sound, it would seem as if God himself did utter the words, but at the same time, through the physical recitation of the words, eighteen times or more, the congregation would both learn them and affirm their message. They would constitute part of the theological literacy of the community. In the shofar service poetry of Yose b. Yose, we find significant use of short, fixed-​word refrains that are integrated into the conclusions of the poetic lines, in a fashion akin to what we see in Romanos, although more consistently simple.40 Each poem in this series of three poems repeats a fixed word (“kingship [‫]מלוכה‬,” “memory [‫]זכרון‬,” and “voice [‫]קול‬,” respectively) at the end of each four-​stich line. A few examples make the patterning clear, and so here I present the opening two strophes of each poem: God’s Kingship: I will praise my God /​I will sing of His might I will recount His glory /​I will crown Him with I will exalt He who works /​His words into being I will praise Him for to Him /​befits

kingship

A Day of Remembrance: I fear for my deeds /​I fret all the time I dread the day of judgment /​when I enter into I petition the Gracious One /​I entreat the Merciful I beseech the One who inscribed for me /​a day of

remembrance

kingship41

remembrance42

Sound of the Shofar: Let me flee to (my) Helper /​I will find (Him) before me God is close to me /​whenever I call out with (my) voice In the congregation of God /​so near me He stands And here, in the small sanctuary /​I chirp to Him with (my)  voice43 40 See Lieber, “With One Voice,” for a treatment of refrains and acclamation in Yose b. Yose. 41 Mirsky, Yosse ben Yosse, 93. The Malchiyot poem, “I will praise my God” (‫)אהללה אלהי‬, is rooted in Exodus 15 (the Song of the Sea). It blends the poet’s own voice with that of the people, but with a focus on God’s redemptive power and an orientation toward retelling sacred history. Each line of the poem concludes with the theme word “sovereignty” (‫)מלוכה‬. 42 Mirsky, Yosse ben Yosse, 101. The Zichronot poem, “I fear for my deeds” (‫)אפחד במעשי‬, draws on the priestly imagery of Exodus and Numbers, as the poet adopts the persona of the High Priest in the sanctuary, thus highlighting the rituals of repentance and atonement. Each line ends with the word “remembrance” (‫)זכרון‬. 43 Mirsky, Yosse ben Yosse, 109. The Shofarot poem, “Let me flee to [my] Helper” (‫)אנוסה לעזרה‬, uses the language of yearning and romance to color the nature of the covenantal bond between God and Israel, with Israel personified as a woman calling to her divine Beloved. Each of its lines concludes with the single word “voice” (‫)קול‬, echoing the sound of the shofar. This text is also discussed in Chapter 4.

370  Staging the Sacred The fixed-​word refrain underscores the theme of each poem and its liturgical station, even as it aligns with the biblical verses quoted in the latter sections of each poem. As a single word, the congregation would pick up the repetition and be able to join in at once; each word underscores a key theological idea (God’s majestic sovereignty, mindful faithfulness, and devoted presence) that manifests through the sounds of the shofar. As the community joined in the repetition of these theme-​words, the sounds would themselves resonate through the space, most evocatively in the final poem when the word itself means “sound” as well as “voice.” The acoustics of the human voice would, in some fashion, anticipate the blasts of the ram’s horn that they preface. The experience of live performance might, in some ways and in some spaces, verge on the cacophonous, but redounding resonance might be the point. Scripts for Ritual: The hymnic texts we have can be understood as bare-​ bones scripts for the actual performances delivered in early synagogues and churches. Often the manuscripts detail the liturgical setting of works, although those could change over time and may not reflect late antique usage, but medieval adaptations; sometimes contemporary writings provide clues for how compositions were performed. Occasionally, hymns refer explicitly to the liturgical stations or practices they embellish, alluding to the language and physical practices (standing, bowing, fasting, etc.) of prayer. We can discern evidence of this liturgical self-​awareness in the way Yannai’s qedushta’ot weave the language of the Amidah into each composition’s initial units (#1 and #2) and, especially, the final unit (#9); in the relationship between Torah and congregation in the Samaritan works; and in the allusions to liturgical language and ritual in Romanos’ kontakion “On the Ascension,” discussed earlier. In some instances, the poems do more than allude to liturgical practices, however, and appear to encode complete rituals. Some poems come to us with headings that indicate a ritual setting. We see this in the Aramaic eulogy poem (JPA Poem #6644), which bears the heading Let them form up into rows And let the aftarah45 be spoken and afterward, let it be said . . .



44 Lieber, Jewish Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity, 209.

45 Poetic eulogy (lit., “separation” or, a bit more poetically, “leave-​taking”).

The Stage Is a World, the Body an Instrument  371 The four extant lines of the poem itself do not speak directly to known ritual practices, but their focus on the image of a cup of wine suggests that it anticipates the ritual of the “cup of consolation” consumed in the house of mourning after a funeral.46 If this is the case, two metaphorical cups mentioned in the composition—​the cup of death (l. 3) and the cup of reeling (l. 5)—​anticipate a communal rite employing a very tangible vessel, the cup of consolation (l. 6), the vessel that concretizes grief and mingles hopes of sweetness with the bitterness of loss. Just as the JPA poem marking a death encodes elements of ritual performance, Marqe’s Hymn #25 embeds a complete life cycle liturgy, but one of birth, specifically the entry of a male child into the covenant through the rite of circumcision. Where the JPA poem looks back to the origins of death in the days of Adam, who first tasted from “the cup of death” (l. 3), Marqe’s poem looks to the future and the promise of new generations, not only in philosophical ways, but also through concrete ritual actions that appear to structure the complete work. The poem consists of multiple units and seems to fall into discrete sections. The full text of this composition is as follows:47 Master of the divine beings,48 You to whom greatness belongs, Such manifold honors Befit this one, who is worthy to don (it)49 Exceedingly great is That which we see here The precious image50 Planned by the hand of God

46 See GenR 67:9 (T-​A 766), in which Rachel warns Jacob that he must flee, in part because Esau is already acting the mourning, “[pretending to be] desolate over you, as though you were [already] dead; he accepts condolences over you as though you were dead, and he has already drunk the Cup of consolation over you!” On the cup of reeling, see Isa. 51:22; see also Zech. 12:2 and EstR 4:2 (Vilna ed., 8a). 47 Translation from Lieber, Classical Samaritan Poetry, 215–​217. I analyze this poem at length in my essay “The Good Christian: A Classical Samaritan Circumcision Poem,” in Genesis in Late Antique Poetry, ed. Andrew Faulkner, Jeffrey Wickes, and Cillian O’Hogan (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2022), 124–​152. 48 Lit., “deities, gods.” 49 I.e., to receive in his flesh the sign of the covenant—​the circumcision—​which he will wear all his life. 50 A reference to the baby, who is made in the divine image.

372  Staging the Sacred He Himself is the One who planned it With great tenderness A gift from God Eternal life51 Lo, such a joyous vision, So overwhelming!52 May God be magnified For doing thus! Happy are the fathers When they behold this (scene): A son donning His covenant53 And happy is the boy Who dons it, (his) first (commandment)54 For it is a purifying immersion But without water. It is a powerful ordeal55 Without a ritual bath56—​ It is an eternal covenant That shall not be nullified Abraham donned it first, and his sons And all the members of his household And he commanded those who would come afterwards To don it (too). And one who does not don it himself On the eighth day He is not one of the Hebrews And he is not holy 51 This may suggest the idea of “intergenerational eternity,” the idea that one generation lives on through the next. 52 Lit., “greatly strong, powerful.” 53 Lit., “clothes himself in [or wears] his cutting/​commandment.” The translation attempts to acknowledge the infant’s lack of physical agency while also rendering the important theme-​word ‫גזרה‬ consistently throughout the work. The term combines the meanings of “cutting” (as in the physical act of circumcision) with that of “decree” (and is thus suggestive of the covenant). 54 I.e., the sign of the covenant in his flesh. As Ben-​Hayyim notes (RPH, 260n), the poet seems to celebrate the circumcision as the first commandment a Samaritan boy fulfills. 55 This stanza puns on the consonant sounds /​b-​r/​, which appear in “ordeal” (‫ )בחור‬and “covenant” (‫ )בריה‬while evoking the essential word “son” (‫)בר‬. 56 Lit., “cistern.”

The Stage Is a World, the Body an Instrument  373 (This) boy who approaches To don his circumcision May God protect him—​ He who lifts up the heavens (This) boy who approaches To don his circumcision May he be pleasing and may he grow And may he reach a ripe old age57 (This) boy who approaches To don his circumcision May he stand firm and live long On account of his donning (of the sign of) the Almighty58 Lo, may this little boy Grow into a man59 Remember for good Germon60 The Roman official!

The first nine stanzas establish the context of the circumcision ritual and welcome the various attendees. The poem opens with an address to the deity (“You”) and pivots immediately to “this one” (‫)להן‬, an exemplary use of deixis that indicates that the infant about to be circumcised is physically present. In the second stanza, the poet draws the community in: “that which we see here” (l. 6). Stanzas 2, 3, and 4 celebrate the sight of the child and the joy this vision brings to the community and the glory that redounds to God for the miracle of life. In Stanza 5, the poet speaks of “fathers”—​implicitly welcoming the presence of the infant boy’s father—​while in Stanza 6, he speaks of “the boy” 57 Lit., “may he arrive at the stage of old age.” 58 The term ‫( חיולה‬lit., “the strong, mighty one”) is here taken as a divine epithet. Alternatively, it could be taken as an adjective modifying “donning,” yielding the translation “on account of his powerful (act of) donning (the sign of the covenant).” 59 Lit., “become a big one.” This stanza, unusually, employs two Greek words: κόρος (boy) and μέγιστος (“very large,” i.e., a grown man). A third word (‫ )מקסקס‬is difficult and may be corrupt; Ben-​ Hayyim suggests that it may derive from the Greek μέγας (“big”) + ὑιός (“son”), and he hypothesizes that this entire stanza was originally written in Greek. Tal summarizes Ben-​Hayyim’s proposal and translates the phrase as “this little son shall be a great one” (DSA, 484, s.v. ‫)מקסקס‬. The phrase strongly echoes the language of the Jewish circumcision ritual, which expresses the wish ‫זה הקטן גדול‬ ‫יהיה‬, “May this little one become a great one!” 60 Germon, probably a shortened form of the Latin name Germanus, was a Byzantine official or perhaps a bishop in Nablus/​Neopolis. Medieval chronicles remember Germanus positively for not enforcing the ban on circumcision proclaimed in the Edict of Decius. See Paul Stenhouse, “Germanus,” in A Companion to Samaritan Studies, ed. Alan D. Crown, Reinhard Pummer, and Abraham Tal (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 1993), 103.

374  Staging the Sacred who is about to fulfill his first commandment. Stanzas 7–​9 articulate the history and significance of the ritual as an ordeal that hearkens back to the patriarch Abraham and, for all its acknowledged pain, assures the place of the boy among the community of Israel. Stanzas 10, 11, and 12 constitute a unit; each stanza begins with the same phrase: “(This) boy who approaches /​ to don his circumcision” (‫​ מלביש בגזרתה‬/ ‫)ילידה דאמטו‬.61 Each invocation is followed by a petition on the boy’s behalf. The transition from history and significance to “this boy,” along with the cadenced repetition, strongly suggests a ritual pivot, in which the child is brought forward and readied for the rite while these stanzas are recited. The repetition draws the assembled community members into the performance of both the poem and the ritual: the words suggest a bodily script. Recitation of these stanzas likely accompanied the child up to the moment of milah. The final stanza again explicitly addresses the baby (“this little one”—​with the deictic particle), expresses hope for his specific future among the people, and concludes with an enigmatic instruction to remember a Roman official for good.62 Its optative language indicates the successful conclusion of the rite. The ritual framework of bodies in motion, choreographed by the poem, lends this poem a coherence absent from a more conventional, strictly literary, and non-​embodied reading. Absent such attunement, this poem reads as uneven and disjointed. Its perspectives vary and lurch, and any sense of pattern or predictability is absent. Once we recognize the text as the scaffolding for a rite of circumcision, however, the distinct elements fall into place. The physical staging of the work is never specified, and yet it is without a doubt essential to understanding this composition. The precise ritual space implied here could vary; the ritual could take place in the home, in the synagogue, or a courtyard, and the assembly could be intimate and familial or robustly communal. But there is no question that it encodes a choreography, and it demands a spatially attuned reading in order to be understood. Imagined Spaces: For most of this chapter, we have attended to physical bodies in concrete spaces. But it is worth recalling the important role that imagined places played in liturgical poetry. Just as orators asked jurists to 61 It is worth noting that “circumcision” in Samaritan Aramaic shares a root with the word for “decree” (‫)גזר‬: circumcision and commandment are, in essence, synonymous. 62 The subject of Germon and why a Samaritan circumcision poem would mention a Roman (perhaps Christian) official lies beyond the concerns of the present study, but I have treated it in my essay, “The Good Christian.”

The Stage Is a World, the Body an Instrument  375 envision the scenes of crimes and actors transformed sets in stages for the imagination, poets coaxed locations—​remote in time or space—​into vivid reality before the minds’ eyes of the congregation. In Samaritan, Jewish, and Christian poetry we find examples of epideixis—​ poetic praise of cities and other loci—​both in passing and as governing themes of hymns.63 Poets writing in these traditions would have been familiar with biblical instantiations of this genre; the laments over Jerusalem preserved in the Book of Lamentations can be seen as a variant of this tradition of city-​focused poetry, even as they anticipate the qinot written centuries later. In Samaritan poetry (which does not include Lamentations in its canon), Mount Sinai (the site of revelation) and Mount Gerizim (the site of the Temple) are the two locations mentioned with some frequency, although these spaces are rarely described in ekphrastic detail. The Samaritan poets also reveal a fascination with the heavenly abode of God, which God leaves in order to descend to the mortal realm.64 In Jewish poetry, Sinai is similarly revered, as is the Temple, albeit the one in Jerusalem, and likewise we find significant interest in the nature of the divine realm above, to the extent where classical piyyutim have been considered a public face of rabbinic hekhalot (Divine Palace) mysticism.65 Yannai, unsurprisingly, displays a particular fondness for the Land of Israel, and specifically Zion. To be sure, the Jewish Bible provides him with abundant language and imagery for such imaginings, and he participates in a long tradition of “songs of Zion,” which continues long after his own period. But the vividness of his compositions merit scrutiny in their own right and not merely as links between Psalms and Judah Halevi. Yannai’s rahit (Unit Seven-​B) for Genesis 31:3 runs as follows:66 You will bring us back from all foreign gates When gates sunk low are lifted Lifted shall be the stooped of stature With stature and status, distinguish us!

63 Chapter 1 (pp. 79–88) touches on these poems from a different angle, in the category of “invented narrative.” 64 Marqe #9 is a particularly lovely example of a revelation-​themed hymn; see Lieber, Classical Samaritan Poetry, 154–​158. 65 On this topic, see Michael D. Swartz, “Hekhalot and Piyyut,” in his volume The Mechanics of Providence: The Workings of Ancient Jewish Magic and Mysticism (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 257–​278. 66 Text in Lieber, Yannai on Genesis, 578–​581.

376  Staging the Sacred Distinguish us, the chief cornerstone A cornerstone, a precious gem, on high On high, over all, set us Set us, and over every head exalt us Exalt us, and lift us up to the heights Upon the heights, exalted of old, You shall dwell! Dwell with us amidst the scattered Scattered, then ransomed, shall be the precious ones Precious ones, honored though we have strayed! We strayed, though in the land of our desire Desired and delightful—​a land flowing Flowing with milk and honey Honey clear and unpolluted Unpolluted, she shall not expel her dwellers Her dwellers who are her keepers Her keepers keep her covenant Her covenant was made with her in truth Truth within her bounds flourishes

Zion here is, as in Lamentations, an active and responsive entity; Yannai presents the city as redemptive and restorative, nurturing.67 Formally, the poem offers a lovely example of the technique of anadiplosis, in which the last word of one line becomes the first word of the next; the phrasing lends the poem a sense of breathlessness, but its voice is clear: the poet speaks to God about the city of Jerusalem. The lectionary verse that the poem embellishes, “Return to the land of your ancestors” (Gen. 31:3), is a command spoken in the divine voice. This poem takes the Torah portion’s central motif of the Land of Israel but responds to God’s commandment in the communal “we,” and in doing so the poet affirms the joy that the divine order—​now understood as a messianic promise—​brings to the people in whose midst he stands. The key intertext explains why the poet focuses on the land here, much as Torah portions featuring revelation lead to contemplations of Sinai and those on the Tabernacle and its furnishings inspire musings about the Temple. But the poet is not content simply to express eagerness to return; instead, Yannai 67 The personification here differs from that of Qallir in his qinah, “When Her Quota (of grief) is filled,” discussed in Chapter 4 as an example of prosopoeia. In the Qallir poem, Zion appears as a woman; in this poem by Yannai, the Land remains fundamentally terrestrial and somewhat abstract rather than personified and human.

The Stage Is a World, the Body an Instrument  377 paints a vivid picture of the people’s much desired destination. It is almost as if with the poet’s aid, the people can will their redemption not into existence but into slightly nearer proximity, by imagining the experience of their restoration with greater clarity. Similarly, geography and a sense of place can play an important role in Christian poetry. The ambiguity of the term “church,” which can refer both the place of assembly and the community that assembles, allows poets to blur the boundary between the church as the body of believers and churches as physical structures. The memra by Narsai (6th c. ce), known as “The Sanctification of the Church,” a lengthy verse-​homily in Syriac, primarily explores the idea of “the Church of the Nations” and develops the image of the congregation as Christ’s bride. It does, however, include a brief excursus that describes the church as building: Her sublime apse shines with light full of delight, in the place-​of-​forgiveness68 covered with splendor and sanctity In her stands the altar, the mystery of the tomb of Christ the Bridegroom, and in it the Cross, the mark of his life-​providing death, is placed. (ll. 160–​161)69

The description is generic: the poet invokes elements of structures—​apse, altar, cross—​common to churches of Narsai’s day. But while we may regret the lack of specificity to unique structures, Narsai’s blandness allows his listeners to see their own structure in his words. Seen through the poet’s eyes, the apse of any and every church is radiant and contains within it the life-​ giving mysteries of the Eucharist. Every congregation that heard this poem would find their own sanctuary within it. Within the Syriac tradition, Ephrem displays a particular interest in specific locations. He wrote three hymns about Shechem, which he presents as representative of the Gentile church (“On Virginity,” #17–​19), and two poems about the city of Ephrem/​Ephraim (“On Virginity,” #20–​21), where Jesus sought refuge before his final return to Jerusalem, according to John 11:54.70 Each of the Shechem hymns opens, “Blessed are you, O Shechem!” Hymn #20, clearly following after this series, opens, “Blessed are you, too, 68 The Holy of Holies. 69 Mar Narsai: Homily 33 on the Sanctification of the Church, ed. and trans. Amir Harrak (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2018), 48. 70 These poems can all be found in McVey, Ephrem the Syrian: #17 (334–​336), #18 (338–​340), #19 (341–​344), #20 (346–​349), and #21 (350–​353).

378  Staging the Sacred Ephrem,” while Hymn #21 returns to a simple “Blessed are you, Ephrem.” Ephrem notes other cities, as well—​Bethlehem, Cana, Nazareth, Samaria, and Bethany71—​which were not only singled out in scripture but possibly constituted pilgrimage sites in antiquity.72 Indeed, Poem #17 of “On the Virginity” concludes with a description of the church, standing in Ephrem’s day, erected in memory and at the site of the events recounted in John 4, adorned with a paraphrase of John 4:1–​15. The final strophe states: Blessed are you, O Shechem, for upon your well Today is built a holy church: For behold, “I baptize with living water For which your mouth asked there. Whoever drank from your well thirsted again and returned to it; My baptism needs no repetition.” Blessed are you, O Shehchem, upon whose well and church His exact words are portrayed! (Strophe 10)

There is the possibility, then, that some of Ephrem’s listeners would have seen these sites or held out hope of doing so. And if they could not see them in the flesh, they could visit them in their minds. Not in the abstract, but as imagined in concrete, spatial detail. Finally, it is worth highlighting the exceptional kontakion by Romanos, “On Earthquakes and Conflagrations,” which celebrates the restoration of the imperial cathedral.73 This hymn does not describe an imaginary 71 See “On the Nativity,” 2 (esp. Stanzas 3–​4). 72 The bibliography on pilgrimage in late antiquity is substantial; of particular value for our present study are Georgia Frank, The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 2000); Brouria Bitton-​Ashkelony, Encountering the Sacred: The Debate on Christian Pilgrimage in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); and Scott Fitzgerald Johnson, Literary Territories: Cartographical Thinking in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). For the earlier period, I would refer to Benjamin Gordon, “Sightseeing and Spectacle at the Jewish Temple,” AJS Review 43.2 (2019): 271–​ 292. Also note the excellent essays in Linda Ellis and Frank L. Kidner, eds., Travel, Communication, and Geography in Late Antiquity: Sacred and Profane (Aldershot, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004); and Rebecca Stephens Falcasantos, “Wandering Wombs, Inspired Intellects: Christian Religious Travel in Late Antiquity,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 25.1 (2017): 89–​117; 73 This poem is O #54 (462–​471), and a translation can be found in Carpenter, Kontakia of Romanos, Byzantine Melodist, translated and annotated by Marjorie Carpenter, 2 vols (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1970), 239–​248. On this hymn, see Eva C. Topping, “On Earthquakes and Fires: Romanos’ Encomium to Justinian,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 71 (1978): 22–​35; J. H. Barkhuizen, “Romanos and the Nika Riots: A Religious Perspective,” Ekklesiastikos Pharos, n.s. (1990): 30–​39; and Johannes Koder, “Imperial Propaganda in the Kontakia of Romanos the Melode,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 62 (2008): 275–​291.

The Stage Is a World, the Body an Instrument  379 place, remote in time or space, but a structure well known to the composer and his congregation: Hagia Sophia. And yet, recitation of this hymn was not confined to Constantinople; as a testimony to imperial piety and power, it was heard by those who would never behold the splendid edifice, whether in similarly magnificent structures in Ravenna or far more modest sanctuaries.74 As such, Romanos’ kontakion offers testimony of magnificence and power, bearing witness to those who could see it only through the lens of the poet’s words. It offers a hymnic alternative to pilgrimage, an experience shared with the congregation, refashioned as pilgrims of the imagination.75 The impetus for the poem, perhaps commissioned by the emperor Justinian, was the restoration of Hagia Sophia in 537, after its destruction in the Nika riot of 532.76 Romanos, whose works were performed in Hagia Sophia, dramatizes the splendor of the renewed sanctuary: Now our rulers have revealed things that are great, Brilliant, and worthy of wonder, Indeed surpassing all the men of old. The rulers of the Roman Empire at this time As they reverently manage affairs. In a short time rebuilt the entire city So that the hardships of all who had suffered Were forgotten. The very structure of the church Was erected with such excellence That it imitated Heaven, the divine throne, Which indeed offers Eternal life

74 The kontakion is labeled for the fourth day of the third week of Lent. 75 Imagined pilgrimages, conveyed through ekphrasis in written form, were well attested in antiquity and included the Jerusalem Temple. See Benjamin D. Gordon, “Sightseeing and Spectacle at the Jewish Temple,” AJS Review 43.2 (2019): 271–​292. The entire issue of AJS Review, vol. 43.2, is devoted to the theme “The Jerusalem Temple in History, Memory, and Ritual.” 76 John Malalas, Chronicle, Book 18 (esp. §§474–​477); translation in Elizabeth Jeffreys, Michael Jeffreys, and Roger Scott, The Chronicle of John Malalas: A Translation (Melbourne: Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, 1986), 275–​281. On the Nika riots see G. Greatrex, “The Nika Riot: A Reappraisal,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 117 (1997), 60–​86; and M. Meier, “Die Inszenierung einer Katastrophe: Justinian und der Nika Aufstand,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 142 (2003), 273–​300.

380  Staging the Sacred We who love Christ and hasten to Him And send up our praise to Him Entreat the Master and Creator of the Heavens To confirm the undertaking and strengthening The sanctuary Of His church In order that we may be able to behold [the Great Church] Entirely completed and filled with those who see its grace In the odes and hymns of the divine services, So that rulers and citizens And priests may exult in it because There has been given to all Eternal life.77

In these two strophes, Romanos touches on many of the themes in the chapter, all in the context of celebrating the restoration of a building both ideal and immensely present and concrete. The physical structure of the building expressly evokes the heavenly realm, and its space is filled with “odes and hymns” (τε ᾠδαîς καὶ τοîς ὓμνοις)—​not simply for the sake of beauty, but to secure the blessing of salvation for all who dwell within it. Romanos, perhaps gesticulating or inclining his head, directs his listeners’ eyes toward the ceiling that sparkles with mosaics, noting that it is “brilliant and worthy of wonder,” suggestive of the dome of heaven, even as he notes that those who pray within it “send up our praise to Him.” Here, we may recall the ekphrasis of the dome of Hagia Sophia written by Romanos’ near contemporary, Paul the Silentiary. In 562 or 563 ce, after the dome was reconstructed, he described the scene in radiant terms: Rising above this [walkway at the base of the dome] into the immeasurable air is a helmet rounded on all sides like a sphere and, radiant as the heavens, it bestrides the roof of the church. At its very summit art has depicted a cross, protector of the city. It is a wonder to see how [the dome], wide below, gradually grows less at the top as it rises. It does not, however, form a sharp pinnacle, but is like the firmament which rests on air.78 77 Strophes 23–​24. 78 Paul the Silentiary, Description of Hagia Sophia, §489; translation from Cyril Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire, 312–​1453; Sources and Documents (Englewood, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1972), 83. Mango translates the entire description of the church (pp. 80–​91), and it is an important source for understanding the appearance of Hagia Sophia in Justinian’s time.

The Stage Is a World, the Body an Instrument  381 Paul the Silentiary repeatedly speaks of glitter, gold, sparkle, stars, and light, suggesting the way daytime sun and nighttime lamps would have illumined the space. Indeed, he writes of the church at night: “But no words are sufficient to describe the illumination in the evening: you might say that some nocturnal sun filled the majestic temple with light,” and he describes a ceiling hung with reflective golden disks: Thus descending from their lofty course, they float in a circle above the heads of men. The cunning craftsman that pierced the discs all over with his iron tool so that they may receive shafts of fire-​wrought glass and provide pendent sources of light for the men at night . . . and in its pierced back it holds luminous vessels. You might say you were gazing on the effulgent stars of the heavenly Corona . . . 79

The resulting dynamic between performance and performance space, as seen by the community looking through Romanos’ eyes, shapes perception: the sight of what is above travels down to mortal realms, while the prayers of mortals rise.80 Standing inside brings one closer to heaven not only spiritually but also aesthetically. Romanos, performed in this setting, appeals to both the visual and aural, heavenly and human. Hagia Sophia is an echo of the divine abode, an icon that one can inhabit, and that thus facilitates contemplation and immersion in a truth that exceeds the capacity of verbal expression alone. The physical space, enlivened by active bodies, offers a window—​or, better, a doorway—​into reality, one encapsulated by the refrain: “Eternal life (ζωήν τήν αίώνιον).” This phrase, uttered by the community (in a poem otherwise strikingly devoid of dialogue), would have not only affirmed the poet’s words but also resonated throughout the cathedral, as the voice of heaven itself confirmed its truth by joining in its recitation.

Conclusions With the movement of the performer’s body, in concert with the congregation and the very architecture of sacred space, all these elements come 79 Paul the Silentiary, Description of Hagia Sophia, ll. 806–​833, in Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire, 89–​90. 80 On the role of movement and spatiality in ekphrasis, see Ruth Webb, “Spatiality, Embodiment, and Agency in Ekphraseis of Church Buildings,” in Aural Architecture in Byzantium: Music, Acoustics, and Ritual, ed. Bissera Pentcheva (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), 163–​175.

382  Staging the Sacred together in the passage from Romanos quoted earlier, but whether the poet draws attention to such elements or not, the nature of performance suggests that these components colored the delivery and reception of every hymn. Actors and orators displayed keen awareness of the communicative powers of their bodies and voices, and architects and builders created structures that would augment performance, enabling people to see, hear, understand, and respond. If delivered poorly, the best poet’s finest efforts—​ekphrasis and ethopoeia, connections to literary tradition and exegetical innovation, theological instruction, and demonstrations of wit—​will be muddled, obscured, or even ruined. Shakespeare poorly performed is still Shakespeare, but no one would want to watch it.81 In late antiquity, poets composed hymns to be performed, and people experienced their works as live performances. While oratory, theater, and hymnody served very different functions, and were delivered by distinctive kinds of performers, the populations they sought to engage overlapped a great deal, and they shared techniques and spatial elements in common. Orators, actors, and liturgical singers used the tools of hands, body, voice, and space to connect with their listeners and persuade them (they hoped) to share their vision. These elements of delivery, integral to how well a hymn was received, along with congregational participation, responsible not only for signaling community enthusiasm but also for generating it through the physical experience of crowd energy, defy capture on the page. We must remember, furthermore, that every delivery would have been different. Even the same poet, performing in the same space, would nonetheless have presumably performed before a somewhat different audience, one reflecting a distinctive communal, social, or political moment, and even weather could affect acoustics. Furthermore, while named poets, about whom we often have some sense of when and where they lived, composed many of the works studied here, all of these hymns long outlived their authors in popular use,

81 An incident recounted in the tenth-​century Italian-​Jewish Chronicle of Ahimaatz (Megillat Ahimaatz) is premised on this reality. In this episode, the cantor-​poet Silanus (or Silano) of Venosa (ninth c.) tricked the visiting emissary from Jerusalem into reading an inappropriate text at the Saturday morning service, thereby starting a riot. By the trickster Silanus’ perspective, perhaps the delivery was effective, but it seems unlikely that the emissary felt the same. See B. Klar, The Chronicle of Ahimaatz (Jerusalem: Tarshish, 1974), 18–​19 (Hebrew); and R. Bonfil, History and Folklore in a Medieval Jewish Chronicle: The Family Chronicle of Aḥima’az ben Paltiel (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 81–​83 and 256–​259. While of dubious historicity, this amusing anecdote suggests that the use of written texts in synagogue performance was plausible at this early period, and it relies on the facts that a local scamp-​poet would be sufficiently literate to manipulate a text and that a prayer leader (albeit a visiting dignitary) could be sufficiently literate not to prepare extensively and thus be taken by surprise.

The Stage Is a World, the Body an Instrument  383 and they did so in communities far removed from where they lived. Finally, while likely composed for wealthy, urban congregations, these works must be imagined as having eventually migrated to more modestly endowed congregations, communities with different communicative conventions and performance aesthetics, and spaces with different acoustics. All these factors would shape the delivery and experience of these poems. The words as we have them on the page help begin the process of imagining the performance of late antique hymnody, but the variables involved in the experience are manifold. Perhaps the preservation of these works and their endurance in living rituals offers the best witness to their enduring vitality.

Epilogue Curtain Call: Afterlives of Liturgical Theater

He’s gone and with him what a world are dead. Which he review’d, to be revived so, No more young Hamlet, old Hieronimo Kind Lear, the Grieved Moor, and more beside, That lived in him have now forever died. —​Elegy for Richard Burbage (d. 1619)

On March 18, 1899, theater critic Jacob Corbin expressed tremendous enthusiasm for the actor Jacob Adler’s performance of the lead role in Der yidisher kenig Lir (The Jewish King Lear)—​a Yiddish adaptation of the Shakespearean tragedy by Jacob Gordon, staged in New York City. Adler impressed Corbin (despite the critic’s general disdain for the production), and Corbin observed how effective Adler was in connecting with his audience: [Adler’s] audience was one palpable mass of sympathy. If he merely stroked his daughter’s hair, graspingly like a blind man, the women in the audience sobbed and the men blew their noses. And he is not only an actor of great temperamental force; he is technically a master. His voice has richness and sonority, and he husbands it well. He makes the slightest gesture count, and his frequent moments of quiet, one is tempted to say, count most of all. His costumes and make-​up were as simple and unobtrusive as the setting of his stage; yet, as his clothes grew older and more worn from act to act, and his hair and beard thinner and more thin, the unconscious effect was stupendous.1

1 John Corbin, “Drama: Shakespeare and Primitive Instincts,” Harper’s Weekly 43 (March 18, 1899), 261.

Staging the Sacred. Laura S. Lieber, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780190065461.003.0008

Epilogue  385 Adler’s Yiddish Lear is far removed from Late Antiquity in both time and place, and yet it serves as a reminder that much of the ancient material examined in this volume would remain central to performances for centuries. Gordon’s text of Lear is not a simple translation of the English original but, rather, a creative adaptation, one that draws on the “sacred canon” of the Anglophone stage. The play’s script, that is, its written words, represent a starting point in the theatrical experience, not their culmination. As compelling as Gordon’s script was, it was Adler who brought it to life and elicited such rich emotional responses from his audience. Corbin’s analysis displays a keen sensitivity to Adler’s skillful delivery: he notes the actor’s voice, his gestures, and his body language, and the responses he elicited in his audience. As Joel Berkowitz observes, in his summation of American Yiddish theater and its playwrights, “From their earliest works in the mid-​1870s, these writers had raided the cupboard of European dramas and operettas for plots and music, which they often blended with character types and issues of immediate interest to their audiences.”2 Writers and actors such as Gordon and Adler were not passive recipients of the majority culture’s traditions, but active participants who drew upon a variety of tools and texts to adopt fully both literary works and performative traditions into their own world.3 And they worked in close partnership with their audiences, constantly refining their presentations to suit expectations and tastes.4

2 Joel Berkowitz, Shakespeare on the American Yiddish Stage (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2002), 207–​208. 3 On the topic of early modern Jewish theater, particularly in terms of performers’ flair for the melodramatic and the powerful influence of individual actors, see Jonathan M. Hess, Deborah and Her Sisters: How One Nineteenth-​Century Melodrama and a Host of Celebrated Actresses Put Judaism on the World Stage (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). 4 Yiddish theater lore traces its own origins as a highly participatory artform to a Romanian cafe in 1876. On this occasion, the poet and songwriter Avrom Goldfaden was invited to perform, but his decision to recite somber poetry got him booed off the stage. Goldfaden’s account goes on to state, “As quick as lightning [Yisroel] Grodner threw himself into socks and shoes and a long caftan with a shtreiml [fur hat] and payes [side-​locks] . . . and announced, ‘I will now sing for you the song, ‘The Happy Hasid,’ written by the famous author Avrom Goldfaden!’ And he began to sing and make crazy hand gestures and dance a Russian folkdance. God knows why they could not appreciate the same author for whose work they would constantly clamor!” (Avrom Goldfaden, “Der onfang fun yidishn teater,” Yidishe velt [June 7, 1929], 7). See discussions in Alyssa Quint, The Rise of Modern Yiddish Theater (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2019), esp. 22–​46; and Berkowitz, Shakespeare on the American Yiddish Stage. Berkowitz summarizes the dynamic: “This scenario would resurface time and again in the Yiddish theatre: a powerful, vocal audience dictating the material on the program, chasing away a writer/​performer who miscalculated its expectations, and finding satisfaction in a popular star entertainer with a better understanding of its tastes. The lively dialectic between artists and audiences would often have a strong influence on the way in which Shakespeare’s plays were adapted into Yiddish” (10).

386 Epilogue Adler’s performance of Lear reflected a distinctive synthesis of late-​ nineteenth-​century American and Eastern European Jewish conventions, much as other performances of the tragedy reflected their own unique contexts. From its original productions during the reign of James I—​ Shakespeare wrote the role of Lear for the Globe’s aging lead actor, Richard Burbage5—​to its revival during the Restoration (where an adaptation by Nahum Tate, which lightened the grimness of the original story and gave it a happy ending, was favored), to the baroque and early modern periods in both Britain and on the continent, the words of the Bard were a starting point, not a fixed one.6 Shakespeare, a transitional figure between the medieval and modern periods, may most be remembered for his innovations but he drew upon received traditions of dramaturgy and playwrighting; he acknowledged his debts to his classical predecessors (and thus amplified their debts to even earlier playwrights) and reflects the influence of mystery plays performed by Christian guilds, as well as other forms of medieval entertainment.7 Mediated by Shakespeare and other medieval, Renaissance, and early modern playwrights, theatrical conventions from antiquity persist into the present, even as they are continually reinvented. In every period and place, writers took the raw material of inherited words and traditions and crafted them anew, so that actors and musicians could bring them to life, all with an 5 On Shakespearean actors, see Stanley Wells, Great Shakespeare Actors: Burbage to Branagh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). Also note Deborah Payne Fisk, “Does Performance Studies Speak to Restoration Theatre?,” Literature Compass 6.3 (2009): 668–​679. 6 See Jean I. Marsden, “Improving Shakespeare: From the Restoration to Garrick,” in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage (Cambridge Companions to Literature), ed. Stanley Wells and Sarah Stanton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 21–​36. It bears noting that while performance of complete plays was largely prohibited during the Interregnum (1642–​1660), excerpts from plays were performed as freestanding works, in a fashion reminiscent of practices from late antiquity. 7 On Shakespeare and classical antiquity, see Richard F. Hardin, Plautus and the English Renaissance of Comedy (Lanham, MD: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2018); and Robert S. Miola, Shakespeare and Classical Comedy: The Influence of Plautus and Terence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). With regard to the influence of the mystery plays on his writing, see Michael O’Connell, “Blood Begetting Blood: Shakespeare and the Mysteries,” in Medieval Shakespeare: Pasts and Presents, ed. Ruth Morse, Helen Cooper, and Peter Holland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 177–​189; and Kurt A. Schreyer, Shakespeare’s Medieval Craft: Remnants of the Mysteries on the London Stage (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014). On the performance of mystery plays, see Eva von Contzen, “Embodiment and Joint Attention: An Enactive Reading of the Middle English Cycle Plays,” in Enacting the Bible in Medieval and Early Modern Drama, ed. Eva von Contzen and Chanita Goodblatt (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2020), 43–​62; and also, V. L. Hamblin, Saints at Play: The Performance Features of French Hagiographic Mystery Plays (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 2012). For one of the most enduring modern forms of religious theater, see James Shapiro’s study of the Passion Play that is closely tied to German Catholic traditions of piety but which has been embraced by American Protestants in the twentieth century, Oberammergau: The Troubling Story of the World's Most Famous Passion Play (New York: Knopf, 2007).

Epilogue  387 eye to making a living as well as making art—​and thus appealing to popular audiences and not antagonizing political authorities. Just as we can discern elements of continuity between late antique theater and the modern stage, scholars have traced similar trajectories that connect certain styles of oratory—​specifically homiletics and the delivery of sermons—​ through time, as well. Among Jews and Christians, in at least some contexts, such addresses were both innovative but framed as a reclaiming of traditions from the classical (or rabbinic) world.8 Just as in antiquity, orators and homilists found much to learn from theater, despite their antipathy for vulgar, morally questionable performances. The Puritan anti-​ theater polemicist, William Prynne, articulates an unease often expressed by elite writers in antiquity, when he expresses dismay that public orators might think a study of theater would improve homiletical performance—​a warning that gives evidence to just such a practice. Prynne writes: The acting therefore of Playes is no wayes necessary or usefull for an Orator, it being no furtherance but an apparant obstacle to true oratory, action, elocution; there being no analogie betweene the wanton amorous gestures, speeches, Pastorals, jests, and florishes of a Poet, an Actor; and the sad, grave, serious elocution or action of an Orator.9

Despite clerics’ attempts to draw boundaries between their declamatory art and others’ theatrical debasement of oratory, modern scholars continue to discern fruitful (if unarticulated) cross-​fertilization between such performances in the early modern period, much as we saw in antiquity. When literary historian John Wesley describes his scholarly project—​an examination of Renaissance English homiletics—​we can hear ambitions quite similar to that of the present study, despite the different time periods under scrutiny: “[T]‌he purpose of what follows to describe not only this particular conflation of acting and oratory, but also the inseparability of performance

8 The nature of the written works and earlier scholarship skews this evidence heavily toward anglophone, European, and white communities. It bears reminding that the issues of delivery of religious teachings was important throughout global Christianity and outside the European Jewish diaspora. 9 William Prynne, Histrio-​Mastix The Players Scourge, or, Actors Tragaedie (1633), 933. For the broader context of Prynne’s thousand-​page-​long attack on theater, see Michael O’Connell, The Idolatrous Eye: Iconoclasm and Theater in Early-​Modern England (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), esp. 14–​35.

388 Epilogue and learning in the actions of a pulpit orator.”10 Similarly, the editors of the Oxford Handbook the Early Modern Sermon state that among their goals is to “encourage critical thinking about early modern sermons not just as texts, but also as vividly performative acts that involve auditory as well as preacher, and as crucial influences on ecclesiastical architecture.”11 Early modern preaching manuals, such as John Barton’s The Art of Rhetorick (1634) and Richard Bernard’s The Faithfull Shepheard (1607), cited authorities important to the present study, such as Cicero and Quintilian, and such practical guides were functionally successors to the progymnasmata from antiquity.12 Preaching stands where oratory once stood, and where once liturgical poetry held its own as a major form of performative theological expression, hymnody—​for all its popularity—​occupied a position secondary to that of the sophisticated sermon.13 Jewish preachers, responding to congregational demand for vernacular homilies in the synagogue, also turned to earlier traditions on rhetoric as well as to contemporary models, both from the general (Christian) context and theater. Homiletics, as both a literary art and a communicative practice (including intonation and gesture), became a feature of rabbinical education, even as classical piyyutim were no longer quietly skipped but expunged from prayer books and replaced by vernacular hymns—​more aesthetically pleasing, morally edifying, and inviting of community participation.14 10 John Wesley, “Acting and Actio in the Sermons of Lancelot Andrews,” Renaissance Studies 23.5 (2009): 678; see also Wesley, “Rhetorical Delivery for Renaissance English: Voice, Gesture, Emotion, and the Sixteenth-​Century Vernacular Turn,” Renaissance Quarterly 68.4 (2015): 1265–​1296. 11 Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon, ed. Peter McCullough, Hugh Adlington, and Emma Rhatigan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), xiv. Of special interest to the present study is the essay by Kate Armstrong, “Sermons in Performance,” 120–​136. 12 Homiletics in medieval and early modern Judaism is comparatively undertheorized (and studies of contemporary Samaritan sermonizing, essentially nonexistent), and where Christian homilists look back to the classical world for models, Jewish speakers looked to their own (rabbinic) antiquity, as well as to more recent (often explicitly Christian) models. See Alexander Deeg, Walter Homolka, and Heinz-​Günther Schöttler, eds., Preaching in Judaism and Christianity: Encounters and Developments from Biblical Times to Modernity (Berlin: DeGruyter, 2008). As Günter Stemberger notes in his essay for this book, “When the young Leopold Zunz wrote his magisterial work Die Gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden, his goal was not only to reconstruct the history of midrash, but to justify with it the renewal of the rabbinic sermon in the Jewish reform movement of his times” (“The Derashah in Rabbinic Times,” 7). 13 On the role of hymnody in the early modern and modern periods, see, among other works, Marvin V. Clarke, British Methodist Hymnody: Theology, Heritage, and Experience (London: Routledge, 2017); and Judah M. Cohen, Jewish Religious Music in Nineteenth-​Century America: Restoring the Synagogue Soundtrack (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019). 14 Isaac Leeser (1806–​1868), a Westphalian-​born Jew who would become a leader in the American Jewish community—​and an antagonist of the nascent American Reform movement—​preached routinely at Mikve Israel in Philadelphia. He possessed a number of books significant for the present study, including George W. Bethune’s The Eloquence of the Pulpit, with Illustrations from St. Paul (1842) and Hugh Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1783; Leeser owned the 1826 edition).

Epilogue  389 Synagogue rituals were, similarly, modernized—​transformations that reflected an attunement to performative aesthetics from the larger culture; we see this awareness of “staging” in descriptions of two holidays—​Shavuot and the Ninth of Av—​as observed in a traditional but modernizing synagogue in Dresden in 1840: . . . A choir of twenty to thirty men and boys was positioned high up in the second gallery, where it responded harmoniously to the chants of the cantor, who led the service from a table located directly in front of the ark. The congregation recited its prayers silently or in unison. Many of the piyutim had been excised, but for the sake of the most traditional worshipers, singing of the akdamut (a special lengthy Aramaic poem for the holiday) was retained. During the Torah chant no one was permitted to sing along out loud. . . . As congregants arrived on the eve of the fast day [of the Ninth of Av], those who chose to remove their shoes as a sign of mourning were required to do so in the entrance hall outside the sanctuary and to put on a presentable foot covering in their place. No one was permitted to bring low benches or to sit on the floor. When they entered, worshipers found the synagogue draped in black and dimly lighted so that the pulpit area remained shrouded in darkness. Only a pale shimmer of light, reflected from a silver Shield of David hanging above the ark, somewhat illuminated its surroundings—​as if to symbolize the lone ray of Israel’s hope. Instead of the cacophonous waitings which characterize the traditional service on this day, the lamentations were rendered by cantor, choir, and congregation in a restrained but sincere manner.15

The rabbi of the Dresden community at this time was Zecharias Frankel, the founder of the “Positive Historical” school of Judaism, a forerunner of

Blair, a Scottish clergyman, includes in his book advice for clergymen writing and delivering sermons. Also, we should note, Leeser owned at least one book written by an actor, which might have provided the reader with advice on gesture and voice. See Robert V. Friedenberg, “Hear O Israel”: The History of American Jewish Preaching, 1654–​1970 (Tuscaloosa and London: University of Alabama Press, 1989), 33. On the purging of many piyyutim from the Jewish prayerbook, see Laura S. Lieber, Yannai on Genesis: An Invitation to Piyyut (Cincinnati: HUC Press, 2010), 9–​11. 15 These accounts come from the writings of Bernhard Beer, a lay leader of the community and supporter of modernization of rituals; the text comes from Michael A. Meyer, Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1988), 106; on Frankel, see also 84–​89. The importance of the sermon, the composition of new hymns, and the purging of classical piyyutim from the prayer book are all topics also treated in Meyer’s important study; see, esp., Chapter 1, “Adapting Judaism to the Modern World” (pp. 10–​61).

390 Epilogue the modern Conservative movement, and one that favored gradual reform anchored in tradition. Frankel did not wish to abandon traditional observances, but he did desire to modernize and update the mourning rituals of the day so that they resonated as edifying and tasteful; it is telling that the highlight of each service, in Bernhard Beer’s account, was Frankel’s sermon.16 As these examples remind us, and as these reformers knew, whether the art form is oratory or acting, homily or hymn, a stage is still a stage, and the speaker’s voice and body the instrument through which meaning is made. This volume opened with an image of a mosaic—​the theater masks (if such they are) from the synagogue in Huqoq—​and with that technology of antique artistry and its survival into the present as a governing metaphor, it also closes. The pixilated composition of mosaics, gapped from the beginning and often altered or damaged over subsequent centuries, perhaps only partially recovered, evokes the fragmentary and fragile nature of the evidence mustered in this study. At the same time, for all the gaps, incompleteness, and mysteries of mosaics—​all the questions they inspire in viewers spanning topics from craftsmanship, to symbolism, to function—​the tesserae conjure in the minds of their viewers a distinct picture. A whole still emerges from the parts. To extend the metaphor of the mosaic, each chapter in this volume worked to recover an awareness of the necessary but often invisible cultural substrate that underlies every tessera: the general “performative” mortar that peeks out around the edges of these texts but sustains and makes the emergent image possible. Samaritan, Christian, and Jewish texts, like the varied and distinctive stones chosen for a mosaic, some only beautiful in the aggregate, differ from each other in meaningful ways and possess their own beauty and individual qualities. Characteristic allusions, aesthetics, and theological assumptions inflect each body of writing with its own color, texture, and gleam. But as much as we can appreciate these bodies of writing in isolation, as we do when we study the individual elements of the works or the kinds of stones only as compared with each other and not with other varieties, we also need to appreciate the richness of the artform as a whole. Elements of mosaic artistry become visible—​legible—​only when we step back and take in the multicolored, multi-​textured composite. The common substrate of 16 The Ninth of Av was a particularly vexing day for early reformers, as it demanded confrontation with traditional expressions of yearning for a return to Zion that was perceived as being at odds with the desires of European Jews for recognition as citizens of modern nation-​states. Some more radical synagogues ceased observing the holiday entirely or transformed it into a celebratory day.

Epilogue  391 conventions, norms, and experiences of performance lends the assembly of stones coherence and brings stability to the composition. If the mosaic is one fruitful analogy for hymnody in late antiquity, a metaphor for the afterlives of these kinds of writings would be the palimpsest, writings layered over writings, antiquity peeking out from behind fresher ink. These texts are not static artifacts, snapshots of a moment in time; they were, and in some cases still are, living texts, components of dynamic ritual performances that write new conventions and contexts over the still-​visible letters of late antiquity. In this volume, we have focused on the “under text,” in that we have tried to recover a sense of how these works emerged and were experienced within the period of their origin. That period itself spans centuries, but this is the period when liturgical poetry emerged throughout the Eastern Mediterranean world as a major form of literary creativity and religious expression, and when the matrix of a general, common culture of performance, both in technique and infrastructure, existed in the areas where this poetry arose. In short, to understand these works—​why they appeared when they did, and what they meant to their authors and why their audiences enjoyed and preserved them—​we need to read them as part of that specific cultural, societal moment. This study itself is palimpsest-​like, in that it layers over and under the written text elements a diversity of other elements, some of which influenced how the text took shape, and others how it was received. But while this volume has sought to recover elements of the texts that, by their very nature or accidents of history, were largely erased, this should not be understood as devaluing the later reception of these works and other works that can be seen as their heirs and decedents. Medieval and early modern religious poetry and sacred theater—​however construed and defined—​can similarly benefit from this kind of study of the ephemeral yet essential elements of their performance. Indeed, for all this work’s ambitions, it is ultimately a very preliminary study, one which points toward multiple avenues for further scholarly inquiry. In regard to the late antique contextualizing of hymnody, much work remains to be done to understand the experiential aspects of delivery and reception of these works as seen and heard performances. Possibilities and questions relegated to the realm of speculation in the present volume may become less ephemeral and more concretely understood through continued study of built structures, particularly work on acoustics, sight lines, and visual adornment. Previously lost structures from antiquity (notably synagogues) continue to come to light, as well as new texts (especially from

392 Epilogue the Cairo Genizah); such discoveries enrich our understanding of the period both by adding to the data we have in hand, and by introducing specific new content, as in the Huqoq mosaics, with their richly allusive narrativity and visual affinities for theater. Finally, as we gain greater and more nuanced understandings of theater, oratory, and education in this period, we can continue to experiment with reading hymnody through the lenses of this diffuse “common” culture and consider the implications of concepts such as an aesthetic of delight. Some scholars will follow such threads deeper into individual traditions and well-​defined bodies of writing, while others may discern new and more robust ways to read texts and contexts together in comparative ways. In addition to avenues of inquiry that deepen our understanding of hymnody in its late antique contexts, this study also suggests new ways for understanding continuity from this time period into the centuries that come after, and for articulating elements of change. Many of the texts here became part of statutory orders of prayers and the liturgical canon. As a consequence of this formalization, works that were once dynamic and expressive syntheses of tradition and the contemporary moment became fixed elements of defined prayer cycles, and in turn they became touchstones that inspired later poets to further their creativity or to rebel against predecessors’ perceived constraints and flaws. The emergence of the Greek poetic form known as the kanon, for example, must be read in light of this late antique backdrop, just as Ashkenazi Jewish hymnody amplifies elements from these Palestinian Jewish piyyutim—​and Andalusian Jewish poetry explicitly rejected such conventions. Other forms of continuity can also be perceived. The Jewish Aramaic poems for Purim in some sense anticipate medieval Purimshpiels; these Aramaic texts have, as their starting point, a biblical text already rich with drama, comedy, costumes, and the potential for physical comedy, and they resonate in suggestive ways with the tantalizing visuals from Dura Europos.17 The theatrical elements of Christian hymnody, similarly, may help us understand the emergence of mystery plays and the rise of medieval religious theater as “secular” theater diminished. Taken together, a greater understanding of the non-​textual, performative elements of liturgical poetry may 17 The Greek additions to Esther amplify the performative elements in an already dramatic book, by introducing extended direct speeches and explicitly describing characters’ body language. See Michael V. Fox, Character and Ideology in the Book of Esther, rev. ed. (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2010).

Epilogue  393 help enrich our understanding not only of new forms of and occasions for religious poetry—​new liturgical poems and forms for developing liturgies, as well as new styles for developing aesthetics—​but the rise of secular forms of poetry and song, as well, in Greek and Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic: wine poetry, troubadour songs, and the rebirth of poetic epics, including chansons de geste such as the Song of Roland, as well as poeticized retellings of biblical texts, such as the book of Esther.18 And just as people preserved literary texts even as the liturgies changed and evolved, even the structures in which such works came to life transformed over time, with specific sacred sites renovated or discarded, repurposed or ultimately discarded, enduring over centuries or preserved only in memory. This study also highlights the importance of liturgical poetry for the study of antiquity. For scholars of religion—​particularly in the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century, when Christianity meant “patristics” and Judaism equaled “rabbinics”—​hymnody occupied a place of secondary importance compared with more “academic” or “scholarly” works, like those produced by the scholars themselves: philosophical and theological treatises, exegetical writings, and even homilies. Prose permits an author to construct an argument or explicate a passage at length, to flesh his analysis out carefully, in point-​by-​point and even pedagogical fashion. Poetry, by contrast, is constrained by form and context, and hymns have often been seen as, at best, derivative popularizations of more learned scholarly works or traditions, demoted precisely because the laity embraced them and participated in their ritual performance. And even when a hymn presents a subtle or sophisticated message, the constraints of poetic form and ritual context often limit a liturgical poem’s ability to “teach” a lesson in the way that prose works do. At the same time, the aesthetic of late antique poetry, and its very investment in exegesis or theology, can strike modern readers as awkward and unlyrical—​ meaning that these works are simultaneously judged as intellectually thin compared with contemporary prose works and as artistically inferior to later forms of hymnody. Among my other ambitions for this study, I have attempted in the preceding chapters to reframe the parameters of evaluation so that hymnody 18 For example, see Deborah Tennen, “Megillat Ester in Ottava Rima: Mordecai Dato’s Poetry Regarding Sixteenth‐Century Italian Jewish Women,” Renaissance Studies 22.4 (2008): 507–​541. Centos—​poems assembled out of quotations and paraphrases of earlier works—​were popular in antiquity and can also be seen as part of this neo-​epic, innovative-​tradition aesthetic; see, for example, Scott McGill, Virgil Recomposed: The Mythological and Secular Centos in Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

394 Epilogue can be judged not simply against contemporary prose works (or later poetry, which reflects the aesthetics of subsequent generations) but on its own terms, viewed through the lenses of varieties of performance that were, in practice, as relevant for understanding both the composition and the reception of hymns as other forms of liturgical and homiletical performance. The analyses presented do not argue that liturgical poetry competes with these other established forms of writing and performance but, rather, show that hymnody, for all its contextually specific expressions, exists at the intersection of multiple, overlapping ecosystems. Liturgical poetry draws on religious texts and traditions, imbuing them with the experiential power of ritual and liturgy, while also infusing them with the efficacy and aesthetics of dramatic performance, both theatrical and oratorical. The complex and frankly speculative nature of this study underscores the complexity of the material itself, and indicates the value of interdisciplinary scholarship in the study of antiquity, liturgy, and performance. Most fundamentally, scholars need to continue to make the texts and artifacts we study more accessible and familiar, particularly those often relegated to the margins; translations that frame these hymns in ways that engage readers from a variety of disciplines remain a desideratum. Those who work in cultural history, visual studies, and theater cannot be expected to engage in works that defy easy access and invitation. Scholars, once they are attuned to the potential value of these poems for their own research, can explore them any number of ways, thus expanding the number sees works as four-​ dimensional experiences, performed in specific spaces and particular times, captured only in the two-​dimensional medium of text, and viewed through the lenses of performativity and theatricality—​is but one of many and can be itself extended along a variety of axes: geographically, chronologically, textually, and spatially. This study also touches upon how knowledge of physical space should inform our understandings of performance; just as poetic and musical styles and homiletical practices evolve, buildings were likewise adapted, updated, and transformed. Similarly, scriptural lectionaries would continue to play a central role in the composition of liturgical poems, but lectionaries were still fluid, as were the liturgies and the general sense of occasions for which hymns would be appropriate. Poets continued to seek out and discover new occasions to which they could apply their creativity, even as other compositions, reflecting older styles, could be discarded or, in practice, skipped, to be replaced by more contemporary styles or even vernacular

Epilogue  395 languages. Religiosity and entertainment display ongoing entanglement, with all factors in flux—​moving dynamically and along complex but decipherable axes. Another key element of this study emerges from its comparative orientation and its ambition to read three distinct but interconnected traditions together, as distinct components of a shared cultural moment. Such cross-​ tradition analysis, which here relies significantly on literary works, can benefit from the insights offered by methods such as network analysis. Such studies, enabled by archaeology and digital humanities tools, affirm the spatial interconnectedness of Jews, Christians, and Samaritans—​and, in the future, other communities may be added, as well—​even as other studies document economic engagement. Understanding the cultural and societal matrices of late antiquity, the complex networks of interconnectivities, helps us draw connections concerning more ephemeral phenomena, those which leave fewer (if any) tangible traces in the written or material record.19 In this study, we have drawn out common elements of performance that, in turn, suggest deeper commonalities among communities as well as emergent interests in a variety of discrete topics, such as pilgrimage, aesthetics, and rituality, whether the texts themselves express polemical attitudes toward others, assume coexistence, or ignore the presence of the present world. Hymns need not explicitly acknowledge contact in order to manifest its reality. For all the antiquity of these texts, the study of hymnody remains in many ways a young discipline. Encountering these poems, on their own terms, can be akin to stumbling upon a previously obscured mosaic: gradually, from among dulled and begrimed stones, and despite lacunae, a rich, colorful 19 With regard to the nascent and robust area of comparative studies within the field of late ancient studies, see Anna Collar, Religious Networks in the Roman Empire: The Spread of New Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), merits particular attention. Also see the work of Michal Bar-​Asher Siegal, especially her most recent monograph, Jewish-​Christian Dialogues on Scripture in Late Antiquity: Heretic Narratives of the Babylonian Talmud (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). Her work builds on important studies by Catherine Hezser, “Crossing Enemy Lines: Network Connections between Palestinian and Babylonian Sages in Late Antiquity,” Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period 46.2(2015): 224–​250; this essay develops important ideas already present in her monograph, The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 1997). See, too, Hayim Lappin, “Feeding the Jerusalem Temple: Cult, Hinterland, and Economy in First-​Century Palestine,” Journal of Ancient Judaism 8.3 (2018): 410–​453; and Maayan Zhitomirsky-​Geffet and Gila Prebor, “SageBook: Toward a Cross-​Generational Social Network for the Jewish Sages’ Prosopography,” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 34.3 (2019): 676–​695. With regard to early Christianity, note Cavan W. Concannon, Assembling Early Christianity: Trade, Networks, and the Letters of Dionysios of Corinth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

396 Epilogue image takes shape, beckoning us to further study. Each body of sacred poetry, whether Jewish, Samaritan, or Christian, constitutes a distinct area of study, challenging scholars to master texts, subtext, and contexts. Scholars have to produce and take seriously studies that take the lived experience of these works—​from material, ritual, performative, and exegetical perspectives—​as their focus, despite the elements of uncertainty and speculation. The present study strives to illustrate various ways in which hymns can be studied at a range of scales: the smallest unit, the individual composition, or even specific units of a single work; or, expanding our reach, as collective genres or by single authors; or, even more expansively, from within singular traditions; and most broadly, by means of cross-​traditional comparative explorations. In this book, my analysis moved from the individual to the communal, but also from the concrete to the ephemeral, and from the closely textual to the speculative. At heart, this study constitutes an appeal to the imagination: the imaginations of those who composed, performed, and beheld these texts in antiquity, but also the imaginations of those who read them in the present. How did ancient poets want their listeners to understand the past, the future, and the heavens? How did they see the world and convey their visions? Reading any text involves some sense of imagination, conscious or otherwise, and all the more so for works as complicated as the hymnody explored here. In this volume, I have imagined myself—​and thus my readers—​in a version of the world of late antiquity, connecting the realms of “civic” public speech (acting and oratory) to synagogues and churches, and the larger world of “religious” performance, particularly of song. These hymns spoke worlds into being, worlds that vanished with the breaths that bodied them forth. We cannot fully recapture the experience itself, but perhaps, with this study, we can begin to remember what once was lively and now is lost, and to hear the echoes of the once-​vibrant stage. This is, after all, a world in which even God could be depicted as pantomime: In the time to come, the Holy Blessed One will lead the chorus (holah) of the righteous, as it is written: “Keep her ramparts (helah) in mind” (Ps. 48:14). It is written holah, (meaning) they will dance around Him like young maidens and point to Him, as it were, with a finger, saying, “This is God, our God, forever and ever; He will lead us evermore” (Ps. 48:15).20

20 LevR 11:9 (Vilna ed., 17a).

Index For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–​53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. Abin ben Kahana, 46 absorption (of religious experience), 165n.7 acclamation, 38, 62, 92, 118–​19, 147–​48, 150–​55, 292, 313–​16, 367. See also refrains acoustics, 10–​11, 331–​39, 343–​44. See also performance, infrastructure and; soundscape; spaces/​infrastructures actores, and persona, 117 actors, 35, 297n.19, See also classical canon; communication, nonverbal; delivery; hypokrite; mime; pantomime advocates and, 118–​19 authors and, 13–​14 Cicero on, 228 condemned, 232 dancers and, 313, 314 distrust of, 39–​40 expressiveness and, 292–​93 liturgists and, 47, 115–​16, 142–​43, 161 mission of, 171–​72 orators and, 3, 4–​5, 9–​10, 50, 97–​98, 116–​17, 120, 147–​48, 160, 166–​68, 232–​33, 286, 297, 308, 309–​10, 316–​ 17, 322, 382–​83 performance spaces and, 330–​34 physicality and, 292, 299–​325 positioning in space, 330–​31 skillful, 231, 237, 286–​87, 292, 296, 308, 347–​48 Tertullian on, 230–​31 adaptation, 14–​15, 28, 95–​96 actor, 230–​31 delivery and, 306–​7 dramatic, and liturgical poetry, 106–​7 for liturgical setting, 49n.70

of popular traditions, 294–​95 selective, 35 spatial, 311–​12, 331–​32, 333–​34, 394–​95 Adat Devorim (ha-​Qostandini), 66n.103 Adler, Jacob, 384–​87 adultery /​infidelity, 73, 133, 136–​39, 136–​ 37n.70. See also mime, adultery Aelius Theon, 224 Aeneid (Virgil), 113–​14, 272–​73 Akdamut, 389 Akedah, 18–​19, 243–​46, 253–​55, 258–​59, 261–​62, 266–​67 Aldrete, Gregory, 117, 299–​301, 314–​16, 349–​51 Allen, Pauline, 214 ambo, 41 Ambrose, 42–​43, 51–​52 Amidah, 108, 142–​43, 186–​87, 201–​2 Amphitheater/​s, 25–​26, 41, 42–​43, 47–​48, 56–​57, 57n.93, 327, 330–​31 Amram Dare, 18–​19, 89, 144–​45, 178–​80, 207–​8, 210, 267 anamnesis, 141–​42 defined, 241–​42 aniconism, 209–​10 Antioch, 18–​19, 23–​24, 42, 100, 101, 212, 213, 322–​23 Antonopoulos, Spyridon, 336–​37 Aphthonius the Sophist of Antioch, 224–​ 25, 226–​27, 235–​36 applause, 317n.76 Apuleius, 298–​99 Archive and the Repertoire, The (Taylor), 293–​94 Aristophanes, 34, 73 Aristotle, 163n.2, 302–​4 Art of Rhetorick, The (Barton), 387–​88

398 Index “Atah Barata,” 63–​65, 245 “Atah Konanta ‘Olam Me-​Rosh,” 63–​64 audience, 24–​25, 47. See also communication, nonverbal; refrains authors and, 112 classical canon and, 5–​6, 29–​30 congregational, 21, 59, 150–​51, 165, 299 conventional plots and, 323 cultural norms and, 49–​50 defined, 10–​11 delivery and, 27–​28, 316–​17 distrust of, 39–​40 divine, 126, 272, 292 engagement /​participation, 19–​20, 92n.141, 152n.91, 242, 366–​70 familiarity with, 322 Greek, 26n.6 for liturgical poetry, 109, 147–​48, 149 physicality and, 292 response, 317–​18 “rhetorical,” 54n.85, 149–​50n.85, 247 synagogue, 53 “theatricality” and, 8–​9, 10–​11 where found, 24–​26 Augustine, 30–​31, 54–​55, 295 Austin, John L., 109 authors, 238–​39 actors and, 13–​14 audience and, 112 cultural tradition and, 164 defined, 10–​11 interpretation by biblical, 107 liturgical poetry and, 115–​16, 147, 348 -​performers mimesis, 100–​1 resonance and, 103 “theatrical,” 10–​11 “vividness” and, 173, 194, 223–​24 Avodahpoems of Yom Kippur, 19, 62–​63, 241–​43, 245–​47. See also story, compression strategy “Az Be’en Kol,” 175–​78, 245–​46 “Azkir Gevurot Eloah,” 245   Baba Rabbah, 207–​8 Barton, John, 387–​88 Basil of Seleucia, 3–​4, 43 Batstone, William, 117 Beachum, Richard, 40

Beer, Richard, 389–​90 Behemoth and the Leviathan, 46, 47–​49, 176n.30 Ben Sirach, the apocryphal work of, 61–​62 Beoker, Tom Berenice, 41 Bernard, Richard, 387–​88 Bible allusions from, 58 Hebrew, 81, 101, 103–​6, 104n.8, 240 Hebrew, and the Torah, 60 Jewish and Christian, 61 Jewish, 60, 65–​66, 240, 375 of Jubilees, 69 Bieber, Margarete, 34 bimah (Syriac: bema), 41, 341–​42 blason, 170, 170n.19 Boatwright, Mary T., 37 Brock, Sebastian, 254 Brook, Peter, 24–​25 Brown, Peter, 38 Burbage, Richard, 386–​87   calendars, 200–​6 “call and response,” 314–​16 canon, classical, 5–​6, 32, 96–​97 “common knowledge” and, 294 familiarity with, 28, 29–​30, 34 indigenous, 95 liturgical poetry and, 57 oratory and, 36 pantomime and, 115 pervasiveness of, 30–​31, 38–​39 women and, 236 Carmen Saeculare (Horace), 111–​12 Cassiodorus, 310 “cataloging” /​“listing,” 188–​91 Centos, 393 chansons de geste, 392–​93 chanting, 51, 151–​52, 314–​16 antiphonal, 153–​54, 338 choreography, 16–​22, 311–​13, 374. See also dance Choricius of Gaza, 115n.36, 135n.68 Chourmouziadou, K., 331–​32 Christodorus of Coptus, 300–​1 chronology, 235

Index  399 Chrysostom, John, 41–​43, 44–​46, 49–​52, 53–​54, 100, 116–​17, 212–​13, 238–​39, 295–​96 churches, 210–​21, 335–​39, 377 Acheiropoietos basilica, 337–​38 at Antioch, 212–​14, 217 basilica of Machouka, 213–​14 Byzantine, 358–​59 Hagia Sophia, 217–​21, 337–​39, 378–​81 at Kaoussi, 213–​14 at Seleucia Pieria, 211–​12, 213–​14, 215, 216–​17 Cicero, 117–​18, 118n.44, 119–​20, 119n.48, 227–​28, 233n.7, 297, 297n.19, 300–​1, 303–​6, 305n.40, 309, 317 comedy classical, 31–​32 drama and, 114–​16 infidelity and, 136–​37 pantomime and, 58 communication cultural differences in, 289 gestural. See communication, nonverbal nonverbal, 299, 300, 301–​2, 310, 317, 320–​21, 346, 347, 350n.7 competence (Culler), 19–​20, 294n.9 conversation, theological, liturgical poetry as, 148–​51 Corbeill, Anthony, 300 Council of Trullo (691–​692), 6, 40, 114–​15 Cribiore, Raffaela, 323, 329 Culler, Jonathan, 19–​20 culture /​entertainment, popular, 4–​5, 28–​ 29, 35, 39–​40, 49–​50, 296   dance, 5–​6, 35, 40, 294. See also choreography audience synergy and, 319–​20, 333–​34 clearness and, 312 ideal performer of (Libanius), 310–​11 Lucian and, 35 mime and, 32 pantomime and, 31–​32, 58, 296, 309–​ 10, 313 religious ritual and, 312–​13 skilled, 301–​2 spatial orientation and, 311–​12 story in, 294, 297–​98

Trullan Council and, 40 De Grammatica (Isidore of Seville), 99–​100 De Oratore (Cicero), 228 De utilitate hymnorum (or, De psalmodiae bono, Niceta of Remesiana), 19n.26 death as a character, 122, 124–​28, 130–​31, 141, 157, 158–​59, 350–​51 defeat of, 122, 132–​33, 139n.73, 157 declamation, 25–​26, 36, 166n.10, 234 late antiquity and, 5–​6 oratory and, 116–​18 theater and, 10–​11 deixis, 352–​60 defined, 348–​49, 359–​60 delivery, 6, 88–​89, 300–​1, 303–​7, 303–​ 4n.34, 309n.48, 318n.79, 346–​48, 382–​83, 385 gesture and voice in, 304 hymnic, 121 liturgical poetry and, 166–​68 as a physical experience, 348–​81 Demons and Dancers: Performance in Late Antiquity (Webb), 286–​87 dikastês, 141n.74 Dionysos (Bacchus), 1n.1 diversity, and liturgical poetry, 58–​59 Donadio, Rachel, 289–​91 drama, and comedy, 111–​16 Dunbabin, Katherine M. D., 25–​26n.5, 30–​31, 114–​15, 296 dynamism, 121   Edessa (modern Urfa), 211–​12 eidolopoeia (defined), 233n.6 eisegesis (defined), 79–​80 ekklesia, 274 ekphrasis, 14–​15, 118–​19, 134, 141–​42, 161, 162–​71, 172n.20, 177, 179, 182, 188, 194–​95, 223–​24, 232–​33, 359–​60 compound (Nicolaus the Sophist), 227 defined, 163–​64, 172–​73 defined (Aphthonius), 226 defined (Nicolaus the Sophist), 227 defined (Theon), 225 hymnic, in visual context, 195–​221 liturgical poetry and, 168–​69

400 Index ekphrasis (cont.) liturgical song and, 171–​95 narration and, 168–​69, 198–​99 in the progymnasmata, 224–​29 Ekphrasis: Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice (Webb), 162–​63 “El Adon,” 172–​73 Eleazar ha-​Qallir (“Qallir”). See “Qallir” embodiment. See also actors energy and, 361 individual, 348–​49 language of, 296 powerful, 287 enargeia, 118–​19, 141–​42, 162–​64, 163n.2, 167–​68, 171–​72, 173, 182, 194–​95, 223–​24, 227–​28, 232 defeat of, 124–​25 defined (Westin), 118n.46 encomium, 166–​67 engagement, with liturgical poetry, 132 Ephrem the Syrian, 12–​13, 18–​19, 92–​93, 121–​32, 141, 142–​43, 148–​49, 210–​ 11, 281–​83, 360–​62, 377–​78 epic, and lyric, 111–​14 epideixis (defined), 375 Epiphanius (Bishop of Salamis), 7n.8, 41 epithalamium /​ epithalamia (defined), 99–​100 Esther, Book of, 152n.92 ethopoeia, 15, 87, 106–​7, 107n.16, 118–​19, 141–​42, 144–​45, 157, 161, 166–​67, 179, 194, 223–​24, 228, 232–​33, 255–​56, 267–​68, 360 categories of, 234–​35 chronological structure of, 146n.81 defined, 69n.109, 233n.6 defined (John of Sardis), 234 hymnic, 242–​68 liturgical poetry and, 267 public speech pedogogy and, 234–​37 etrog, 203–​5 Etymologies (Isidore of Seville), 99–​100 eulogy /​eulogies 67–​68, 270–​71, 350–​53, 370 evidentia, 227–​28 exegesis, 108 defined (Lieber), 79–​80

liturgical poetry and, 69 pedagogy and, 109–​11 exegetes, constituencies of, 57 Exogogue, the, 103 Ezra the Scribe, 61   Faithfull Shepheard, The (Bernard), 387–​88 feedback loop, performer-​audience, 9–​11, 115–​16, 318, 320 festivals and forums, public, 38n.38, 327–​30 Fine, Steven, 197 Flesher, Paul, 342–​44 Frankel, Zecharias, 389–​90 Freeman, Elizabeth, 241–​42 friezes and reliefs, 214   gabbaim, 342 Gador-​Whyte, Sarah, 238–​39 gates (motif), 207–​8 gaze, 10–​11, 10n.13, 29–​30, 45–​46, 272, 273–​74, 291n.7, 313, 320–​21, 338–​39 gender, embodied, 236–​37 gendering, 237, 286–​87 characters, 270–​71, 350 coding, 296 direct speech and, 255 ethopoeia and, 234 Germon, 373n.60 Gerstel, Sharon E., 335–​36, 337–​38 gesture. See also communication, nonverbal; dance; delivery; pantomime; Terence analytical assumptions about (Corbeill), 300n.26 audience and, 317, 320–​21 common culture of, 96–​97, 117, 292, 294, 299 conventional, 296 emotion and, 305 ethical interpretation of, 303 ethnic, 289–​90 ethopoeia and, 286 hand, 125–​26, 181, 289, 351 homiletics and, 388–​89 pantomime and, 31–​32 performative literacy and, 9–​10

Index  401 Quintilian on, 307 in Roman art, 301 “speech” of, 323–​24 tone and, 349–​52 words and, 307, 310 Gleason, Maud, 234, 237 Globe Theatre, 327 Goldberg, Sander, 333–​34 Goldfaden, Avrom, 385n.4 Goodenough, E. R., 197 Gordon, Jacob, 384–​85 Gorgias (Plato), 302–​3 Gregory of Nazianzus, 238–​39   Hachlili, Rachel, 200–​2, 203–​4 haftarah/​haftarot, 60–​61, 76–​77, 364 handbooks liturgical, 20 oratorical, 9–​10, 224–​25. See also progymnasmata rhetorical, 163, 166–​67, 168–​69, 301 Harrowing of Hell, the, 122–​32, 142–​43, 157 Harss, Marina, 20, 297–​98 Harvey, Susan Ashbrook, 154–​55 hekhalot /​merkavah mysticism, 172–​73, 375 Hermogenes of Tarsus, 224–​26, 235 Hippo, 151 Holter, Erika, 327, 328–​29, 330 homiletics, 3, 9, 238–​39, 388–​89 Jewish versus Christian, 388n.12 on Lazarus, 43 Hunningher, Benjamin, 32 Huskinson, Janet, 295, 320–​21 “hymn” (defined), 8n.10 hymnody, 3, 7n.8, 14–​16, 52–​53, 322–​25. See also refrains aesthetic of presence (Lowrie) and, 111 collaborative, 287–​88 communal literacy, cultural competency and, 294, 314 congregational engagement with, 150–​60 constraints on, 393 declamation and, 166–​67 defined, 108 ellipitical, 89

epic and, 111–​12 ethopoeia and, 245, 267 progymnasmata and, 167–​68, 268–​85 prose prayer and, 109 reality and, 113 ritual and, 370–​74 sermons and, 387–​88 theater, oratory, and, 8–​9, 233–​34, 382–​83 theater and, 37, 43, 52 visual arts and, 222–​23 hypokrite, 4–​5, 52 defined, 32n.18   “Icons of Sound” (Pentcheva), 335–​36 illustratto, 227–​28 Institutio Oratoria (Quintilian), 224, 305–​6 interiority, 234–​35 Isidore of Seville, 99–​100, 102–​3, 169n.17   Jacob of Sarug, 18–​19, 18n.25, 52, 69–​73, 122–​23n.52, 173n.24, 187–​91, 242–​43, 262–​67 Jaffee, Martin, 36 Jephthah’s Daughter (Jacob of Sarug), 262–​68 Jewish Palestinian Aramaic (JPA) poems, 258–​62 Number 2, 182, 183, 268–​69 Number 14, 258–​62 Number 17, 80 Number 20, 159, 369 Number 21, 93 Number 28, 351–​52 Number 29, 269 Number 37, 269–​70 Number 52, 350–​51 Number 56, 351–​52 Number 57, 270–​71, 351–​52 Number 60, 352–​53 Number 66, 370–​71 Jewish Symbols in the Greco-​Roman Period (Goodenough), 197 Jewish Symbols in the Greco-​Roman Period (Hachlili), 200 John of Sardis, 234 Jones, C. P., 34–​35

402 Index Jones, Leslie Webber, 349 Judah the Patriarch, 53–​54 Julian, 23–​25, 34, 39–​40, 211–​13 Justinian, 217–​18   Kang, J., 331–​32 kanon, 392 kavvanah, 68 Kennedy, George, 36 Knesset Yisrael, 274 knowledge, categories of (Taylor), 293–​94 kontakion /​kontakia, 19, 73–​76, 221, 338–​39, 379n.74 Kopji, Kamil, 328 Krispos of Alexandria, 310–​11 kroupezion, 323–​24 Krueger, Derek, 2–​3 Kyriakakis, Chris, 335–​36   Lada-​Richards, Ismene, 313 language agonistic, 166–​67 body, 301–​2. See also communication, nonverbal Lash, Ephrem, 127n.58, 130n.62 “late antiquity” acclamations in, 155, 314–​16 biblical canon in, 95, 101, 107–​8 classical canon in, 34–​35, 95, 111–​12, 113 declamation in, 323 defined (Lieber), 5 delivery in, 126, 348–​81 differing poetic traditions of, 58–​59, 89 mime and pantomime in, 5–​6, 33, 115, 309–​10 participative literacy in, 19–​20, 23–​25, 42–​43, 49–​50, 147–​48, 152, 292, 314, 382–​83 performance in, 292, 324–​25, 337–​38, 341–​42 performative awareness in, 12–​13 schematic history of theater in, 31–​32 speech genres in, 120 theatrical opposition in, 6, 8–​9, 114–​15 theatrical sources for, 6 theatricality and religious ritual in, 3, 4–​5

ubiquity of performance in, 13–​14, 22, 27, 159 visual arts and, 183–​84 visual Judaism in, 196–​98 Leatherbury, Sean, 215 Leeser, Isaac, 388–​89n.14 leprosy, 193n.46 “Let Me Flee to [my] Helper” (Yose b. Yose), 278–​81 Levine, Lee I., 52–​53, 197, 341 Lex Roscia Theatralis, 33–​34n.22, 331–​32n.112 Libanius of Antioch, 212–​13, 224, 228–​29, 237, 297, 300–​1, 309–​12, 313, 316–​17, 320, 329–​30 Liebeschuetz, J. H. W. G., 314–​16 Life of Pelagia, The, 7n.7 Life of Thecla, 272–​73 literacy embodied cultural, 299 kinesthetic, 19–​20 oral versus written, 297n.17 participatory, 19–​20 performative, 19–​20 physical, 293–​99 shared visual, 314 liturgical poetry, 36, 55–​59, 108, 111–​12 power of, 393–​94 liturgy angelic, 156n.104 participatory, 147–​48 performative (Krueger), 3 performative (Romanos), 3 visual art and, 195–​96 Lowrie, Michèle, 111 Lucian of Samosata, 34, 35, 212–​13, 300–​1, 309–​10, 312–​13, 319 lulav, 203–​5 lyric, and epic, 111–​14   Mackintosh, Iain, 330 madrasha /​madrashe, 19, 122 defined, 18n.25 Magness, Jodi, 1–​2, 197 Marcion /​Marcionism, 60–​61 Marqe, 12–​13, 18–​19, 89–​90, 180–​82, 207–​ 8, 210, 283–​85, 352–​60, 371–​74 Poem Number 20, 89, 91–​95, 283, 355–​56, 367–​68

Index  403 Poem Number 21, 94, 354 Poem Number 23, 89–​91, 94 Poem Number 24, 180–​82, 355 Poem Number 25, 371–​74 Mayer, Wendy, 214 McGurk effect /​illusion, 328n.103 megillot, 60–​61 memory archival versus embodied, 293–​94 “stage,” 210 memra /​memre, 19, 70–​73, 253–​59, 284 defined, 18n.25, 243–​44 Menander, 34, 73 menorah, 203–​4 merkavah mysticism. See hekhalot mysticism Metamorphoses (Apuleius), 298–​99 Metatron, 201–​2 midrash, 65–​66, 69, 79–​80 ethopoeia and, 107 Lamentations Rabbah, 85–​87, 277–​78 Leviticus Rabbah, 46–​48 liturgical poetry and, 65 piyyut and, 87–​88, 278 mime, 5–​6, 32–​35, 115n.36, 135n.68, 286–​ 87, 309–​10 adultery, 31–​32, 73, 135–​37, 320–​21 defined, 32n.18 excommunicating, 40 mimesis, 118–​19 actors and, 230–​32 empathetic, 164 Mishnah Sotah, 133 Yoma, 62 Misopogon (Julian), 23–​25 mnemotechnics, 324n.93 Morey, C. R., 349 mosaics, 195–​96, 204–​5, 207, 384–​85, 390 at Antioch, 213, 214 carpet, 207–​8 “end time,” 198–​99 figurative, non-​abstract, 214 geometric, 213–​14, 215 Helios, 200–​2, 209–​10 liturgical poetry and, 222 as metaphors, 390–​91, 395–​96 poems as literary, 222–​24 prevalence of, 217

“multiliteracies” (Thomas), 50–​51n.75 Muth, Suzanne, 328–​29, 330   narrative, 79, 168–​69. See also ekphrasis; ethopoeia; story biblical, 60–​72, 94–​95, 198–​200, 299, 323–​24 classical canon and, 58, 294, 299, 323–​24 classical epic, 111, 113–​14 defined, 168–​69 familiar, 26–​27 imagistic, 134 liturgical poetry and, 94–​95, 161 Samaritan piyyutim and, 89 narrator, 31–​32, 102–​3, 111–​12 Narsai, 12–​13, 18–​19, 18n.25, 172–​73, 377–​78 nature, 200–​6 Neapolis (Nablus). See Shechem ne’ilah service, 152–​53 Nereids, 183–​84 Nicolaus the Sophist of Myra, 224–​25, 227, 235–​36 Ninna ben Marqe, 18–​19, 89 Ninth of Av, 92–​93, 158, 159, 201–​2, 388–​ 89, 390n.16 Nisan, first of, 201–​2 Nisibis (modern Nusaybin), 211–​12 norms alien, 101 congregational, 140–​41 cultural, 49–​50 performative, 153, 160, 165, 167–​68, 283, 299, 322–​23, 367 societal, 8–​9, 12, 96, 140, 151, 215–​16, 287–​88, 289   O’Connell, Peter A., 165–​66, 302–​3 On Dancing (Lucian), 35, 212–​13, 309 “On Earthquakes and Conflagrations” (Romanos), 378–​81 “On the Afflicted Woman” (Jacob of Sarug), 187 “On the Ascension” (Romanos), 356–​58, 370 “On the Conquest of Death” (Jacob of Sarug), 122–​23n.52 “On the Crucifixion” (Ephrem), 281–​83

404 Index “On the Leper” (Romanos), 187, 191–​65 “On the Nativity” (Ephrem), 173–​74, 216, 274, 360–​63, 367–​68 “On the Nativity: Adam and Eve and the Nativity” (Romanos), 74n.114, “On the Nativity: Mary and the Magi” (Romanos), 73–​76 “On the Spectacles” (Tertullian), 44 “On the Victory of the Cross” (Romanos), 126–​32, 141 “On Virginity” (Ephrem), 377–​78 orator’s gesture (oratorum articulum), the, 298–​300 oratory. See also actors, orators and arrangement and, 303–​4 declamation and, 116–​18 disreputable versus reputable, 308 invention and, 303–​4 liturgical poetry and, 8–​9, 36, 393–​94 public, 3, 25–​26 stream of, 317–​19 style and, 303–​4 theater and, 10–​11 three duties of (Cicero), 303–​4 training, 164–​65n.6 Origen, 99–​100, 102–​3 Oxford Handbook the Early Modern Sermon, 387–​88   Palmyra, 211 Pammachius, 42–​43 pantomime, 5–​6, 30–​31, 33–​35, 58, 286–​ 87, 286n.87, 294, 309–​10. See also dance, pantomime and defined, 31–​32 tragedy and, 313 parokhet, 205 participation active and passive, in liturgical poetry, 150–​51 hymns and, 367 patterns abstracted, 207, 209–​10 geometric, 200–​6, 209–​10 Paul the Silentiary, 217–​18, 219–​20, 380–​81 payyetan, 62 defined (Lieber), 18–​19 Pentcheva, Bissera, 218–​19, 220–​21, 335–​ 36, 338–​39

performance common culture of, 164–​65 complicity of dramatic (Huskinson), 320–​21 components of, 347–​48 content, 27–​28 cultural foundation of, 12–​13 as dialogue, 313, 314–​22 elements of, 10–​11, 27–​28 embodied memory and, 293–​94 infrastructure and, 41, 56–​57, 110–​11, 125–​26, 324–​26, 331–​33, 358–​60, 382–​83 of persuasion, 302–​8 pervasiveness of, 12 religious, 50 requirements of a theatrical, 30 ritual, 102 spaces/​infrastructures, 24–​28 stage and performative scaffolding in, 30 venue and content in, 27–​28 performative contexts and sensibilities, in liturgical poetry, 107–​8, 120 performers, 24–​25. See also mime; pantomime; actors defined, 10–​11 religious, 3 personification. See ethopoeia and prosopopoeia of “the people,” 274–​85 persuasion, 118–​19, 120 “Peter’s Denial” (Romanos), 153–​54 Phaedra (Seneca), 272–​73 phantasia, 227–​28 physicality, 346–​48. See also actors; performance expressivity and, 348–​49 Pilch, Adam, 328 piyyut /​piyyutim, 18n.24, 52–​53n.82, 109–​10 Avodah, 62–​69, 243n.32 classical Samaritan, 89 midrash and, 87–​88 Samaritan, and qedushta, 92–​93 Plato, 302–​3 Plautus, 73 plays, mystery, 386–​87 Pliny the Younger, 305–​6 Plutarch, 168–​69, 169n.16

Index  405 Poetics (Aristotle), 163n.2 poetry, classical constraints on, 393 Jewish Aramaic, 349–​53 liturgical poetry and, 113–​14 Poggi, Isabella, 290 Poseidon, 183–​84 “Positive Historical” Judaism, 389–​90 possession (demon), 232n.4 “powerful words” (Austin), 109 prayer, 108, 239–​40 prose, 109n.20, 110–​11 ritual and, 108–​9 precedents, biblical, and liturgical poetry, 107–​8 progymnasmata, 118–​19, 162–​63, 166–​67, 166n.10, 172–​73, 194–​95, 223, 224–​25, 224n.103 defined, 9–​10, 165, 224 liturgical poetry and, 166–​68 prologue, 78–​79n.117 personified (Shakespeare), 248n.45 prosopopoeia, 106–​7, 107n.16, 144–​45 defined, 82n.121 indirect, 283–​85 liturgical poetry and, 268–​85 of “the people,” 271–​74 rhetorical, and JPA poems, 268–​71 Prynne, William, 387 Purimshpiels, 392–​93 Puritanism, 387–​88 putti, 1–​2 pyxides, 38–​39   “Qallir,” 12–​13, 18–​19, 47–​48, 183–​87, 201–​2, 274–​78, 281 qatafim, 60–​61 Qedushah (Sanctus, or the Trisagion), 365–​66 qedushta /​qedushta’ot, 49n.70, 76–​79, 142–​43, 156–​57, 204–​6, 271, 362–​63, 365, 366–​67 composition of, 78 form of, 140–​41 versus memre and kontakia, 140–​41 qedushta’ot (Yannai), 202–​3 qerova /​qerovot, 341–​42 defined, 19 qillus (defined), 66–​67 qinah /​qinot (defined), 82, 87, 87n.132, 92–​93, 158–​59, 376n.67,

Quintilian, 166, 168–​69, 224, 227–​28, 299–​301, 305–​9, 317–​18   rahit /​rahitim, 20, 156–​57, 365, 367–​68. See also delivery defined, 202 reality, liturgical poetry and, 362 refrains, 121, 153, 155–​60, 319–​20, 323–​ 24, 366–​67, 368–​70 liturgical poetry and, 150–​51 versus repetends, 153n.94 repertoire, 293–​94 “Reply to Aristides on Behalf of the Dancers, A” (Libanius), 309 Resh Laqish (Shimon ben Laqish), 53–​55 Retzleff, Alexandra, 115 rhetoric anti-​theatrical, 40, 114–​15 forensic, 73–​137 theatrical, 133–​36 Rhetoric (Aristotle), 302–​3 Rhetorica ad Herennium, 303–​4 ritual, and prayer, 108–​9 Romanos the Melodist, 2–​3, 12–​13, 18–​19, 21–​22, 69–​70, 73–​76, 92–​93, 121–​32, 142–​43, 148–​49, 191–​95, 210–​11, 218–​19, 220–​21, 242–​43, 246–​54, 258–​59, 261, 360, 368–​69, 378–​81 Rosh Hashanah, 61 Rostra, 327–​28 Roueché, Charlotte, 95–​96, 154–​55 Rozick, Eli, 54–​55   Saadia (ben Joseph ha-​) Gaon, 18–​19, 18n.24 “Sanctification of the Church, The” (Narsai), 377–​78 Sanctus, 240–​41 scripture centrality of, 60–​79, 87–​89, 99–​100 defined, 240 readings from, 240 sculpture, 229n.118 selihot prayer, 92n.141 Seneca the Younger, 301–​2 senex amator, 73 sensorality, 62, 164. See also ekphrasis embodied, 168, 177

406 Index sermons, 110–​11 audience and, 11, 314–​16 diversionary, 50 John Chrysostom’s, 212–​13 kontakion and, 219 monodirectional, 110–​11 oratory and, 387 rabbinic, as performance, 53–​54 Shakespeare, William, 384, 386–​87 Shavuot, 158, 388–​89 Shaw, Brent, 151–​52 Shechem (Neapolis, Nablus), 7n.8, 79–​82, 377–​78 Shema, 240–​41, 273–​74 shift, perceptual, 121 Shimon ben Laqish. See Resh Laqish (Shimon ben Laqish) “Shiv‘ata for Dew” (”Qallir”), 184–​87, 200–​1 shivata’ot, 204–​5 Shofar service, 203–​4, 279, 369, 370 shovels, incense, 203–​4 signifiers, 294 Simon ben Yochanan, 61 Simonides, 168–​69 Soferim, 342 Song of Songs, 102–​5, 134, 169–​71, 279–​81 soundscape, Byzantine, 335–​36n.123 “Soundscapes of Byzantium” (Gerstel and Kyriakakis), 335–​36 Sozomen, 101–​2, 150–​51 spaces/​infrastructures, 358–​60 imagined, 374–​81 multifunctional, 41–​42 performance, 324–​44 sacred, 209–​10 sacred, and liturgical poetry, 196–​97 sacred, and natural motifs, 215–​16 theatrical, 330–​34 theatrical, in antiquity, 326 spatiality, 339–​40 Flesher and, 343–​44 spectacle, 115n.34 speech collective, 106–​7 congregational, 155–​58 direct, 255 dramatic, and liturgical poetry, 100–​1 embodied, 166–​67

imagined, 106–​7 persuasive. See performance, of persuasion public, 234–​37 recorded, in Hebrew Bible, 104–​7 repetitive persuasive, 367–​68 ritual, 240–​42 statuary, oratory, 301n.30 story, 232–​34.See also narratives compression strategy for defined (Lieber), 55 elliptical narration strategy for, 59, 88–​95 expansion strategy for, 59, 68–​79 invention strategy for, 59, 79–​88 narrative and, 55 pantomime and, 294 -​telling, parties to, 55 “theatricality” and, 55–​95 Sukkot, 204 symbols, 203–​4 “Jewish symbols panel” (Hachlili), 203–​4, 205 synagogues, 197–​206, 339–​44 amphitheaters and, 57n.93, 331n.110 basic components of, 340–​42 at Beit Alpha, 244n.34 “broadhouse,” 343 at Chorazin, 7n.8 at Dura Europos, 211, 244n.34, 321, 392–​93 at el Khirbe, 207, 208 at Huqoq, 1–​2, 21–​22, 183–​84, 197, 198–​99, 321, 390 Jewish, 197–​206 at Khirbet Samara, 207–​8 at Ma’oz Hyyim, 342, 344 at Nabratein, 342 “pre-​basilica,” 343 Samaritan, 41, 206–​10 at Sepphoris, 244n.34 syntax liturgical, 121–​32 of liturgical poetry, 121–​32   Tacitus, 305–​6 Targum Neophyti, 284 targum /​targumim, 56n.89, 79–​80, 110–​11, 343–​44 Tate, Nahum, 386–​87

Index  407 Taylor, Diana, 293–​94 temples, of Castor, 327–​28 Terence, 73, 290–​92, 299–​300 Tertullian, 7n.7, 44, 49–​50, 51–​52, 230–​31 texts, genres of biblical, 107–​8 theaters, 330–​34 at Antioch, 42 at Antiochenes, 38 authority and, 30–​31, 39–​40, 50–​52, 114–​15 banned, 6 at Caesarea, 37–​38 Christian, 2 community, 41–​55 criticism of /​opposition to, 6, 15n.22, 322n.90 heritage of, 28–​36 infrastructure/​spaces, 37–​40 late antiquity and, 5–​6 liturgical poetry and, 11, 28, 55–​57, 115–​16, 392–​94 liturgical poetry as, 287–​88 liturgical poetry as a form of late antique, 28 liturgy of, and performance of law, 132–​40 at Neapolis (Nablus), 37–​38 obstruction and, 37–​40 origin of Yiddish, 385n.4 pervasiveness of, 30–​31, 51 roots of, 312–​13 sacred rituals and, 3 in sacred spaces, 2–​3 at Scythopolis, 37–​38 at Sepphoris, 37–​38 spaces, 6–​7 at Tiberias, 37–​38 visual arts and, 295 “theatrical,” defined (Lieber), 10–​11, 10n.13 “theatricality,” 8–​9, 10–​11, 11n.14, 14–​15 as a criticism, 51–​52 defined (Lieber), 29–​30 performativity and, 55–​56 story and, 55–​95 Theodora, 40, 114–​15 Theodosius I, 40, 114–​15 Theodosius II, 217–​18 Theon, 225–​26 Thomas, Rosalind, 50–​51n.75 Tibat Marqe, 238–​39

Tidbeck, Karin, 160n.108 Torah, 60, 90–​92, 94, 104–​5, 210, 283n.86, 354–​57, 376–​77 abridged, 61 divine authorship of, 90–​91, 284 indirect characterization of, 284–​85 non-​narrative sections of, 88–​89 shrine and accessories, 203 tragedy, and pantomime, 31–​32 Treatise of Miraclis Pleyinge (Wycliffite), 15n.22 Tzaferis, Vassilios, 342, 344   Underwood, Douglas R., 332   Ve’ahavta, 273–​74 Visual Judaism in Late Antiquity (Levine), 197 visuality. See ekphrasis Vitruvius, 333 vividness. See enargeia voice, 147–​51 communal, 246–​47 liturgical, 238–​42 of liturgical poetry, 147–​48 liturgical poetry “in voice,” 102–​7 physical expressiveness and, 236 role of, in hymnology, 151–​60 spoken, 102–​7   wasf, 170 Webb, Ruth, 286–​87, 294, 296 Wesley, John, 387–​88 White, Andrew Walker, 97n.147 Williams, Michael Stuart, 314–​16 woman, 69–​81, 85–​87, 236–​37 guilt and, 82 Lady Zion, 274–​77   Yannai, 12–​13, 69–​70, 75–​79, 132–​41, 148–​49, 198–​99, 200–​3, 271–​74, 281, 360, 362–​67, 370, 375–​77 yidisherkenigLir, Der, 384–​87 Yom Kippur, 63–​64 Yose ben Yose, 12–​13, 18–​19, 369–​70   Zodiac, 200–​2, 208n.75, 273–​74, 285, 353–​ 54, 363, 364–​65